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The British economy is stuck. Living standards have stagnated, the public finances are under pressure, regional inequality is severe, and growth is too low. If devolution matters and is worth doing, then it can and should be about improving not just our local governance but also our national economic performance.
The solution to this is to rewire local government finance, devolving tax powers, to allow areas to keep and reinvest more of the proceeds from growth. Our latest report sets out how this could be done, proposing a ‘triple deal’ for London, Greater Manchester and the West Midlands.
Fiscal devolution to the mayors will help unlock national growth
Fiscal devolution is at the core of the triple deal. The current problem with the design of the local funding system is that there are no incentives for growth – most of it is based on grant funding irrespective of economic performance.
The report proposes a new revenue-neutral fiscal settlement. It reduces the amount of grant local government receives. In return it allows mayors to: fully retain business rates; gain extra flexibility over council tax; and – to offset the gap in funding this would create – to keep a share of income tax receipts they raise (with Greater Manchester and the West Midlands keeping more). By reconnecting local resource to growth in the local tax base and rewarding cities for pursuing growth, the triple deal would increase both local and national economic growth.
By 2038, fiscal devolution would mean that higher growth would translate into higher income tax revenues every year for the big cities. Depending on how much they improve their economic performance, this could range between£49 million and £230 million for Greater Manchester, and £40 million and £187 million for the West Midlands every year by 2038. Crucially, as the big cities are so important to the national economy, higher local growth would mean HM Treasury would also see higher income tax revenues of between £161 million and £505 million a year.
Importantly, the triple deal wouldn’t exacerbate inequality. By being revenue-neutral, no city would be left worse off. And fiscal devolution would see shift from national to local redistribution, as mayors would have to agree a funding settlement with their boroughs. More flexibility over council tax would not just provide better incentives for growth, but would also make its tax base broader and fairer, with 74 per cent of households, including a majority in every borough, potentially seeing a tax cut of on average £637.
The triple deal would change the mayors’ powers and governance too
The triple deal isn’t just about money—it’s also about empowering mayors with the tools and structures to reshape their cities’ economies. This includes planning reforms, to merge local plans and local transport plans at the mayoral election, control of commuter railways and major roads, and smaller changes such as licensing in city centres.
But governance would need to change in the triple deal too. With their additional responsibilities and tax powers, mayors would take on a more prominent role as leaders of their cities’ economies. Replacing the local authority boards with assemblies and more proportional elections would make it easier for central government and, much more importantly, local voters to hold them to account for the performance of the city.
The triple deal would make future devolution easier
One possible response to the triple deal would be to call for devolution across all of England and not just the big cities. But this ‘big bang’ approach would be challenging and entail tricky reforms to reorganise local government, even if it was the end-state we eventually want to get to. The risk is that this complication means we get nowhere. The triple deal would serve as a stepping stone towards further devolution and benefit the country as a whole – there’s no world in which the UK does better unless Manchester, Birmingham and London (which has stuttered since the global financial crisis) do better too.
While it’s a big challenge, fiscal devolution is key to the next phase of reform. Economic growth should be at the core of local government reform, and the triple deal is a proposal to both deliver it and begin the debate on what devolution across England should really look like.
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United Kingdom Business & Economics
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With inflation, house prices, rents and the cost of living rising RBA Governor Philip Lowe told senate estimates this week more Australians need more people in their dwellings.
But for many this is already an uncomfortable reality as pressures have hit hard and those in the industry have confirmed it is already happening.
At 39 years old, Claire did not ever foresee herself having to share her housing with anyone other than her 18-year-old daughter.
For nine years she has rented houses for the pair but increasing cost of living pressures and rent rises meant they have had to open their Brisbane space up to strangers.
"The idea of sharing with somebody else, sharing my stuff I worked hard to achieve and have other people come in and not respect that space — that's a really hard thing to come to," Claire said.
She tried to make ends meet working part-time, running a business and doing other gig jobs such as food delivery.
Now working full-time in employment services and earning what she described as a middle income, filling the extra space was the only option left.
She said it was something her teenager struggled with.
"She's a very homely person and doesn't really like sharing her space," Claire said.
"Having other people has been an adjustment, her mental health has suffered."
With a family to take care of she said downsizing was unrealistic — and even if she did, the pricing for smaller houses was still "ridiculous."
"It's just beyond reasonable at this point, the cost of living, the ridiculous amounts of rent," she said.
"It's pathetic it's allowed to go on this long."
'We need more people to live in each dwelling'Loading...
During senate estimates Mr Lowe acknowledged more housing supply was needed but added that higher interest rates would alleviate some rental pressure by forcing people to "economise" their housing.
"That's the price mechanism at work. We need more people on average to live in each dwelling, and prices do that," Mr Lowe said.
However according to data from share accommodation site Flatmates.com.au, the number of people seeking to fill rooms in their homes has already significantly increased — with May 2023 breaking the record for the largest number of new users at 70,000.
Data provided showed the number of new sign ups each month had increased by up to 70 per cent compared to the same time last year.
Similarly, the number of active members increased up to 40 per cent compared to the same month last year.
The largest demographic on the website was still those aged 25-34, making up 31 per cent of their audience, followed by the 18-24 age group.
However, both of those age groups have declined by at least five per cent since May 2022.
Meanwhile the 55-64 age group has increased by 10 per cent in the same period.
Flatmates.com.au community manager Claudia Conley said there were a number of factors driving the 55-64 year age group increase, including marriage breakdowns, lifestyle change and entering into retirement.
"The older demographic is also experiencing loneliness across the country and are choosing to move for companionship," she said.
For home owners, with rate rises pushing up mortgage costs she said a lot of people were seeing spare rooms they could rent out for additional income.
Similarly, she said cost of living is driving fewer young people to move out of their parents' homes, especially when they have the option to stay at home rent free.
She said like open houses, competition for spots in share houses is fierce.
"For people renting a room there are up to 70 people applying," she said.
Regarding Mr Lowe's comments, Ms Conley agreed share accommodation was one of many solutions to the current rental crisis.
"The biggest solution is supply, but obviously building homes takes time," she said.
"Share housing is a quick solution to a very large problem."
'Bitter pill to swallow'
For Ballina resident Warren, his choice was between saving his business, his unit, or sharing.
Previously rent for his health clinic had increased at CPI, but the landlord this year plans to increase the cost to match market value— 44 per cent higher than what he pays now.
The 48-year-old also expects his mortgage repayments to increase by an extra $600 a month as he comes off fixed rates in December.
"And there's just no way I can take on the business rent increase and six months down the line take on the increase in the mortgage payments," he said.
"It's just impossible."
Knowing what was coming he has chosen to move in with a friend and place his unit up for rent to make ends meet.
"It's been a bitter pill to swallow," he said.
"I don't want to wait until the end of the year and find myself in a world of financial trouble where I'm back pedalling and I'm in over my head."
Having worked in the acupuncture, osteopathy and massage industry for 21 years and owned his Ballina business for five, closing the business and finding a new job was something he wanted to avoid.
"I came to Australia 12 years ago, as an international student, worked solidly hard, saving, saving, saving, saving," he said.
"Two years ago, I felt really chuffed I was able to buy myself the unit. I spent a little on the flat improving it. I've made it quite nice and had a sense of achievement.
"To give it up to somebody else who doesn't care about it as much – it doesn't feel great.
"I'm looking at it as an asset as opposed to my home, I don't have to sell it, but I didn't think this would happen."
'Feel happier flat sharing'
For some though the news isn't all bad and is a welcome lifestyle choice.
Rebecca McLean had managed to find a place to live alone in Brisbane for the first time at the beginning of 2022.
But after a year, the 24-year-old found herself back in share housing again — fortunately it worked in her favour.
"When it came around to renewing my lease I decided there was no way I could afford my rent on top of all the utility increases as well," she said.
"Just so I could have peace of my own mind I decided to go back to flat sharing."
For her the move has meant she is no longer "constantly stressed".
"I had to take up a second part-time job as an Uber Eats driver just to afford my bills," she said.
"It was rough living alone — being able to afford things is a lot better."
The full-time graphic designer said ideally, she would have preferred to continue living alone, but has managed to find great flatmates and a good home.
But she acknowledged she got lucky.
"It was just a gamble, such a fluke I found the place," she said.
"When I was looking for a new place, I found even the prices of some rooms for flat sharing were getting up to the price of the one-bedroom apartment.
"Sometimes maybe flat sharing isn't even affordable."
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Real Estate & Housing
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A major shake-up of the way alcohol is taxed could leave many drinks costing more from Tuesday.
Under what the Treasury says are new "common-sense" principles, tax is being levied according to a drink's strength.
Duty will increase overall, with most wines and spirits seeing rises, but will fall on lower-alcohol drinks and most sparkling wine.
Taxes on draught pints will not change, an additional measure designed to support pubs.
Alcohol duties have been frozen since 2020. These changes were originally scheduled for February this year but were postponed by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt as the cost-of-living crisis continued.
Now with prices still rising, though at a slower rate, the government is going ahead with a 10.1% rise in alcohol duties, and is also overhauling the system.
Drinks with alcohol by volume (ABV) below 3.5% will be taxed at a lower rate, but tax on drinks with ABV over 8.5% will stay the same, whether it is wine, spirit or beer.
As a result, sparkling wine, which was previously taxed at a higher rate than still wine, will be 19p cheaper, for a standard-strength bottle, if retailers pass on the tax changes by lowering prices. A can of pre-mixed gin and tonic would be 5p cheaper.
Tax on a typical bottle of still wine with ABV 12% will go up by 44p, but on wine with 15% ABV, tax will rise by 98p, according to the Wine and Spirits Trade Association (WSTA).
Spirits and fortified wines, such as sherry and port, will see steep rises.
"The changes we're making to the way we tax alcohol catapults us into the 21st century, reflecting the popularity of low-alcohol drinks and boosting growth in the sector by supporting small producers financially," the chancellor said.
The government said the new system of duties had been made possible by the UK's departure from the EU, and that it would support "wider UK tax and public health objectives".
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said lower duties on draught beers and ciders would "reduce the price of a pint" and support pubs.
Tax on draught beer in pubs will be up to 11p lower than tax on supermarket beer as a result of the changes - a measure that was announced in the Budget earlier this year.
William Robinson, managing director of Robinson Brewery, which operates 250 pubs, welcomed the difference in draft beer duty between pubs and supermarkets but said rising tax on other alcoholic drinks could be passed on to customers.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "There is clearly a benefit there of a lower duty rate on pubs but what will be going up is wines and spirits, they will be increasingâ¦we'll have to all work out how we manage to pass those increases on to the consumer or how we can hold those increases and absorb them."
He said he thought individual businesses would take their own view. "At the end of the day, duty is a tax. It isn't a cost of goods so it is very hard to work out how you can absorb all of that," he said. "Ultimately and generally, duty is simply passed through because it is form of tax collection."
'Inflationary misery'
The WSTA said the measures represented the biggest tax rise on a standard bottle of wine for nearly 50 years.
The trade association said the government had chosen to "impose more inflationary misery on consumers".
It warned that other economic pressures, including high inflation and "rocketing prices" for glass, would mean that many businesses, especially smaller firms, would not be able to stay afloat following these changes.
"Ultimately, the government's new duty regime discriminates against premium spirits and wine more than other products," WSTA chief executive Miles Beale said.
Wine from hotter countries, where the sun naturally produces higher alcohol content, would be penalised, he added.
The overhaul of alcohol excise is being introduced in two stages, with a second adjustment coming in February 2025, which will apply a full sliding scale of tax levels according to alcohol content.
The British Retail Consortium said its latest monthly survey of shop prices showed that prices were rising more slowly in July (at 7.6%), compared to June when they were rising at 8.4%.
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Inflation
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Jeremy Hunt should copy the Danish benefits system to encourage people to switch jobs more often, according to a new report.
The Resolution Foundation has urged the Chancellor to offer people who lose their jobs more generous benefits to encourage them to take more risks with their careers.
This would help tackle Britain’s productivity crisis by making the jobs market more dynamic and boost overall growth at a relatively modest cost, the Resolution Foundation argued.
Economists Louise Murphy and Mike Brewer recommend that people who have been in work for at least 12 months and lose their jobs involuntarily should be eligible to receive up to 65pc of their in-work salary for the first three months spent unemployed.
The think tank argues that more generous benefits would encourage people to switch jobs more often, safe in the knowledge that if things go wrong and they lose their new role they would not struggle to pay the bills.
Currently, unemployment benefits amount to 14pc of the average wage, which the report argues puts workers off moving roles.
By contrast Denmark offers 90pc, the Netherlands 75pc and Canada 55pc.
Ms Murphy said the higher benefits would also give workers a little extra time to find the best job for them, rather than being forced to simply take the first role that became available.
She argued this would be a benefit to businesses, the economy and jobseekers.
Ms Murphy said: “Too many workers across Britain are having their careers held back by a fear of moving jobs, and the new job not working out. And too many of those out of work have to take the first job they’re offered, rather than holding out for one that matches their skills.
“Workers just can’t afford the major loss of family income that unemployment can bring. But staying put in the wrong job, and not having the time and confidence to find a better one, isn’t just bad for individuals. It makes our economy less productive and Britain poorer as a result.”
Evidence from the US and several European countries indicates that jobseekers with higher unemployment benefits tend to end up finding positions with higher pay, indicating it is a worthwhile investment for them and the economy.
In the UK the share of people moving jobs in any given year – whether from one position to another, leaving the workforce, being fired or entering employment – has fallen from a peak of more than 30pc in 2001 to 19pc in 2019, on the eve of the pandemic, suggesting the jobs market is becoming more stagnant.
Workers in middle- and high-income families are particularly unlikely to move jobs, the report found, as running the risk of losing their new post would mean a particularly large loss of earnings.
Most of the UK’s 1.5m unemployed would not qualify for the proposed scheme as it would require them to have been in work for the previous 12 months and would not cover those who leave their jobs voluntarily.
As a result, the report estimates the proposals would come at a relatively low cost compared to the potential benefits.
“On current patterns of low unemployment, our proposed system would cost £0.4bn per year in 2024-25 – this is just a fraction (less than 1pc) of the overall working-age welfare bill, which is expected to reach £113bn in 2024-25,” the report said.
Ms Murphy said that the prospect of rising unemployment should focus the Government’s mind on ways to improve the functioning of the jobs market.
So far this year the unemployment rate has risen from 3.7pc to 4.3pc.
The Bank of England expects it to rise to 4.8pc or even 5pc, depending on the path of interest rates, over the next two years.
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Unemployment
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Hundreds of Amazon sellers have complained that the online marketplace is withholding their money.
Amazon said an existing policy to hold some money in case of refunds had been extended to the UK and EU.
But some sellers have written to their MPs saying they cannot get the cash needed to run their businesses.
Vinyl and CD seller Mario told the BBC Amazon is holding £5,000 leaving him "shaken and panicked" and fearing he can no longer continue trading.
Amazon told the BBC it was holding money for seven days after the delivery date to bring sellers in the UK and Europe in line with its worldwide policy which has existed since 2016.
It said it recognised the policy change could lead to "a one-time cash flow disruption" but that it had notified affected sellers three months in advance. Some sellers told the BBC this email was not clear - or in many cases sent to junk mail.
Mario has been selling music on Amazon for seven years, but said he can no longer afford to renew his stock, or pay for postage to fulfil his current orders.
Mario, whose money was frozen on 3 August, said he is unable to withdraw any for maintaining daily operations.
"I'm losing my company," he said. "I've never had a problem with my payments before. How can I feed my family, pay my bills?"
He told the BBC when he emailed Amazon Sellers' customer services, he received a "generic, stock" message that did not inform him about the specifics of his case.
He showed the BBC posts on the Amazon Sellers forum, where there are complaints from hundreds of other sellers who have had their money withheld since 3 August.
'£170,000 withheld'
Daniel Moore, 48, has a business called Ink Jungle that sells ink cartridges. He has £170,000 in reserve - and it is increasing by £40,000 a day, he said.
"The value they will hold from us is disproportionately high versus the potential refunds processed by customer returns or non-delivery," he said.
Daniel uses Fulfilled By Amazon to ship some of his orders, and says he has a 0% defect rate on deliveries, and just 0.13% for returns - but that his money is still being withheld.
Fulfilled By Amazon is a system where sellers use Amazon's warehouse to stock their goods, and Amazon then ships orders to customers on behalf of the sellers from that warehouse.
Daniel said the withheld funds meant he will be unable to pay his £191,000 VAT bill, which is due this week.
His company turns over about £16m on Amazon and employs more than 20 staff.
Daniel says the reserve has left him unable to buy stock and unable to pay bills.
He has contacted his local MP and the Financial Conduct Authority.
'Crippling'
Michelle, 32, from Cheltenham has been selling pet products for more than 10 years on Amazon. She told the BBC it is holding £16,000 of her takings.
She took out a loan from Amazon Lending to help keep her business running during the time her money was held, but the loan money of £18,000 is also locked and is inaccessible - even though Amazon said in the loan confirmation email that the funds would be available straight away.
She was told by Amazon that she will not be able to access any of that money for at least two weeks.
"Obviously when we were used to disbursing payments into our bank account daily, those two weeks are very challenging indeed for the cash flow of the business.
"We employ 13 members of staff and this is crippling our business", she said.
Michelle made several attempts to contact Amazon but says she keeps being told to "wait".
"This whole delivery based reserve is meant to hold funds relating to orders being delivered, then an additional seven days, but they are holding everything including our approved loan," Michelle added.
The BBC has seen several letters sent from sellers to MPs complaining about Amazon's reserve system.
Conservative MP for Bracknell James Sunderland's office confirmed that it was looking in to Amazon's reserve system and that the issue has been raised with ministers, and that the Treasury was aware of it.
Amazon said the policy was introduced for new sellers worldwide in 2016, but extended to sellers in the EU and the UK registered before this date on 3 August this year.
The Small Business Commissioner's office said many sellers reported that they were being offered loans by Amazon at interest rates of around 14% to help them manage cash flow while they wait for funds to come through.
"They say they are being lent their own money at high interest, but for some the alternative is insolvency. We need big firms to understand that delaying small payments to small firms can have a massive negative impact and everyone loses," commissioner Liz Barclay said.
She added that with bank processing times, many sellers are having to wait for around 14 days for their money and have a two-week window in which as a result of this change, they have no income.
The news comes after Etsy began withholding 75% of sellers funds for around 45 days. The company reduced the amount after hundreds of sellers complained of it affecting their business.
Many sellers said the email implied that their ability to withdraw daily amounts would not be restricted - when in practice, it is.
An Amazon spokesperson said: "The policy to pay sellers seven days after delivery date was introduced in August 2016 for new selling partners.
"This process will standardise this policy for European sellers to ensure they have sufficient funds to cover any financial obligations, like product returns or customer claims."
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Consumer & Retail
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The cost of a homemade cheese sandwich has jumped by over a third in one year, according to research for the BBC.
The price of two slices of white bread, a serving of butter and mature cheddar has risen to 40p, up 37% over a year.
Prices of sandwich fillings including chicken, eggs and ham at supermarkets have soared, while the cost of bread has also risen, the figures suggest.
Food prices have been pushed up by extreme weather, the war in Ukraine, and outbreaks of avian and swine flu.
One father said he had already switched his two children from packed lunches to school dinners at £2.45 a head in a bid to save money.
"Everything was going up - ingredients, the cost of cooking, so it's all something we had to take into account," Ritesh Thakker from Hounslow said.
"It's been really tough, especially the cost of fresh food and vegetables going up," he added, with the family often having to make trips to two or three shops to find the best deals in the face of increasing food and energy bills.
The figures come as food prices continue to soar, rising at their fastest rate in 45 years.
Pano Christou, the boss of Pret A Manger, told the BBC that he thought there was still "a bit more time to go" before food inflation peaks.
Retail research firm Assosia analysed the average price of popular items that make up a packed lunch across Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Morrisons and Lidl as well as Aldi click-and-collect. The data included prices from the grocers' standard ranges before any promotions were applied, and is based on online prices for the four biggest supermarkets.
Assosia looked at the cost of white and wholemeal bread, as well as popular sandwich fillings covering a mix of dietary requirements - including cheese, cheese and ham, tuna mayonnaise, egg and cress and ham salad - and compared the prices seen in April with the same month last year.
The BBC then worked out the price per portion using suggested serving sizes. A cheese and ham sandwich on white bread saw the biggest rise, jumping by 18p, while the tuna mayo option saw the smallest increase of just 5p.
The price of a medium loaf of own-label wholemeal or white bread rose by more than 40%, the figures show. They now stand at 86p and 84p respectively.
The price of fresh vegetables such as a whole cucumber or an iceberg lettuce has also gone up by more than 50% in the past 12 months, partly due to extreme weather hitting harvests abroad earlier this year.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine - one of the world's biggest exporters of wheat and other grains - has also disrupted some supply chains.
Outbreaks of avian and swine flu have also affected supplies and mean the cost of eggs, bacon and ham has shot up too.
Fighting price rises
Matt Raynor, chairman of wholesale sandwich supplier Raynor Foods, oversees an operation that includes 300 employees and produces about half a million sandwiches a week.
According to the British Sandwich Association (BSA), three billion sandwiches are purchased from UK retail or catering outlets each year.
But Mr Raynor says that labour shortages, exacerbated by Brexit, and wage increases have meant that he has had to put up prices.
He estimates that the company's wage bill has gone up by at least 20% in the past two years, with more staff now joining from India or China, rather than Eastern Europe, due to increased red tape.
And, of course, extra costs get passed on to its customers, which include the likes of hospitals, shops, schools and airlines.
"If we hadn't done that, we wouldn't be here," Mr Raynor says. "There's not one company out there who could have swallowed all these increases."
While some wholesale food prices have started to fall, it usually takes some time before that feeds through to the supermarket shelves.
Bigger retailers are expected to start passing on savings to consumers in the next few months but the only item in Assosia's figures that fell in price was an own-label bunch of organic bananas.
Your device may not support this visualisation
BBC analysis has found that even the meal deal has gone up in price across many major outlets, with the cheapest generally available deal now £3.50 at Sainsbury's.
But industry body the British Retail Consortium recently said that it expects bigger supermarkets will start passing on savings to consumers soon, potentially easing some of the pressure on households.
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Inflation
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GST Reward Scheme On Anvil; Customers Can Soon Upload Invoice, Participate In Lucky Draw
The invoice uploaded on the app should have the GSTIN of the seller, invoice number, amount paid and tax amount.
Individuals may soon get rewarded for uploading goods and services tax invoice on a mobile app as the government is likely to launch the long awaited 'Mera Bill Mera Adhikar' scheme soon.
Under the invoice incentivisation scheme, cash prize of Rs 10 lakh to Rs 1 crore monthly/quarterly could be given to individuals who upload invoice received from retailer or wholesaler on the app, two officials told PTI.
The 'Mera Bill Mera Adhikar' mobile app will be available on both IOS and android platforms. The invoice uploaded on the app should have the GSTIN of the seller, invoice number, amount paid and tax amount.
An individual would be able to upload a maximum of 25 genuine invoices in a month on the app and the invoice should have a minimum purchase value of Rs 200, an official said.
Over 500 computerised lucky draws would be conducted every months where prize money could run into lakhs of rupees. Two lucky draws will be done in a quarter where the prize amount could be Rs 1 crore, officials said.
The scheme is in the process of being finalised, they said, adding it could be launched as early as this month.
To curb the menace of GST evasion, the government has already made electronic invoice mandatory for B2B transactions where the annual turnover exceeds Rs 5 crore.
The 'Mera Bill Mera Adhikar' scheme would ensure electronic invoice generation even in case of B2C customers so as to enable the buyer to be eligible to participate in the lucky draw.
The scheme is conceptualised in a way so as to incentivise citizens and consumers to ask for genuine invoices from the seller when making business to consumer (B2C) purchase of goods or services, which are under the purview of GST.
The scheme is conceived so as to encourage tax compliant behaviour, in the B2C stage of the transactions, by the consumers and business across India.
GST Network has developed the technology platform which will enable citizens to register themselves and upload invoices on a user-friendly mobile application and portal.
This scheme is expected to serve multiple objectives of incentivising and rewarding compliant behaviour by the consumers, encouraging tax compliant businesses, boosting consumer spending, and, checking tax evasion.
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Consumer & Retail
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CLIMATEWIRE | The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency warned Tuesday that a government shutdown would jeopardize FEMA’s ability to help people after disasters during the peak of hurricane season.
FEMA imposed emergency spending restrictions three weeks ago as its disaster fund dwindled to dangerously low levels. The Biden administration is asking Congress for $16 billion in emergency cash for the fund and an additional $20 billion for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
But with both requests in doubt, the little money that’s left in the disaster fund “would be insufficient to cover all of our ongoing life-saving operations,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told members of a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee.
“We would have to continue to reduce the scope of what it is that we are supporting in our operations,” she added.
Criswell’s remarks are her starkest warning yet about the fund's depletion and its potential affects on the country.
In late August, FEMA stopped reimbursing communities for rebuilding projects such as road repairs and said it would provide money only for “critical response” that protects lives following recent disasters such as the Maui wildfires.
But stalled negotiations in Congress to approve both the administration’s emergency funding request and spending for fiscal 2024 raises concerns that FEMA’s disaster fund will run dry despite the spending restrictions.
“A lapse in appropriations for FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund has an impact on everybody across this nation, from our ability to do life-saving actions in a number of places as well as ongoing recovery projects regardless of where they’re at,” Criswell said.
On Tuesday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) delayed a vote aimed at averting a government shutdown because Republicans couldn't agree on a short-term spending measure.
At the hearing Tuesday, Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.) said FEMA has stopped paying for about 1,610 rebuilding projects since it restricted disaster spending on Aug. 30.
“I am very concerned about the lack of funding available to fight these disasters,” Larsen said.
Criswell urged Congress to approve both the emergency spending and a budget for 2024.
“It is vital that FEMA — and the American people — be able to tap into an adequately funded Disaster Relief Fund so that we can continue to respond as soon as disaster strikes,” Criswell said in her opening statement.
The spending restrictions do not prevent communities from undertaking projects to rebuild from disasters that occurred as long as a decade ago. But communities cannot be reimbursed by FEMA, she said, adding that smaller jurisdictions would be hit hardest.
“They’re not going to be able to continue some of the work because of cash-flow issues. They’ll need the reimbursement for these types of projects so they can continue the work,” Criswell said.
Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2023. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.
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Energy & Natural Resources
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House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) reported Friday that James Biden, who is seven years younger than Joe Biden, sent his older brother a $200,000 check in March 2018. The check came on the same day that one of James Biden's business ventures loaned him the same amount.
The implication is that the money from the business was actually intended for the older Biden.
“James Biden wrote this check to Joe Biden as a loan repayment. Americore, a distressed company, loaned money to James Biden, who then sent it to Joe Biden,” Comer said in a video accompanying the announcement. “Even if this was a personal loan repayment, it’s still troubling that Joe Biden’s ability to be paid back by his brother depended on the success of his family’s shady financial dealings.”
The White House says the claims amount to little more than a distraction, and Democrats on the same House committee say Comer has more bank records available that he's withholding in order to protect the narrative.
"This is ‘failure theater’ that is intended to be a ‘shiny object’ to distract people from how they are incapable of doing the basics of governing," White House spokesman Ian Sams said in a prepared statement. "It’s no coincidence they rushed out a new distraction mere minutes after yet another failed speaker vote."
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) accused Comer of selectively releasing only bank records that make Biden look bad.
"Per usual, @GOPoversight is blatantly misleading the public," he posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. "@RepJamesComer concealed a $200,000 loan from Joe Biden to his brother six weeks before his brother repaid him. It’s time to end this charade and focus on opening the House."
However, the White House has also declined so far to release additional information about the loan.
House Oversight Democrats spokesman Joseph Costello made a similar claim, posting, "[Oversight Republicans are] promoting a false narrative while they hide the bank record showing that on 1/12/18, then a private citizen, Joe Biden made a loan to his brother James."
The White House and Comer's office did not respond to questions about whether they would release additional records about the transaction.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (R-MD) issued a statement saying the loan shows how the president is committed to helping his struggling relatives, loaning them money rather than profiting off of them.
"President Biden has helped family members in times of need, including his son and brother," Raskin said.
Nonetheless, this is not James Biden's first controversy. Joe Biden intervened to help his younger brother with the fallout of an unsuccessful nightclub venture in the 1970s. More recently, James Biden has taken loans from some of Joe Biden’s top donors and allies, a 2020 ProPublica investigation found.
In this most recent revelation, James Biden procured loans totaling $600,000 from a company called Americore Health on the premise that "his last name, ‘Biden,’ could ‘open doors’ and that he could obtain a large investment from the Middle East based on his political connections," according to documents released after the company went bankrupt.
James Biden appears to have settled last year with Americore by agreeing to pay back $350,000.
Former White House ethics attorney Richard Painter says the White House and Comer should both release the full details of what they know about the $200,000 check.
"If there was no loan, it was either a gift or a return on investment or something else," Painter, who worked in the George W. Bush White House, said. "So if they say it's a loan, they should just produce proof of the original loan. ... Everyone should put their cards down face up."
The matter did not come up during Monday's White House press briefing.
Painter argues that Democratic claims about Comer withholding documents do not hold weight so long as the White House also refuses to release them.
"This whole thing sounds weird. It's a little bit like me saying, 'Congressman Comer has information about Richard Painter's bank account, and he won't release it!'" Painter said. "OK, well then I'll release it."
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Banking & Finance
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- More tourists are thought to be prioritizing milder temperatures or even off-season travel to avoid spending their time away in oppressive heat.
- Europe is currently experiencing some of the hottest temperatures of the summer so far, with yet another heat wave expected to push the mercury close to record-breaking levels in the coming days.
- Data from the European Travel Commission found that the popularity of Mediterranean vacation destinations dropped by 10% compared with last year.
Sweltering conditions across southern Europe could accelerate a burgeoning trend among holidaymakers, as more tourists prioritize milder temperatures or off-season travel to avoid spending their time away in oppressive heat.
Europe is currently experiencing some of the hottest temperatures of the summer so far, with yet another heat wave expected to push the mercury close to record-breaking levels in the coming days.
An intense and prolonged series of heat waves recently brought temperatures to over 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) in parts of Greece, eastern Spain, and Sardinia and Sicily in southern Italy.
Data from the European Travel Commission, a nonprofit based in Brussels, showed earlier this month that travelers planning to take trips between June and November this year decreased by 4% compared with 2022 — but remained at a high 69%.
Spain was the most popular travel destination, with 8% of respondents planning a vacation locally in the coming months, the ETC said. The southern European country was followed closely by France (7%), Italy (7%), Greece (5%) and Croatia (5%).
The popularity of Mediterranean vacation destinations, however, dropped by 10% compared with last year, when Europe experienced its hottest summer on record.
Meanwhile, the ETC said vacation spots like the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Ireland and Demark experienced a surge in popularity, attributing the findings to travelers seeking out less crowded destinations and the pursuit of cooler climes.
The trade body also said many planning trips in the coming months were looking for more affordable experiences or considering offseason travel to stretch their budgets.
Nearly a quarter of the ETC survey's respondents said they were worried about the overall rise of trip costs, while 8% cited possible extreme weather conditions.
Emergency workers have been battling devastating wildfires over the past week in Greece — one of the most popular Mediterranean vacation spots.
Huge blazes on the Greek island of Rhodes forced an unprecedented evacuation of some 19,000 people on Sunday, while wildfires also broke out on the islands of Evia and Corfu.
It has left many holidaymakers stuck in limbo, with the BBC reporting Monday that people forced to leave their hotels over the weekend have since been sleeping at the airport, as well as in sports halls, conference centers and on the street.
"Increasingly, this is what you will face if you holiday in southern Europe during the summer months," said Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London, on Twitter.
"And every single holiday flight makes global heating worse," he added.
Scientists say the extreme weather sweeping across the globe reaffirms the increasing urgency of cutting greenhouse gas emissions as quickly and as deeply possible.
It also, the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization says, underpins why "we have to step up efforts to help society adapt to what is, unfortunately, becoming the new normal."
The decline in popularity of Mediterranean countries as vacation hot spots could coincide with an emerging trend of holidaymakers seeking new destinations with cooler temperatures.
In Estonia, for example, average summer temperatures tend to hover around 20 degrees Celsius, and spot readings rarely exceed 30 degrees Celsius.
Marketing campaigns to promote Estonia's colder climate are not likely to be forthcoming, however.
"Obviously in terms of tourism marketing, it's a bit of a hard sell," Rainer Aavik, head of Enterprise Estonia's tourism department, told public broadcaster ERR on July 18.
"As a whole, we are selling the Nordic experience and the fact that there is plenty of nature and fresh air. But positioning ourselves as an opposite to warmer countries is unlikely to benefit Estonia in the long term," Aavik said.
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Consumer & Retail
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Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of hypocrisy after repeatedly opposing High Speed 2 only to later attack the Government over its failure to deliver the railway.
Sir Keir spent years before becoming the Labour leader opposing proposals for the running of services to central London that affect his Holborn and St Pancras constituency.
The high-speed rail project, which has been beset by delays and is expected to cost more than £100 billion on its completion, is set to terminate at a new station at Euston, where construction had started before the site was mothballed.
Labour promised in March that HS2 would be built in its entirety, while Sir Keir accused Boris Johnson of having “betrayed Yorkshire and the North” by scrapping its eastern leg to Leeds.
It is understood that Sir Keir had preferred a different route for HS2 but “fully supports” the project, particularly now construction work has started.
But the leader of the Opposition was a staunch critic of the scheme during his time as a backbencher and as shadow Brexit secretary under Jeremy Corbyn.
In a weekly update for constituents, posted to his website in 2015 – which has since been archived – Sir Keir said HS2 was the most “pressing” issue affecting the seat.
“Imagine having a home just 10 metres from the noise, dust, vibration and disruption of demolition and construction, year after year,” he wrote.
When he voted against the HS2 Bill in Parliament the following year, he insisted it was “my duty to stand with my constituents facing 20 years of devastation”.
Speaking in a debate held before the Bill passed through the Commons, he told MPs: “HS2 will come into Primrose Hill and crash through to Euston, destroying everything in its path.
“It is no wonder that at every meeting and everywhere I go in my constituency, anxiety is etched on the faces of everybody who talks to me about HS2. It is an appalling situation, one that is wholly unacceptable on any basis.”
Sir Keir also urged “compensation and mitigation” for affected residents. In November 2018, by which point he had been a member of the shadow cabinet for more than two years, he tweeted about “the devastating impact of HS2 in Camden”.
Senior Conservative MPs criticised Sir Keir’s apparent change of heart on the project.
Greg Smith, the MP for Buckingham and a member of the transport select committee, said: “Sir Keir is no stranger to a U-turn, but normally he U-turns away from unpopular positions.
“This time he’s turned away from the right choice. The position that we genuinely find ourselves in now is that Labour and the Lib Dems are pushing for HS2 – harder, faster, longer – and it’s actually the Conservatives that are starting to ease gently back from it.
“The hypocrisy on this issue is staggering, and the Starmer example is probably the most stark of them all.”
Sir John Redwood, the former Cabinet minister who ran the No 10 policy unit under Margaret Thatcher, said: “Since Keir Starmer rightly opposed HS2, the business case and the environmental case have got worse for the project and the costs have skyrocketed. So why has he changed his mind?”
Consultation on HS2 started at the end of the last Labour government, with the route drawn up by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. By the time Mr Johnson pressed ahead with it in 2020, he acknowledged its costs had swelled from an initial £42.6 billion to more than £100 billion.
The Telegraph last week revealed the future of HS2 is in question after the official infrastructure watchdog warned its “successful delivery” now “appears to be unachievable”.
The Infrastructure and Projects Authority applied a “red” rating to plans for the construction of the first two phases of the line, noting “major issues with project definition, schedule, budget, quality and/or benefits delivery”.
A Labour spokesman said: “A lost decade of dismal Conservative failure has left the country with second-rate infrastructure, and rail services in crisis, holding the economy back and disrupting passengers. The Tories should stop playing political games and just get on with building HS2 in full. Labour will call time on this decade of Tory decline, and deliver infrastructure fit for the century ahead, unlocking growth, jobs and investment.”
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Real Estate & Housing
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Susan Walsh/AP Photo
In this September 20, 2016, photo, Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf prepares to testify on Capitol Hill before the Senate Banking Committee.
Beginning in 2011, Wells Fargo, today the country’s fourth-largest bank, launched a cross-selling plan to persuade existing bank customers to buy other products. This dubious but legal business model metastasized into a scheme where the bank opened extra checking and savings accounts and provided credit cards without the customer’s consent.
The number of fraudulent accounts eventually totaled more than three million. That gross fraud produced excess costs to consumers, lucrative fees for the bank, and fat paydays for bank executives, particularly through their stock options. The cross-selling scheme was mostly an attempt to prove to investors that the company was growing, and as the stock rose, executives who were paid through equity awards benefited.
When the scheme unraveled, two Wells Fargo CEOs were eventually forced out. Some 5,600 low-level employees, who had been pressured by their managers to carry out the illegal ploy, were scapegoated and lost their jobs. The bank paid fines in the hundreds of millions.
One senior executive, who was responsible for executing the design and aggressively pressuring employees to carry it out, faced criminal charges. But last Friday, Carrie Tolstedt, the chief of the bank’s retail operations for a decade, managed to avoid prison time, continuing a long pattern in which senior bankers, who create gross frauds and cause the suffering of millions of people, never go to jail.
Tolstedt was sentenced by a federal judge in Los Angeles to three years’ probation, six months of home confinement, 120 hours of community service, and a token fine of $100,000. (Previously, Tolstedt paid a $17 million fine to settle separate charges with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which makes that $100,000 fine look even more ineffectual.)
The judge, Josephine Staton, was an Obama appointee. The Justice Department, which launches criminal prosecutions of bankers with the greatest reluctance, had prosecuted Tolstedt for the most minor of several possible offenses, failure to cooperate with regulators. In March, Tolstedt agreed to a plea bargain that might have included jail, but didn’t.
Tolstedt’s avoidance of prison is the perfect symbol of a bank regulatory and accountability system that is still broken, 15 years after the great financial collapse and 13 years after the Dodd-Frank Act supposedly ended “too big to fail.” It did not.
Today’s big banks are bigger and more concentrated than ever. They take excessive risks in order to fatten executive pay, knowing that government will have to bail them out if they get into trouble, because of the catastrophic risk of systemic contagion. This was exactly the script that government followed after the collapse in 2008, and the script that Dodd-Frank was supposed to prevent ever recurring: Privatize the gain, socialize the loss.
Even the Biden administration, which has some unusually strong and public-minded regulators, has been unable to alter these fundamental patterns.
Last week, the indispensable reform group Better Markets convened a one-day conference with an all-star cast of critics, scholars, and regulators, to do a postmortem on why and how Dodd-Frank did not do the job and why “too big to fail” is more of a menace than ever. The conference was one of the best I’ve ever seen, and you can watch it for yourself on YouTube.
To summarize a complex story, the core problem was that bank regulators, overly influenced by industry, failed to use the tools that Dodd-Frank gave them. They didn’t even use their pre-existing regulatory powers.
They allowed mergers and acquisitions that made the industry still more concentrated. They failed to break up giant banks. They failed to require banks that returned to profitability after the giant post-crisis bailouts to pay some of the money back. They never fully implemented the Volcker Rule prohibiting bank proprietary trading in credit derivatives. They never funded the Orderly Liquidation Authority provided by Dodd-Frank, which would enable the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to wind down big banks with no hit to the insurance fund.
They failed to drastically increase bank capital requirements so that banks would be more likely to absorb their own losses from excessive risks rather than running to government for bailouts, and think twice about incurring those risks in the first place. (Even the relatively modest capital requirement increases being pursued today are under enormous pressure by the big banks.) Only rarely did they use their power to claw back bank profits or executive pay from illicit acts. At the level of bank examination and supervision, regulators were far too lax at taking a close look at bank balance sheets and risky new products and strategies. And exactly one senior banker, not a CEO, went to prison.
A Trump-era law, S.2155, promoted by the banking industry, deliberately weakened the Dodd-Frank Act, which had set a threshold of $50 billion as the level at which banks came in for extra regulatory scrutiny. The law, passed in 2018, raised that to $250 billion, exempting 25 of the nation’s 38 largest banks. It gave regulators discretion to lower that to $100 billion when necessary, an option that regulators did not use. Disgracefully, 17 Democratic senators and 33 House Democrats voted for it.
Even the Biden administration, which has some unusually strong and public-minded regulators such as SEC Chair Gary Gensler and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Chair Rohit Chopra, both of whom spoke eloquently at the Better Markets conference, has been unable to alter these fundamental patterns. The administration also suffers from captured regulators, such as OCC acting director Michael Hsu and CFTC chief Rostin Behnam, as well as much of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury, including its bank-friendly secretary Janet Yellen.
The failure of Dodd-Frank, as applied, was on vivid display in three recent bank failures. In the cases of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic Bank, government opted to rescue uninsured depositors and did not penalize offending executives. The business models of regional banks left them overexposed to very large uninsured deposits subject to runs and the spike in interest rates enacted by the Fed. Executives failed to appreciate that a shortage of liquidity would force them to sell long-term bonds at a loss, leading to insolvency.
Bank supervisors also totally missed these risks. When these banks failed, regulators feared contagion to other banks. All of these banks were below the $250 billion threshold, even Silicon Valley Bank, which was the nation’s 16th-largest.
Even worse, as the Prospect has pointed out, when First Republic failed, the Treasury encouraged JPMorgan Chase to buy it. The FDIC lost $13 billion on that deal, while JPMorgan made a profit of $3 billion, and became even bigger.
The preamble to the Dodd-Frank Act declared that it would end both “too big to fail” and the risk of future taxpayer bailouts. But today, even medium-sized banks subject to inadequate supervision are deemed too big to fail, and receive government bailouts.
At the Better Markets conference and elsewhere, one interesting phrase crept into the discussion: banks as public utilities. This is also the subject of a new paper by Vanderbilt University’s Morgan Ricks and Columbia’s Lev Menand, both former Treasury officials. The current banking system has allowed bankers to use strategies that are so opaque and intricate that they defy good regulation, which has become an infinite game of whack-a-mole. Dodd-Frank required more than 400 separate rulemakings, some of which are not yet complete after 13 years.
What’s needed is a return to plain-vanilla banking, in which commercial banks, which enjoy government deposit insurance and are part of the monetary system, take deposits and make loans, while not being permitted to engage in complex financial plays such as credit derivatives. Investment bankers would be a separate industry, with their own capital at risk, but very closely supervised by the SEC. The tax and regulatory loopholes that facilitate private equity and hedge funds—now larger than the commercial banking sector—would be closed. For good measure, we could use a true consumer public option, such as expanded postal banking. And the giant banks that inevitably pose systemic risks should be broken up.
Alas, this is far more radical than anything in mainstream debate. But as recent events have made clear, more modest reforms are just as hard to implement, and they don’t do the job of making the financial sector servant of the real economy rather than master. We’ve reached a point where liberal reforms require radical remedies.
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Banking & Finance
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- Lower turkey costs will bring down the average cost of a Thanksgiving dinner this year, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.
- Cranberry prices are down about 18%
- While Thanksgiving food costs less than it did a year ago, it's still much more expensive than it was before the pandemic.
But not everything costs more.
A Thanksgiving dinner this year will gobble up less of your wallet, thanks in large part to lower turkey prices. According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, the average cost of a dinner for 10 people will be $61.17, down 4.5% from last year's record of $64.05.
The findings come from a survey conducted Nov. 1 to 6, with the agricultural advocacy group's members checking prices at grocery stores in the 50 states and Puerto Rico.
Almost everything on the Thanksgiving menu is lower – prices for cranberries have dropped 18%. But the main reason for the decrease is due to the star of the show — the turkey. This year, a 16-pound turkey is averaging $27.35, down 5.6% from a year ago.
"Consumers who have not yet purchased a turkey may find additional savings in the days leading up to Thanksgiving," the advocacy group said.
This is especially welcome news, as turkey prices shot up 50% between 2020 and 2022 – though they remain 30% higher than 2019, before the pandemic, which many consider a baseline.
Why are turkey prices dropping? There's plenty of demand, but there's even more supply.
The average cost of a Thanksgiving dinner for 10 people, by region:
- Northeast: $64.38
- South: $59.10
- Midwest: $58.66
- West: $63.89
Source: American Farm Bureau Federation
"Last year, avian influenza devastated our industry, we lost six to seven million turkeys," said Heidi Diestel of Diestel Turkey Ranch in Jamestown, California. Her family raises up to 300,000 turkeys a year for higher-end customers who shop in stores like Whole Foods.
As we spoke this week in one of her barns housing hundreds of large tom turkeys — often gobbling in unison — she told me that last year's flu infected some of her family's flock.
"We had to kill some birds, unfortunately," she said.
So her farm, like many other turkey operations, raised a lot of extra turkeys this year to beef up supplies. They did it in case there was another round of the flu. But the avian flu this year hasn't been too bad — at least not yet — so farmers are stuck with an abundance of birds. "We're heavy on supply," Diestel said.
At the same time, she's discovered that some grocery stores have been cautious in ordering turkeys after a year of high inflation.
"Retailers have definitely been much more conscientious about what they're purchasing — they're purchasing a bit more lean —to ensure that they don't have a lot of leftover," she said. "Everyone is trying to cut their costs and operate as efficiently as possible."
She thinks Diestel Turkey Ranch revenues will be higher this year than they were back before the pandemic, but profits will be lower. Things like feed cost a lot more now. "We have margin erosion," Diestel said.
New Jersey turkey farmer Ronnie Lee has planned for the possibility that consumers might pull back on spending.
"This year we started our turkeys later than we've ever started them before, because I'm predicting that the size is just going to be a little smaller than last year," he says. "People are starting to feel the pinch."
Lee says one of the upsides of producing smaller birds is that they're easier for workers to carry during processing. That helps, because he struggles to find workers, and he's having to pay them more.
"Labor is up, no two ways about it," he said. Employees at his farm make at least $20 an hour. Even so, he added, "finding people to do it can be difficult."
At least for consumers, though, the news is all good. And it may get better. Turkey prices could go even lower if supplies continue to increase. Heidi Diestel says that while the latest round of avian influenza has not made much of impact, even the hint of flu could shut down export markets.
"We may have even more turkeys," she said, before adding with a smile: "Just enjoy turkey dinner more than once a year."
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Consumer & Retail
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This deep into the crypto winter big venture fund debuts are few and far between, a far cry compared to previous years. But the freeze is not stopping some venture capitalists from launching new funds targeting the decentralized technology market.
Dispersion Capital has compiled a $40 million first fund to invest in decentralized infrastructure, the firm exclusively told TechCrunch. The venture vehicle is backed by Web 2.0 and web3 entities including WeNade, Circle Ventures, Ripple, Alchemy Ventures, NGC and individual general partners. It will focus on deploying capital into pre-seed and seed rounds, and has already deployed 10% of the fund.
The evolution of blockchain infrastructure technology has been slow, Patrick Chang, founder and managing partner of Dispersion Capital, said. “We believe there’s so much more that needs to be built.”
Blockchains and decentralized computing are still very new, Chang added, arguing that they still have a “lot of missing pieces.” In his view, existing blockchain infrastructure technology was built bit by bit, something that new development work which is bringing Web2.0 “know-how” to web3 could help harmonize.
During the 2021 crypto bull market, lots of startups were founded to build NFT projects, decentralized finance protocols and more, but few of the upstart technology companies focused on the underlying infrastructure itself, Chang said. “What was frustrating for users and people coming into web3 was onboarding, scalability and hacks. The infrastructure was incredibly immature and people weren’t thinking about it.”
Fast-forward to today and there are a plethora of startups and developers working to improve web3 infrastructure.
Dispersion plans to deploy its fund into startups that want to help onboard new crypto users with technology like refreshed data infrastructure, cybersecurity and smart contracts.
While it’s mainly looking at U.S.-based companies, Dispersion actively invests in other regions, too, Chang shared. About a quarter of its active investments are based in Israel, but the firm is also looking into Asia-based builders, given the proliferation of developments for ZK, or zero-knowledge technology, in that region, Chang noted.
“The mission for us is how can we get web3 to a level similar to cloud computing that it’s invisible technology that everyone doesn’t realize they’re using, but are,” Chang said. “In the long term, the focus is on how we bring web3 to the masses and bring it [to] a billion users.”
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Crypto Trading & Speculation
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No-one wants to pay more tax than they need to at any stage of life, but it’s particularly important to make sure you’re not overpaying in retirement when drawing down on your savings.
The key to reducing how much tax you pay is by looking at the order in which you take your pension and other savings. In fact, prioritising which savings you use up first can be almost as important as saving itself, and can also help you to leave more money to your loved ones as an inheritance.
Here, Telegraph Money outlines eight ways to reduce tax on your retirement savings, and help them to last longer.
1. Don’t rush into withdrawing your money
Pensions, Lifetime Isas and other Isas will continue to grow tax-free when you’ve reached retirement, so you should try to avoid taking money out of these kinds of accounts until you actually need the income.
Not only could you forfeit the tax-free status of the cash you withdraw, taking income from a “flexi-access” drawdown account while you’re still working and saving into the pension will severely limit the amount you can continue to save tax efficiently.
This is because the “money purchase annual allowance” (MPAA) is triggered when defined-contribution style pensions are accessed, cutting your tax-free pension allowance to £10,000 from £60,000.
If you’re concerned about your pension’s investment performance, or uncomfortable with the level of risk as you get closer to needing to make withdrawals, don’t be tempted to withdraw cash to save into a bank account or cash Isa.
Instead, consider moving your pension into lower risk funds to avoid large market fluctuations.
2. Use your Isa savings to provide an initial retirement income
Isas can also be used to provide a retirement income, which won’t affect your tax-free pension contributions if you’re continuing to save.
Withdrawals are tax-free, but they can come with other penalties, depending on the type of Isa you have, so be sure to check the terms and conditions first.
Fixed-term cash Isas, for example, may allow withdrawals before the end of the term, but you’ll often pay an interest penalty.
Lifetime Isas, on the other hand, only offer penalty-free withdrawals once you’re over the age of 60 – before this, you’ll lose 25pc on the amount being withdrawn.
If you are able to draw a regular income from Isa savings, doing this can be a helpful way to top up your income when moving from full-time work to reduced hours, to full retirement.
Using this money first means you can keep paying up to £60,000 into your pension tax-free, and is prudent from an inheritance tax perspective as Isas form part of your estate.
There are, however, special tax rules between spouses and civil partners who can inherit their partner’s Isa allowance.
3. Consider taking your pension tax-free cash sum
You have to purchase an annuity or go into drawdown at the same time as taking your tax-free cash sum.
Taking a 25pc cash sum will not trigger the MPAA, as long as you don’t take any extra withdrawals from your drawdown account.
4. Make the most of your personal tax allowance
If your income is less than the personal tax allowance (£12,570) you won’t pay any income tax. You can continue to be free of income tax by making sure you don’t exceed this threshold when you come to draw down your pension.
If you have a spouse or civil partner who is a basic-rate taxpayer, keeping your own income at £11,310 you can also benefit from the marriage allowance, where you essentially transfer 10pc of your personal tax allowance to your partner, which cuts your household’s income tax bill by £252 a year.
However, if you are still saving in a pension – or think you may start again at a future date – you’ll only be able to save up to £10,000 a year before triggering the MPAA.
5. Take small pension pots worth less than £10,000
You can cash in up to three small pension pots – that is, those containing savings of less than £10,000 – from “personal pension” schemes without triggering the MPAA.
Note that if the small pot payment is paid from “uncrystallised” funds, 25pc will be paid tax-free and the remainder will be taxed as income. If it’s paid from “crystallised” funds, the full amount is taxable.
6. Access your pension last
You should generally access your pension savings last – that is, after using your Isa savings and pension tax-free cash. This is because pension income is taxable under the income tax rules (although, as noted above, income up to £12,570 is tax-free).
Delaying taking your pension income will help it to last longer, and allow you to continue making higher tax-free contributions if you are still working.
7. Never push yourself into a higher tax bracket
Pension income, including the state pension, is taxable. It’s therefore important to consider all forms of income you receive – including state pension payments, rental and dividend income – when using drawdown in case this pushes you into a higher tax bracket.
Only take out as much money as you need to fund the lifestyle you want, and that your retirement savings can afford.
8. Pension savings can be passed to your loved ones tax-free
Pension savings, unlike money held in Isas, generally don’t form part of your estate when you die, so inheritance tax isn’t normally payable. This is another reason to prioritise spending money held in other accounts before turning to your pension.
If you die before your 75th birthday, your unused pension funds can be paid tax-free to your loved ones either as a lump sum or as income, if paid within two years. If you die after age 75, any unused pension fund is taxed at your loved one’s income tax rate.
This can be significantly cheaper if they are a basic-rate taxpayer, as they’ll be charged 20pc versus the 40pc inheritance tax charge. But, if they’re an additional-rate taxpayer, they’ll be taxed at 45pc.
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Personal Finance & Financial Education
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- The number of expat Americans living in Spain grew 13% from 2019 to 2021, according to a Spanish government report.
- Among foreign residents, American expats pay the second most for living space per square meter, after the Danes.
- Purchasing or living in a home abroad requires a certain level of wealth, given the cost not only of real estate but overseas travel, as well.
More Americans are flocking to Spain for longer, whether as so-called digital nomads working abroad or to enjoy a new life in retirement.
The number of Americans living in Spain grew by 13% from 2019 to 2021, and home sales to Americans jumped 88% from the first half of 2019 to the first half of 2022, according to a report by the General Council of Notaries in Spain.
Among expat groups buying in the sun-washed country, Americans paid the second most, after the Danes, shelling out up to 2,837 euros, or $3,119, per square meter. In addition, the home prices that grew the most in the same period were paid by Americans, according to the report.
Purchasing or living in a home abroad requires a certain level of wealth, given the cost not only of real estate but overseas travel, as well, said Alex Ingrim, a Florence, Italy-based private wealth manager and senior investment analyst at global financial services firm Chase Buchanan.
According to the General Council of Notaries report, American buyers are focusing on urban areas like Madrid — as with any big city, people are attracted to its job opportunities and amenities, said Ingrim.
While the southern coastal region of Andalusia has always been a popular location for Americans, there's a "strong word of mouth" for the city of Valencia, an urban area on the beach farther north on the Mediterranean coast with a large expat community, among them many Americans, said Ingrim.
However, Americans who want a different retirement or remote work experience and an adventure by relocating to Spain should take a few factors into consideration.
Most tax on property purchased in Spain is paid upfront in a stamp duty, or "AJD" in Spanish parlance, rather than in annual property tax payments like in the U.S.
"The stamp duty can run from 1% to 2.5%, and then there is [value-added tax] on new construction or transfer tax on pre-owned homes," said certified financial planner Jude Boudreaux, partner and senior financial planner with The Planning Center in New Orleans. "It's all substantially more than in the States."
It must be paid by the buyer at the treasury office of the appropriate autonomous region in Spain within 30 business days after the property is bought.
"You pay a lot of the taxes upfront rather than on an ongoing basis, so the purchasing costs and the purchasing process are a lot different," said Ingrim, who advises interested buyers to get in touch with local estate agents and property lawyers early on in the process.
If you are looking to retire in Spain, consider the financial and tax implications, and seek help from an advisor before setting into the idea, he added.
Additionally, make sure your taxes are in order. Although you are rarely taxed on the same income twice, look at the different streams of income and assets you may have in order to understand "who gets to tax what first, whether Spain or the U.S.," said Ingrim.
For instance, an American citizen working in Spain will have a higher tax rate, but those taxes become a deduction when they file their federal tax return in the U.S., said Boudreaux, who is a member of CNBC's Financial Advisor Council.
On the other hand, the U.S. taxes your global income, so if an American earns an income from rental properties in Spain, or anywhere else in the world, "the U.S. will gladly tax your income from Spain," he added.
For his part, Ingrim noted that "while you might have a liability to both systems, you rarely pay tax on the same income stream or asset base twice."
It's important to remember your debts in the U.S. doesn't just go away when you move abroad, he added. "You need to still have a plan to deal with your American liabilities while you're living abroad."
Some countries, like Portugal, may ask foreign residents for a credit report from their home country when they take out a mortgage or try to establish credit. Keep your debts in mind and plan to keep up with your payments.
"Keep repaying your student loans, your car payments, mortgages, whatever it may be, and try to [keep up] your U.S. credit history because it may impact your going forward in your new country [of residence]," said Ingrim.
Keep an American bank account tied to a U.S. address open before you move so you can pay your bills through automatic transfers from that account, said Boudreaux, to save on exchange rates and monthly wires.
Additionally, you may need a Spanish bank account to pay your daily living expenses in euros and avoid being regularly at the mercy of fluctuating exchange rates. The U.S. government imposes bank reporting rules on every bank that does business with U.S. citizens. Find a Spanish bank that complies with these rules, "so they can do all the proper reporting when and as necessary," added Boudreaux.
Spain launched its digital nomad visa earlier this year, making it easier for foreigners to move to and work there. The visa is tailored for "international teleworkers," and applicants must comply with a set of requirements, such as accreditation or professional experience of at least three years.
"Prior to having this visa, it was difficult to work in Spain because the tax rates were so high and there wasn't a clear-cut immigration regime, other than the 'golden visa' that allowed you to move to Spain and work," said Ingrim.
The golden visa, which you only obtain if you purchase a property for more than 500,000 euros — or about $550,000 — allows you to live, work and earn a larger set of rights once you're residing in Spain, he said.
Nonlucrative visas, meanwhile, are meant for people who are no longer employed, including retirees, who can rely on a passive income. This type of visa allows you to live in a new country but prohibit you from working. "The first step would be engaging with a Spanish immigration lawyer and understanding if you meet the requirements," said Ingrim.
However, before you make your bid on a property, consider renting first to see if the area meets your preferences and needs, added Ingrim.
Some Americans already living in other countries, namely Portugal, are conscious about how arrangements like the golden visa can exacerbate housing problems for locals. That ought to be a consideration for buyers in Spain, he said.
In Ingrim's experience, incoming U.S. buyers express concerns around the issue, saying "We don't want any part in contributing to that." As a result, many prefer to initially rent, as a precaution.
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Real Estate & Housing
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NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump has testified in court as a football owner, casino builder and airline buyer. He bragged in a deposition that he saved “millions of lives” by deterring nuclear war as president. Another time, he fretted about the dangers of flung fruit.
Conditioned by decades of trials and legal disputes, Trump has now reprised his role as witness under extraordinary circumstances: as a former Republican president fighting to save the real estate empire that vaulted him to stardom and the White House.
Trump is testifying Monday at his New York civil fraud trial, taking the stand in a deeply personal matter that is central his image as a successful businessman and threatens to cost him control of marquee properties such as Trump Tower. His highly anticipated testimony in the trial of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit follows that of his eldest sons, Trump Organization executives Eric and Donald Trump Jr., who testified last week. His eldest daughter, Ivanka, is set to testify on Wednesday.
READ MORE: On the stand, Trump tries to downplay financial statements at the center of his civil fraud trial
Trump has testified in court in at least eight trials since 1986, according to an Associated Press review of court records and news coverage. He also has been questioned under oath in more than a dozen depositions and regulatory hearings.
In 1985, he was called to testify before Congress as owner of the USFL’s New Jersey Generals and he testified on behalf of lawyer and friend Roy Cohn at a state disciplinary hearing that led to Cohn’s disbarment. In an early flash of his firebrand persona, in 1986, Trump told New Jersey’s casino commission that plans for highway overpasses near one of his casinos “would be a disaster. It would be a catastrophe.”
Those testimonies, captured in thousands of pages of transcripts and some on videotape, offer clues to the approach Trump is likely to take when he testifies Monday. They show clear parallels between Trump as a witness and Trump as a president and current candidate for the office. His rhetorical style in legal proceedings over the years bears echoes of his political verve: a mix of ego, charm, defensiveness, aggressiveness, sharp language and deflection. He has been combative and boastful, but sometimes vague and prone to hedging or being dismissive.
Testifying in the USFL’s antitrust lawsuit against the NFL in 1986, Trump denounced allegations that he had spied on NFL officials at one of his hotels, calling the claim “such a false interpretation it’s disgusting.”
In 1988, as he sought to buy Eastern Air Lines’ Northeast shuttle service, Trump turned on the charisma, flashing a wide smile at the judge’s female law clerks and shaking hands with the bailiff during a break in his testimony at a federal court hearing in Washington. Trump testified that his $365 million purchase, later approved, would be a “major boost in morale” for employees.
WATCH: What we know about Trump’s 2020 election indictment
On the stand in a boxing-related case in 1990, Trump described a Mike Tyson fight he planned for one of his casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, as “one of the greatest rematches you could have.” Accused by two men of cutting them out of a riverboat gambling project, Trump professed ignorance, testifying in 1999: “I was shocked by this whole case. I had no idea who these people were.”
Trump was briefly called to the witness stand in the New York case last month to explain comments outside of court that the judge said violated a limited gag order.
Before that, he last testified in a courtroom in 2013, two years before launching his winning presidential campaign. An 87-year-old suburban Chicago widower had sued him over changes to contract terms for a hotel and condominium tower she had bought units in as an investment. Trump grew increasingly agitated as his testimony wore on, at one point raising his arms and bellowing: “And then she sued me. It’s unbelievable!”
In 1990, Trump testified in a losing effort in a lawsuit over his company’s failure to make pension contributions on behalf of about 200 undocumented Polish workers hired to tear down a building to make way for Trump Tower. A year later, he was in court again in Manhattan, testifying against a man who claimed he had a contract to develop Trump’s board game and was owed 25% of profits from “Trump: The Game.”
Trump won that one and another lawsuit in 2005, where he testified that a construction company had “fleeced” him by overcharging him by $1.5 million for work at a golf course in New York’s Westchester County.
WATCH: Audio of Trump discussing classified material further complicates his legal troubles
When questioned in the past about his business and financial dealings, Trump has sometimes deflected responsibility and blame. In a 2013 deposition over a failed Florida condo project, Trump blamed an employee for paperwork that said he was developing a project when, in reality, he wasn’t.
Another refrain in Trump’s depositions is his incredulity that he would be taken so seriously for hyping up his real estate projects.
“You always want to put the best possible spin on a property that you can,” Trump said in a December 2007 deposition in his lawsuit against a journalist he had accused of downplaying his wealth. “No different than any other real estate developer, no different than any other businessman, no different than any politician.”
Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report.
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Real Estate & Housing
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It has been nearly a month since the last Wilko shops closed their doors - but a lot can happen in a short space of time.
On Friday, CDS Superstores, which bought the name and website after the firm collapsed, said it would open a Wilko-branded store in Luton before Christmas.
It is one of five new Wilko shops that will return to the High Street before Christmas. The others will be in Plymouth and Exeter, as well as two additional locations still to be announced.
Under the plan announced by CDS Superstores, which owns The Range, former Wilko workers will be given priority when applying for the 80 jobs that are on offer per store.
While it brings hope to some former Wilko staff, more than 12,000 people were made redundant when the retailer went under.
Some have found new jobs, but for others it has been a struggle. The BBC spoke to four ex-workers about how they've been navigating life after Wilko
'It's a hard adjustment'
Lisa Swan from Gateshead was just 17 when she started working at Wilko.
Since being made redundant, the 41-year-old said she has felt depressed. "It's like those 24 years of loyalty didn't mean anything," she said.
Despite all the support pledged for Wilko workers, Lisa said: "It just feels like we've been left on our own."
Poundland, which took over some Wilko shops, had pledged to prioritise former staff and told the BBC it has made more than 700 job offers. But Lisa was disappointed not to get an interview when Poundland took over her Wilko store.
Lisa has been searching for full-time work but has found that many retailers are looking for part-time workers. Meanwhile, other companies don't even respond to job applications at all.
Although Lisa said she is now feeling a little more hopeful, the first few weeks of job searching after being made redundant were a challenge given she had spent nearly a quarter of a century at the same place.
"When you've done a job for such a long time, it's a hard adjustment not having work," she said.
"Different things rattle through your brain, whether it's thinking you're not good enough, or wondering if you're being unrealistic in what you're trying to achieve."
'I've only had one interview'
Like Lisa, Matt Jonas from Canterbury hoped to benefit from some of the retailers who had offered to take on Wilko staff.
But so far, that help has failed to materialise.
"It's interesting how when the time came, those opportunities weren't there," said Matt, who worked at Wilko for five years.
Despite applying for a job a day, he said he's only had one face-to-face interview.
"It feels like the job market has got much less personal," Matt said. "You have these one-way interviews where you answer questions on a webcam and send the video to someone."
While navigating the jobs market, Matt is also feeling anxious about whether there is any work in retail.
"Poundworld, where I used to work, is still an empty building five years after I was made redundant there. The Wilko building is now empty. High Street retail - I have become quite disillusioned with now."
He describes his former colleagues at Wilko as "like a family."
"I keep waking up and hoping that this was all a crazy dream and I'm still working there," he said. "It's crushing."
'I was offered a job in the same store the next day'
After 15 years at Wilko, Tina Bellamy from Lincolnshire was devastated about the closure.
But within hours of the shop shutting, she'd been offered a new job with Poundland which was taking over the shop - as were all of her colleagues.
"We all know what we're doing, so we've just cracked on," she said, adding that the only new thing she's had to get used to is the uniform.
Their first task was to ready the shop - now rebranded as Poundland - for reopening within a few days.
When they did, one of the best things, she said, has been customers' reactions.
"It's so nice when they say, 'we're so pleased you're here, we were so worried about you all.'"
Poundland took on the leases of up to 71 former Wilko stores and the retailer said it has since reopened 56 sites.
'I've cried walking past the empty store'
Sarah Curtis was a supervisor at Wilko in Essex's Lakeside shopping centre when it fell into administration.
She hadn't been there long enough to qualify for redundancy and needed a new job quickly. "I was entitled to a week's notice [and] pay and that was it," she said.
Luckily, she was offered a job by her previous employer, Superdrug, and she's very happy to be back.
But to get there, she has to walk past her old Wilko store, which is still sitting empty.
The first few times, she said it made her cry.
"It makes me feel sad," she said. "It was so much fun, it didn't feel like you were going to work, we had such a laugh."
Despite being there only a year, she said she's grateful for the confidence her experience at Wilko gave her - as well as her former co-workers.
"On our last day we sang and danced as we left. It was the end, but we were still a team," she said. "I'm probably not going to see those people together again."
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Workforce / Labor
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A run of 14 consecutive interest rate rises has brought worry and financial pain for mortgage holders - but it has also boosted savers' bank balances.
Millions of people in the UK are both borrowers and savers (while some are one, or neither), so the balance - or imbalance - between the two is important for our money.
Documents published after the chancellor's Autumn Statement on Wednesday give a fascinating insight as to which way the scales are shifting.
This year, according to the UK's official economic watchdog the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the benefit of better returns on savings has outstripped the hit of higher mortgage rates. Our real household disposable income - put simply, the money we have to spend or save - has risen slightly in 2023.
The trouble is, that is bookmarked by a fall in this disposable income in 2022 and another forecast drop in 2024.
Last year, everyone took a hit from rapidly rising prices. Next year, an estimated 1.6 million homeowners will see their current mortgage deal expire and so will move on to a much more expensive loan.
In short, there is more pain to come.
The OBR's view is a forecast, and it may ultimately prove to be wrong, but the OBR is the official body that marks the Treasury's homework and its predictions carry significant weight.
Impact delayed
Much was said in recent days about tax cuts, pension rises, and even speculation about the date of a general election. However, interest rates have a central impact on our finances, and the power to set them lies with the Bank of England, not the chancellor.
After more than a decade of very low rates, they rose consistently from December 2021. That is two years now, yet, what the OBR's outlook document tells us is how relatively resilient our collective finances have been to those increases this year.
"Rising interest rates support household incomes (on aggregate) due to the boost to savings income from higher deposit rates so far outweighing the rise in interest payments from higher mortgage rates," it says.
In real life, this effect is not shared equally. Many millions of people have less than £100 in savings. A whopping £260bn sits in bank accounts that do not pay any interest. There is a whole separate debate about rates of tax on savings income.
Even if you are not a homeowner, then higher mortgage rates are likely to have an impact - as it has been a major factor behind rapidly rising rents.
The OBR's figures are an aggregate, creating a risk of drawing oversimplified conclusions, but what it says next is quite clear.
It points to a rise in debt interest payments next year, as more fixed-rate mortgages face renewal. As a result, real household disposable income is set to fall.
In other words, things will get tougher - even if the Bank of England decides that it will not raise rates any further than their current level of 5.25%.
What happens if I miss a mortgage payment?
- If you miss two or more months' repayments you are officially in arrears
- Your lender must then treat you fairly by considering any requests about changing how you pay, such as lower repayments for a short time
- They might also allow you to extend the term of the mortgage or let you pay just the interest for a certain period
- However, any arrangement will be reflected on your credit file, which could affect your ability to borrow money in the future
There is, however, some good news for those facing a mortgage shock next year, owing to more competition in the mortgage sector. Providers have money available to lend so have been cutting their mortgage rates.
While many people face big repayment hikes, they will not be "quite as drastic" as they have been recently, according to Aaron Strutt from broker Trinity Financial.
"The banks and building societies have been very busy lowering their rates and there has been a considerable shift in pricing. After offering high rates for such a long period, there are now two-year fixes starting at 4.78% and five-year fixes starting at 4.43%," he says.
"If you have selected a new mortgage rate with your existing lender or a new lender, it is well worth checking to see if the rate has come down. Most lenders allow borrowers to switch to the cheaper deals they offer a few weeks before the mortgage starts."
There is, as we know, another side to that coin. While mortgage rates might be on the way down again, analysts say savings rates may also have peaked - including at Treasury-owned National Savings and Investments (NS&I),
"Savers should brace themselves for rate cuts on NS&I accounts and for the Premium Bond prize fund to fall, as the government-backed provider has already exceeded its fundraising target for the tax year," says Laura Suter, head of personal finance at investment platform AJ Bell.
MPs on the influential Treasury Committee have accused big banks of doing "as little as they can get away with" when setting savings rates for loyal customers. They advise people to continue to shop around for the best returns.
So a busy week of economic announcements now leads us into a busy, festive, season for our finances.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt spoke of cutting National Insurance in January, raising the state pension by 8.5% and benefits by 6.7%, as well as a big boost to minimum wages, in April.
He said these would help people to pay the bills and showed how things were moving in the right direction.
"Average disposable income is around £800 higher than the OBR expected this spring, and the Autumn Statement set out a clear plan to reduce our borrowing and debt to keep inflation falling, helping get mortgage rates back down to affordable levels," said a spokesman for the Treasury.
However, even if prices are not going up at the rate they once were, the financial pain felt by millions of people is far from over yet.
What are my savings options?
- As a saver, you can shop around for the best account for you
- Loyalty often doesn't pay, because old savings accounts have among the worst interest rates
- Savings products are offered by a range of providers, not just the big banks. The best deal is not the same for everyone - it depends on your circumstances
- Higher interest rates are offered if you lock your money away for longer, but that will not suit everyone's lifestyle
- Charities say it is important to try to keep some savings, however tight your budget, to help cover any unexpected costs
There is a guide to different savings accounts, and what to think about on the government-backed, independent MoneyHelper website.
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Interest Rates
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Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) have gained significant attention in recent years as a potential career path for individuals interested in the real estate industry. This article aims to explore the potential of a career in REITs and shed light on the factors that should be considered before pursuing this path.
REITs offer a unique opportunity for individuals to invest in real estate without directly owning or managing properties. Instead, they can invest in publicly traded REITs, which own and operate various types of real estate assets, such as residential, commercial, or industrial properties. This allows individuals to benefit from the potential growth and income generated by these properties.
However, before embarking on a career in REITs, it is essential to consider several factors. Firstly, individuals should assess their interest and passion for the real estate industry. REITs involve dealing with property investments, market trends, financial analysis, and legal regulations. Therefore, a genuine interest in the real estate market is crucial for long-term success.
Secondly, individuals should evaluate their skills and qualifications. A career in REITs often requires a strong foundation in financial analysis and valuation. The ability to assess the financial performance and potential risks of real estate investments is vital. Additionally, market research and analysis skills are valuable for identifying lucrative investment opportunities within the real estate market.
Furthermore, individuals should stay updated with the regulatory and legal framework surrounding REITs. This industry is subject to specific regulations and compliance requirements, which can impact investment strategies and decision-making. Having a sound understanding of these regulations is essential for navigating the REIT landscape effectively.
In conclusion, a career in REITs can offer exciting opportunities for individuals interested in the real estate industry. However, it is crucial to carefully consider factors such as interest, skills, qualifications, and regulatory knowledge before pursuing this path. By doing so, individuals can position themselves for success and make informed decisions in the dynamic world of real estate investment trusts.
Job Opportunities in REITs
Job Opportunities in REITs
The real estate investment trust (REIT) industry offers a wide range of job opportunities for individuals interested in pursuing a career in the real estate sector. From finance and investment roles to property management and operations, there are various positions available within REITs that cater to different skill sets and interests.
Here is an overview of some of the key roles and positions within the real estate investment trust industry:
- Investment Analyst: These professionals are responsible for conducting financial analysis and valuation of potential real estate investment opportunities. They assess the financial feasibility and potential returns of different properties and help in making informed investment decisions.
- Portfolio Manager: Portfolio managers oversee the overall performance and growth of a REIT’s real estate portfolio. They analyze market trends, monitor property performance, and make strategic investment decisions to optimize returns for investors.
- Property Manager: Property managers are responsible for the day-to-day operations and maintenance of properties owned by a REIT. They handle tenant relations, lease agreements, property inspections, and ensure that properties are well-maintained and meet regulatory standards.
- Asset Manager: Asset managers are responsible for maximizing the value of a REIT’s real estate assets. They develop and implement strategies to enhance property performance, negotiate leases, and oversee property renovations or repositioning projects.
- Acquisitions Analyst: Acquisitions analysts identify and evaluate potential real estate investment opportunities for a REIT. They conduct market research, financial analysis, and due diligence to assess the viability and profitability of acquiring new properties.
These are just a few examples of the diverse job opportunities available within the real estate investment trust industry. Whether you have a background in finance, property management, or market research, there are roles that suit different skill sets and interests. It is important to explore the specific requirements and qualifications for each position to determine the best fit for your career goals.
Skills and Qualifications
Skills and Qualifications
When considering a career in real estate investment trusts (REITs), it is important to possess a set of skills, qualifications, and educational background that will enable you to excel in this industry. Here are some key factors to consider:
- Financial Analysis and Valuation: A strong understanding of financial analysis and valuation is crucial in evaluating real estate investment opportunities within REITs. This includes analyzing financial statements, assessing property values, and understanding market trends.
- Market Research and Analysis: The ability to conduct thorough market research and analysis is essential for identifying potential investment opportunities within the real estate market. This involves staying updated with market trends, analyzing demographic data, and assessing the demand and supply dynamics.
- Property Management and Operations: Having knowledge and experience in property management and operations is valuable in a career in REITs. This includes understanding property maintenance, tenant management, lease agreements, and optimizing property performance.
- Regulatory and Legal Knowledge: Understanding the regulatory and legal framework surrounding REITs is crucial. It is important to stay updated with industry regulations, compliance requirements, and any changes in legislation that may impact the operations of REITs.
In addition to these skills, a strong educational background in finance, real estate, or a related field can provide a solid foundation for a career in REITs. Many professionals in this industry hold degrees in finance, economics, business administration, or real estate. Furthermore, certifications such as the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) or Certified Commercial Investment Member (CCIM) can enhance your credibility and marketability in the field.
By acquiring the necessary skills, qualifications, and educational background, you can position yourself for success in a career in real estate investment trusts. However, it is important to continually update your knowledge and skills to adapt to the evolving landscape of the industry.
Financial Analysis and Valuation
Financial Analysis and Valuation
Financial analysis and valuation skills are crucial for evaluating real estate investment opportunities within Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). These skills enable professionals to assess the financial health and potential profitability of properties and make informed investment decisions.
By conducting thorough financial analysis, individuals can determine the value of properties, assess their income potential, and evaluate the risks associated with the investment. This analysis involves examining factors such as rental income, operating expenses, property appreciation, and market trends. It also includes assessing the financial statements of REITs to understand their financial performance, debt levels, and cash flow.
Valuation skills are equally important in the REIT industry. Professionals need to accurately determine the value of properties to ensure that they are acquiring assets at fair prices. This involves using various valuation methods, such as the income approach, sales comparison approach, and cost approach, to estimate the market value of properties.
Additionally, financial analysis and valuation skills help in identifying potential risks and opportunities in the market. By analyzing financial data and market trends, professionals can make informed decisions about which properties to invest in and when to buy or sell. These skills also enable them to negotiate deals, secure financing, and manage the financial aspects of real estate investments within REITs.
Market Research and Analysis
Market research and analysis are vital components in identifying potential investment opportunities within the real estate market. By conducting thorough research and analysis, investors can gain valuable insights into market trends, demand and supply dynamics, and other factors that can impact the performance of real estate investment trusts (REITs).
One of the key aspects of market research is understanding the local real estate market. This involves analyzing factors such as population growth, economic development, and infrastructure projects in the area. By studying these factors, investors can identify regions or cities with high growth potential, which can lead to lucrative investment opportunities.
Additionally, market research helps investors identify emerging trends in the real estate market. This includes analyzing factors such as changing demographics, technological advancements, and shifts in consumer preferences. By staying ahead of these trends, investors can position themselves to capitalize on new opportunities and adapt their investment strategies accordingly.
Market analysis, on the other hand, involves evaluating the financial performance and stability of potential investment opportunities. This includes analyzing key financial metrics such as rental income, occupancy rates, and property appreciation. By conducting a thorough analysis, investors can assess the potential return on investment and make informed decisions about which REITs to invest in.
In summary, market research and analysis are crucial in identifying potential investment opportunities within the real estate market. By conducting thorough research, analyzing market trends, and evaluating the financial performance of potential investments, investors can make informed decisions and maximize their chances of success in the REIT industry.
Property Management and Operations
Property Management and Operations
Property management and operations are essential aspects of a career in real estate investment trusts (REITs). As a property manager within a REIT, you will be responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations of the properties owned by the trust. This includes tasks such as tenant relations, lease agreements, maintenance and repairs, and ensuring the properties are in compliance with local regulations.
To excel in property management within a REIT, you need a combination of skills and qualifications. Strong organizational and communication skills are crucial for effectively managing tenant relations and resolving any issues that may arise. Additionally, knowledge of property maintenance and repairs is essential to ensure the properties are well-maintained and attractive to potential tenants.
Furthermore, understanding the financial aspects of property management is also important. This includes budgeting, rent collection, and expense management. Being able to analyze financial data and make informed decisions based on market trends and economic factors is vital for the success of a property manager within a REIT.
In summary, property management and operations within a real estate investment trust require a diverse set of skills, ranging from interpersonal and organizational skills to financial analysis and market knowledge. By effectively managing and operating properties, you contribute to the overall success of the REIT and help maximize returns for investors.
Regulatory and Legal Knowledge
Understanding the regulatory and legal framework surrounding Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) is crucial for anyone considering a career in this industry. REITs are subject to specific regulations and guidelines that govern their operations, including tax requirements and compliance with securities laws.
Staying updated with industry regulations is essential to ensure compliance and avoid legal issues. This includes understanding the reporting and disclosure requirements, as well as any changes in tax laws that may impact the operations of REITs. Additionally, knowledge of securities laws is crucial, as REITs often raise capital through public offerings and must comply with regulations related to investor protection.
By staying informed about the regulatory and legal landscape, professionals in the REIT industry can make informed decisions and mitigate potential risks. This includes keeping track of any changes in laws or regulations that may impact the structure or operation of REITs. It is also important to work closely with legal and compliance teams to ensure adherence to all applicable regulations and maintain the trust and confidence of investors.
Challenges and Risks
Challenges and Risks
Embarking on a career in real estate investment trusts (REITs) can be both rewarding and challenging. As with any investment venture, there are risks involved that need to be carefully considered and mitigated. Understanding these challenges is crucial for success in the industry.
Market Volatility and Economic Factors:
One of the primary challenges in the world of REITs is the inherent volatility of the real estate market. Economic factors such as inflation, interest rates, and market trends can greatly impact the performance and stability of REITs. It is essential for REIT professionals to stay updated with market conditions and be prepared to adapt their strategies accordingly.
Financial Risks and Leverage:
Financial risks are another significant concern in the REIT industry. REITs often rely on leverage, which means borrowing money to acquire properties. While leverage can amplify returns, it also exposes investors to higher risks, especially during times of economic downturns or interest rate fluctuations. Proper risk management strategies, such as diversification and maintaining a healthy balance sheet, are crucial for mitigating these risks.
In conclusion, a career in real estate investment trusts offers immense potential, but it comes with its fair share of challenges and risks. By staying informed, developing strong financial analysis skills, and implementing effective risk management strategies, individuals can navigate these challenges and thrive in the dynamic world of REITs.
Market Volatility and Economic Factors
Market volatility and economic factors play a significant role in shaping the performance and stability of real estate investment trusts (REITs). As an investor or a professional looking to build a career in the REIT industry, it is crucial to understand the impact of these factors and how they can influence your investment decisions.
One of the key factors that can affect REITs is market volatility. Real estate markets are not immune to fluctuations, and changes in market conditions can have a direct impact on the value of properties held by REITs. For example, during periods of economic downturn or recession, property values may decline, leading to a decrease in the overall performance of REITs. On the other hand, during periods of economic growth and stability, property values may increase, resulting in higher returns for investors in REITs.
Economic factors such as interest rates and inflation also have a significant influence on the performance of REITs. Changes in interest rates can affect the cost of borrowing for REITs, which in turn can impact their profitability. Additionally, inflation can erode the purchasing power of rental income earned by REITs, potentially affecting their cash flow and overall returns.
It is important for investors and professionals in the REIT industry to closely monitor market volatility and economic indicators to make informed investment decisions. By understanding the impact of these factors, one can better assess the risks and potential rewards associated with investing in REITs and develop strategies to mitigate any adverse effects.
Financial Risks and Leverage
Financial risks and leverage are important considerations when it comes to investing in real estate investment trusts (REITs). One of the main risks associated with REITs is the potential for leverage. Leverage refers to the use of borrowed funds to finance investments, and while it can amplify returns in a rising market, it can also magnify losses in a declining market.
In addition to leverage, interest rate fluctuations can also pose a financial risk for REIT investors. REITs typically rely on debt to finance their operations, and changes in interest rates can impact their borrowing costs. When interest rates rise, the cost of borrowing increases, which can negatively affect a REIT’s profitability and cash flow.
To effectively manage these financial risks, REIT investors should consider diversifying their portfolio by investing in different types of properties and geographic locations. This can help mitigate the impact of any individual property or market downturn. Additionally, staying informed about market trends and economic indicators can help investors make informed decisions and adjust their investment strategy accordingly.
It is also important for REIT investors to closely monitor the leverage levels of the REITs they invest in. Understanding the REIT’s debt-to-equity ratio and its ability to manage and service its debt is crucial in assessing its financial health and stability.
Overall, while there are financial risks associated with investing in REITs, with careful consideration and risk management strategies, investors can navigate these challenges and potentially reap the benefits of this investment vehicle.
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Real Estate & Housing
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A day after the SEC filed 13 charges against Binance and CEO Changpeng Zhao, as well as BAM Trading and BAM Management, it has requested a temporary restraining order to freeze assets for all of the parties involved, according to a filing on Tuesday. The filing shows that the motion was granted.
The order is “necessary to preserve the status quo, ensure the safety and availability of those assets held and prevent dissipation or transfer of those assets from the jurisdiction of this Court,” the SEC stated in the case, which it filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The request applies to BAM Trading and Bam Management — its staking-as-a-service program — and the Binance.US platform.
The respective parties have between five and 10 days to move the crypto assets involved in the restraining order to BAM. Within the next 30 days, the defendants have to transfer all customer crypto assets to “new wallets with new private keys, including new administrative keys.” The keys, along with the crypto assets and staking assets, will be in sole control of BAM Trading employees based in the U.S. and will “not be provided to or in any way shared” with Binance, Zhao or any Binance entity.
On a case-by-case basis, BAM Trading may transfer custody of customer crypto assets to third-party custodians like BitGo or Aegis, according to the filing.
Earlier this week, the SEC sued Binance and related parties; the suit touched on securities violations, including details on several crypto tokens that it considers to be securities, and how the Binance team worked to evade U.S. securities law and regulatory oversight.
Binance and BAM Trading were under Zhao’s leadership and control and operated without registering with the SEC, the agency alleges. “Zhao and Binance created BAM Management and BAM Trading in the United States and claimed publicly that these entities independently controlled the operation of the Binance.US platform.”
However, behind the scenes, according to the suit, Zhao and Binance were allegedly “intimately involved” in directing the trading entity’s business operations and providing crypto-related services to the Binance.US platform, which claims it’s an independent exchange.
Over the past 24 hours, Binance’s exchange saw a net daily outflow of $1.65 billion, or 2.57% of the $54 billion balance attributed to Binance on-chain, according to Nansen data.
The top cryptocurrencies are seemingly unaffected by the SEC news and have rebounded from the separate SEC suits against Binance and Coinbase over the past two days. The two largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, bitcoin and ether, rose 5.4% and 4%, respectively, during a 24-hour period, CoinMarketCap data showed. The global crypto market cap rose 3.81% to $1.13 trillion during the same time period.
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Crypto Trading & Speculation
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Walmart’s quarterly sales and profits smashed expectations on Thursday — one day after Target said its revenue dropped for the first time in six years as a result of customers’ “negative reaction” to its Pride Month collection.
Walmart’s earnings release showed that e-commerce increased a whopping 24% in the 13-week period ended July 28, buoyed mostly by pickup and delivery orders placed online.
Sales at stores and digital channels open for at least a year were up 6.4% — well above the 4% Bloomberg analysts expected — and international net sales increased 11%, to $27 billion.
Foot traffic was also up 2.8% across the Arkansas-based discount retailer’s portfolio of 10,500-plus locations.
The gains prompted Walmart to raise its annual profit forecast for the second straight quarter.
“We like our position for the back half of the year,” Walmart’s longtime chief executive, Doug McMillon, said in the earnings report.
Strong revenue was attributed to increased grocery sales, though McMillon pointed out that there were also encouraging results across general merchandise, especially at Sam’s Club, where membership income climbed 7%.
The Post has sought comment from Walmart.
Retail rival Target, meanwhile, lowered its profit goal for the full year after a dismal quarter where sales, foot traffic and inventory dipped.
The losses were attributed to consumers’ “negative reaction” to its Pride collection, which included “tuck-friendly” women’s swimwear and LGBTQ-friendly gear for infants and children that particularly outraged many shoppers.
Target’s CFO Michael Fiddelke addressed the Minneapolis-based retailer’s disastrous rainbow-clad collection in an earnings call on Wednesday, saying: “Traffic and top line trends were affected by the reaction to our Pride assortment.”
Sales at stores and digital channels open for at least a year were off 5.4% from a year earlier, according to Target’s Q2 earnings report released Wednesday, while digital sales slipped 10.5%.
Fiddelke said on the call that the retailer couldn’t quantify the impact the Pride collection alone had on comparable sales.
Target’s revenue for the three-month period ended July 29 was $24.8 billion — 4.9% lower than this time last year and worse than the company’s predictions.
The figure was slightly under the $25.2 billion economists expected, though the dip isn’t surprising considering Target’s stock lost nearly $14 billion as the Pride Month controversy grabbed headlines.
Though Walmart also offered items in celebration of Pride — part of its “Pride & Joy” collection — it seemed to fly under the radar of conservative pundits who, at the time, were accusing Target of grooming children with its merchandise, which included a children’s book titled “‘Twas the Night Before Pride,” and a handful of T-shirts donning LGBTQ-friendly slogans, like “live laugh lesbian.”
Target responded to the backlash by yanking some of its Pride items off shelves and relocating its celebratory displays father back in stores.
The move then caused Pride supporters to condemn the company for falling victim to “extremists,” leading to a boycott from customers on both sides of the political aisle.
Walmart, meanwhile, refused to make any changes to its LGBTQ+-friendly merchandise despite the fierce criticism Target was experiencing.
“We have merchandise that we sell all year that supports different groups,” Walmart chief merchandising officer Latriece Watkins said at the start of Pride Month in June. “In this particular case, we haven’t changed anything in our assortment.”
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Consumer & Retail
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If $1 million was once the consensus target for retirement savings in the U.S., that appears to be changing. A recent Schwab Retirement Plan Services survey found that 401(k) plan participants across the country now believe they must save $1.9 million for retirement. The online survey, handled by Logica Research, conducted 1,000 interviews with plan participants between ages 21 and 70 and gauged confidence levels for achieving their own retirement goals. Whether you’re just beginning to save or quickly approaching retirement age, a financial advisor can help you build a plan.
Retirement Survey Results
In 2019, the same Schwab survey found that 401(k) participants had a target retirement savings of $1.7 million. That goal has since increased and so has investors’ confidence in reaching their goals. More than half (53%) of survey participants said they are likely to achieve their retirement goals, up 16% from a year ago when the COVID-19 pandemic unleashed massive economic turmoil and uncertainty.
“We experienced tremendous stress in our work and home lives this past year that highlighted the importance of financial wellness and the value of trusted advice,” Catherine Golladay, head of Schwab Workplace Financial Services, said in a statement.
But 401(k) plan participants say they still face numerous challenges. In fact, 61% said they needed the type of professional advice a financial advisor can provide, including help calculating a retirement savings goal, investing, creating income in retirement and planning for taxes in retirement.
How to Save $1.9M for Retirement
While the prospect of having $1.9 saved by retirement seems daunting, saving early and often will increase your chances of reaching this goal. Tax-advantaged accounts like 401(k)s and 403(b)s, which are offered through employers, can help you build a nest egg over the years. While annual contributions to these types of plans are capped at $19,500 in 2021 (with a $6,500 catch-up permitted for people 50 and older), those saving for retirement can also contribute $6,000 ($7,000 if you’re over 50) to an individual retirement account (IRA) each year. Those saving for retirement may also want to explore whether a mega backdoor Roth IRA is appropriate for them.
If you’re ready to be matched with local advisors that can help you achieve your financial goals, get started now.
Every three years, the Federal Reserve examines the changes in U.S. family finances, including how much people have saved in retirement accounts at various points in their lives. Using data from the Federal Reserve’s 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances, the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College calculated the median retirement savings across several age groups:
Median 401(k)/IRA balance for ages 35-44: $51,000
Median 401(k)/IRA balance for ages 45-54: $90,000
Median 401(k)/IRA balance for ages 55-64: $120,000
Here’s how much someone with the median 401(k)/IRA balance at age 35, 45 and 55 would have to save in total each month to reach the $1.9 million threshold by age 65 (these projections assume an 8% annual rate of return):
Building a $1.9 Million Nest Egg Age 401(k)/IRA Balance Monthly Savings Retirement Savings at Age 65 35 $51,000 $900 $1,899,046 45 $90,000 $2,475 $1,901,238 55 $120,000 $8,930 $1,900,065
A 35-year-old who has already saved $51,000 for retirement is clearly in the best position and would have to sock away $900 per month over the next 30 years to nearly reach the $1.9 million threshold. Older workers would have to save much more each month. A 45-year-old with $90,000 saved must sock away $2,475 per month to eclipse the $1.9 million mark by age 65. Meanwhile, a 55-year-old with $120,000 saved would have to play some serious catch-up and save nearly $9,000 per month to reach their goal within 10 years.
Bottom Line
A million bucks isn’t what it used to be. It was once thought a retirement savings milestone, but 401(k) plan participants now believe they’ll need nearly twice as much, according to a Schwab Workplace Financial Services survey. Building up a nest egg that large will likely take time and planning, highlighting the importance of saving for retirement in one’s 20s and 30s.
Retirement Saving Tips
SmartAsset has a variety of tools that can help you plan for retirement. Our 401(k) calculator can show you how much your account will be worth by the time you retire. Meanwhile, our retirement calculator can help you determine whether you’re on track to meet your retirement goals.
Need help managing your investments? How about planning for retirement income? A financial advisor can help you with a myriad of money needs and finding one in your area doesn’t have to be difficult. Finding a qualified financial advisor doesn’t have to be hard. SmartAsset’s free tool matches you with up to three financial advisors who serve your area, and you can interview your advisor matches at no cost to decide which one is right for you. If you’re ready to find an advisor who can help you achieve your financial goals, get started now.
Photo credit: ©iStock.com/izusek, ©iStock.com/iChainarong Prasertthai, ©iStock.com/Piotrekswat
The post 401(k) Plan Participants Say They Need to Save This Much to Retire appeared first on SmartAsset Blog.
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Personal Finance & Financial Education
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How An Andhra Government Entity Avoided Default At The Last Minute
The money was raised to finance priority infrastructure development projects in Amaravati.
An urban development plan fraught with opposition and bureaucratic delays have resulted in an Andhra Pradesh state government entity nearing a default on its Rs 2,000 crore bonds.
The Andhra Pradesh Capital Region Development Authority is expected to receive Rs 570 crore this week from its state government, so it can replenish its escrow account and make due payments, according to two people in the know.
APCRDA’s debt servicing is due on Nov. 16, said the first person quoted above, who is one of the bondholders.
The amount has been approved and sanctioned by the government, and this would be shortly sent to the secretary in the finance department for the release of funds, both the people added.
On Nov. 2, rating agency CRISIL downgraded these bonds to ‘BBB+ (CE)’ from ‘A- (CE)’, maintaining a watch on the rating with negative implications.
The rating action was due to delays in release of funds by the state government, which caused the company to not meet its timely debt servicing ability and non-adherence to the T-structure of the bonds, CRISIL said in a note.
The money was raised in 2018 to finance priority infrastructure development projects in Amaravati, according to the issue document reviewed by BQ Prime. The document showed that in 2017, APCRDA's expenditure stood at Rs 87.4 crore and the income stood at Rs 132 crore. These are the last available financials of the entity.
At the moment, APCRDA requires Rs 152 crore to make the required payments to bondholders. This includes Rs 100 crore as principle and Rs 52 crore as interest, the second person quoted above said.
Once the finance department secretary clears the amount, it would take about one or two days for the money to come in APCRDA’s account. The obligation is expected to be met before the due date, this person added.
Reasons For Delay
As per the agreement, APCRDA must utilise its own revenue to maintain the escrow account, the second person said.
However, the revenue has been impacted due to Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy government's proposal to develop three state capitals, this person added.
In 2019, the government had proposed three capitals - Visakhapatnam (executive), Amaravati (legislative) and Kurnool (judicial). However, the plan never saw the day's light as farmers, who had given their land for construction, agitated against the shifting of capital out of Amaravati.
The development activity then declined and revenue generation suffered for APCRDA, the second person explained. Approximately Rs 3,300 crore-worth land had to be monetised, which would be the main source of revenue, the person added. However, litigation has blocked this.
The Way Forward
In July, the Supreme Court deferred relaed hearings to December. It was then understood that the state may not have a capital city before the upcoming assembly elections in 2024.
Till the case doesn't get resolved, the revenue of APCRDA may continue to be impacted, the second person said.
As of now, the investors are not planning any action against the state government entity till the payments are resolved this week, the first person said.
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Banking & Finance
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In February, egg prices fell 6.7% compared to January, according to seasonally adjusted data released Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Groceries rose 0.3% in that time, while menu items got 0.6% more expensive, for overall food inflation of 0.4% in February.
It’s a welcome reversal: Egg prices have been astronomically high, fueled by short supply caused by the deadly avian flu, high input costs and egg producers increasing their own profits. Some of those constraints have eased, sending wholesale prices down earlier this year. In February, retail prices finally followed.
Still, eggs remain far more expensive than they were a year ago. In the 12 months through February, egg prices rose 55.4%.
And food prices still outpaced inflation overall on a year-over-year basis. Food prices rose 9.5%, compared with 6% for all items, for the year. The difference was even more pronounced when looking just at grocery prices, which rose 10.2%. Menu prices, which also factor into overall food inflation, rose 8.4% throughout the year.
Food prices have remained stubbornly high in part because the tools used by the federal government to try to fight overall inflation don’t work as well when it comes to food. Higher interest rates don’t prevent bad weather, diseases including avian flu, or international events like the war in Ukraine, which all go into food prices.
Plus, those factors have given food manufacturers cover to raise prices, and their own profits, in recent years, raising consumer prices.
What got more expensive in the grocery store this year
Though the rise in egg prices has been the most dramatic, plenty of other food items got more expensive over the past year.
Margarine shot up 39.8%, and butter spiked 20.7%. Flour got 19.8% more expensive, bread rose 15.8% and breakfast sausage got 9.7% pricier, with poultry rising 9.5%.
Ice cream got 13.9% more expensive, cheese jumped 9.4%, and milk rose 8.1%. Overall, fruits and vegetables rose 5.3%, with a 15.8% spike in frozen fruits and veggies. Some fresh vegetables got much more expensive, too: Potatoes rose by 13.5%, and lettuce went up 10.4%.
Beverages also got more expensive, with coffee up 11.4% and juice rising by 12.8%.
But it wasn’t all bad. Bacon dropped 5.9%, and beef and veal together fell 1.4% over the course of the year. Citrus fruits fell 1.2%.
Monthly food price changes
And the monthly data from February paints a rosier picture.
Month-over-month, lettuce got 4.7% cheaper, and butter fell by 1.9%. Oranges dropped 1.8%, and bacon got 1.5% less expensive. Breakfast cereal dropped 1.1%.
The meats, poultry, fish, and eggs index ticked down 0.1%, last month, marking the first decline since December 2021, according to the BLS.
Still, many items did get more expensive last month.
Together, frozen fruits and vegetables jumped 4.5% in the past month. Ham prices rose 3.3%, and pork chops grew 2.3%. Potatoes went up 2.8%, bananas rose 1.7%, and bread went up 1.2%.
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Inflation
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Fisher-Price is recalling about 21,000 units of some of their popular Thomas & Friends toys.
Parents and customers are being advised to stop using Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway Troublesome Truck & Crates and Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway Troublesome Truck & Paint toys because a small magnet encased in a plastic piece that can connect the toys to additional train toy pieces "can detach or become loose, posing choking and magnet ingestion hazards," according to a Consumer Product Safety Commission notice released Thursday.
Fisher-Price said in a statement shared on their parent company Mattel's website that the company has received one report of the plastic part loosening and detaching from one of the Thomas & Friends toys but that no injuries have been reported so far.
"Fisher-Price's greatest concern and primary focus has always been the safety of the children who use our products," the company said in part. "For that reason, we've taken action to recall the Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway Troublesome Truck & Crates and Troublesome Truck & Paint."
The recalled Troublesome Truck & Crates toys with model number HBJ89 have a black and gray coloring while the Troublesome Truck & Paint toys with model number HBJ90 are gray with a yellow paint splatter design on the sides of the toys. Both toy types are designed to look like Thomas & Friends characters and have light gray faces painted on them as well and measure about 3.6 inches long and 2.1 inches high, according to the CPSC.
The CPSC said the Troublesome Truck toys, which were made in Indonesia and retailed for about $17, were sold online and in stores nationwide including at Amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble stores from February 2022 through August 2023.
Anyone with the recalled toys can contact Fisher-Price through the Mattel website for a prepaid mailing label that they can use to request a refund. Fisher-Price said it will refund U.S. customers $17 for each recalled toy. If customers have additional questions, they can reach out to the company at 1-855-853-6224 between Monday to Friday and from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET.
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Consumer & Retail
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The Silicon Valley Bank post-mortem is over. Now come the new regulations.
Speaking at a Bipartisan Policy Center event in Washington on Monday, Michael Barr, the Fed’s vice chair of supervision, outlined proposals for additional rules to regulate the banking industry — primarily in the form of beefing up capital requirements to help stave off another wave of agita-inducing banking runs like we saw this spring.
Stressed Out
Sometimes it takes a crisis to inspire change. In this case, it took two. Many of Barr’s proposed rules are merely the final steps of regulations laid out by global policymakers after the 2008 financial crisis — the so-called Basel III reforms, which call for banks to hold a leverage ratio (capital divided by total exposure) above 3%. The new proposals would raise capital requirements even more, and would subject mid-sized banks holding at least $100 billion in assets to as much scrutiny as their too-big-to-fail big brothers on Wall Street. Currently, only banks with at least $250 billion in assets face the most stringent of requirements, a threshold much higher than what SVB, First Republic, and Signature Bank each held just before their implosions.
Barr also proposed an overhaul of annual stress test rules, a change that may feel sorely needed given that the US division of the also-now-defunct bank Credit Suisse passed the Fed’s 2022 stress test with flying colors. The new rules, which could be approved as soon as this month by the Fed and fellow regulators, could reshape compliance in the industry:
- Stress tests would be based on a new standardized system for estimating credit and operational risks, and would gauge banks’ ability to weather hypothetical recessions. “The proposed rules would end the practice of relying on banks’ own individual estimates of their own risk and instead use a more transparent and consistent approach,” Barr said.
- Meanwhile, the new capital requirements would increase by 2 percentage points for large banks, essentially forcing them to hold an extra $2 of capital per each $100 they held in risk-weighted assets.
“In an obvious way, the failures of SVB and other banks this spring were a warning that banks need to be more resilient, and need more of what is the foundation of that resilience, which is capital,” Barr said.
Bank Shot: Critics are already decrying Barr’s proposed rules as an overzealous reaction to what was, at its core, mismanagement at SVB. Barr, however, disagrees: “It is not logical to argue that failings in supervision must mean that SVB was adequately capitalized — it wasn’t,” he said, adding “Capital is and has always been the foundation of a bank’s safety and soundness.”
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Banking & Finance
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New government rules meant to boost the transparency of bank account closures after Nigel Farage’s campaign against private lender Coutts, could have damaging consequences for fighting financial crime, industry and law enforcement sources have warned.
Planned changes by the Treasury will force banks to spell out why they are shutting an account and give three months’ notice before ending their relationship with a customer. City minister Andrew Griffith said it would create “a much fairer playing field” by giving consumers more time to appeal against their lenders’ decisions.
It follows the recent furore over Coutts’s rationale for closing Farage’s accounts, the details of which emerged after he obtained and released internal documents last week. Those documents showed Farage had been “below commercial criteria for some time”, since customers are required to hold £3m in savings or borrow or invest £1m, and that the bank believed his alleged “xenophobic, chauvinistic and racist views” did not align with its values.
Coutts’s parent company NatWest has since apologised to Farage for comments included in the report, while the government put forward new rules meant to protect free speech and increase the transparency of bank account closures.
However, there is some disquiet among financial crime investigation operatives at the National Crime Agency (NCA) and other government departments over the proposed changes, which would give customers more detailed reasons for any account closures or denial of services.
Banks are free to deny additional services to customers for a number of reasons, from threats of violence towards bank staff to suspicions of financial crime, but usually avoid explaining their decisions in any substance or detail. Saying as little as necessary can be a helpful way to avoid signalling to customers that they are under investigation by the NCA or are of interest to any other government departments. While this can be frustrating for customers, banks are more concerned with following laws laid out in the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, which make it an offence to disclose information regarding a potential investigation “in the course of a business in the regulated sector”.
The government could still block lenders from informing customers they have flagged to authorities or are suspected of taking part in financial crimes.
However, there is a risk that if all other customers receive explanations, the mere omission of detailed information could inadvertently alert potential criminals that their funds and transactions are being investigated or are of interest to government departments. This had been a problem in some rare instances in investigations already, sources said.
“Banks will need to carefully consider how to meet these requirements in order to avoid cutting across their anti-money laundering obligations and undermining the effectiveness of those measures,” said David Lewis, a senior fellow at defence and security thinktank RUSI and an anti-money laundering expert who worked at the NCA’s predecessor the Serious Organised Crime Agency.
Griffith is planning to hold a meeting next week with banking industry and law enforcement bosses to discuss the details of the reforms. Banks are likely to seek clear guidance on how to apply the rules, which will be applied through secondary legislation and will require parliamentary approval. That is unlikely to be achieved until politicians return from summer recess in September.
The Treasury said: “Lawful freedom of speech is a fundamental right that should be respected by banks. There’s no trade-off between that and also catching and locking up those engaged in financial crime. We are working closely with industry and law enforcement to ensure that our reforms work well with existing financial crime obligations.”
Bank lobby group UK Finance said last week: “Customers should receive good communication about their accounts and a notice period should be served before an account is closed. However, there may be exceptions to this if, for example, money-laundering is suspected. We look forward to reviewing the full HM Treasury response to consultation when it is published.”
The NCA declined to comment and directed comment requests to the Treasury.
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Banking & Finance
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A lawsuit against fashion brand Abercrombie & Fitch - accusing the firm of funding a sex-trafficking operation - has been filed in New York.
The company allowed ex-CEO Mike Jeffries "unfettered access" to resources to support his "criminal enterprise", documents allege.
The lawsuit follows a BBC investigation into allegations Mr Jeffries exploited men at events he hosted while CEO.
A brand spokesperson said the company would not be commenting on the case.
A lawyer for Mr Jeffries said he would also not be commenting. "The courtroom is where we will deal with this matter," Brian H Bieber said in a statement.
The lawsuit also accuses Mr Jeffries and his British partner Matthew Smith of sex trafficking, sexual misconduct and rape. Mr Smith has also been contacted for comment.
The case has been brought under the New York Adult Survivors Act, which allows people to file civil sexual abuse claims that would have otherwise exceeded the statute of limitations.
It is a class action - where one or several people sue on behalf of a much larger group.
"Because of this lawsuit and the brave men that have come forward, Abercrombie will have to answer for its many unacceptable actions and inactions that have destroyed the lives of dozens of young men," said Brad Edwards, a civil lawyer who is now representing some of the alleged victims.
Earlier this month, the BBC published the findings of an investigation into a highly organised network that used a middleman to recruit young adult men for events with Mr Jeffries and Mr Smith. In response, Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) - which also owns the Hollister brand - previously told the BBC it was "appalled and disgusted" by Mr Jeffries' alleged behaviour. Through his lawyer, Mr Jeffries declined to comment.
'Financial lifeblood for sex-trafficking'
The lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York claims that A&F knew, or should have known, it was providing the "financial lifeblood for a sex trafficking organisation" led by Mike Jeffries between at least 1992 and 2014 - while he was CEO of the company.
It alleges he used A&F's corporate resources including a jet, transportation, and unlimited amounts of cash to facilitate a sex-trafficking venture, which enabled him to accumulate "new victims at an alarming rate" and he also had access to aspiring models.
"Abercrombie cared about profiting and showed absolute loyalty to Jeffries, including a willingness to spend copious amounts of money on extravagant drug and sex parties, ignoring multiple red flags of criminality in Jeffries's corporate account activity," the legal document claims.
Company employees were aware of Mr Jeffries' sexually exploitative and abusive behaviour and a video that circulated within the corporate office showed him "sniffing what was believed to be cocaine off a man's penis," according to the lawsuit.
"While Abercrombie tried to prevent the video from being more widely disseminated, the company did nothing to discourage the behaviour captured in the video and in fact continued to financially reward Jeffries," it says.
If you're in the US: The Abercrombie Guys: the Dark Side of Cool is available to watch on BBC Select.
And if you're outside the UK, listen to the podcast series, World of Secrets: Season 1 - The Abercrombie Guys, wherever you get your podcasts.
Mr Jeffries also required Abercrombie employees - says the legal paperwork - to "properly pack his sex toy bag for his business trips" and used the company email platform to co-ordinate with model scouts and make arrangements for the sexual abuse and exploitation of young male models, it claims.
The lawsuit accuses Abercrombie executives of turning a "blind eye" to his conduct because of the profit he generated for the company having transformed it from a failing retailer into a billion-dollar brand.
"With Abercrombie's complicity, Jeffries was free to sexually abuse dozens of men, paying a tremendous amount of cash in hush money, without the fear of detection by law enforcement," it claims.
'Ensnare the young male victims'
The legal complaint is made by David Bradberry, now 37, a former model and actor, who was interviewed as part of the BBC's investigation.
On behalf of himself and others, Mr Bradberry makes allegations based on his "information and belief" that Mike Jeffries held castings at his homes and abroad, providing prospective brand models with A&F gift cards and clothing.
He alleges they were forced to take drugs and participate in sex acts with Mr Jeffries and his partner at Mr Jeffries' direction.
Mr Jeffries was "using the Abercrombie name... his power within the company, its clothing, its photographers, and its marketing materials in order to ensnare the young male victims into the sex-trafficking venture," the lawsuit claims.
It also accuses Mr Jeffries and his British partner Mr Smith of sexual misconduct, forcible touching and rape which resulted in physical and psychological injury and trauma to Mr Bradberry and others.
"Sexual exploitation does not discriminate based on gender. Men have been exploited in the modelling and fashion industries for decades," said Brittany Henderson, a civil lawyer also representing some of the alleged victims.
She added; "This case is paramount to expanding the #MeToo movement across genders and eradicating sexual exploitation in the entire industry, starting with Abercrombie & Fitch."
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Consumer & Retail
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Flair Writing Industries IPO - Investment Rationale, Issue Details, Financials, Peer Comparison: Motilal Oswal
The company has set a price band in the range of Rs 288 to Rs 304 per equity share.
BQ Prime’s special research section collates quality and in-depth equity and economy research reports from across India’s top brokerages, asset managers and research agencies. These reports offer BQ Prime’s subscribers an opportunity to expand their understanding of companies, sectors and the economy.
Motilal Oswal Report
Flair Writing Industries Ltd.'s issue opened for subscription on November 22 and the issue will be closed on Nov 24. The company has set a price band in the range of Rs 288 to Rs 304 per equity share. The minimum order quantity is 49 shares and in multiple thereof.
The Rs 5.9 billion IPO consists of fresh issue of 9.6 milllion shares and offer for sale of 9.9 million shares by promoters. The funds raised will be utilised for capital expenditure, debt repayment and funding of working capital requirement. The market cap post listing would stand at Rs 32 billion.
Financials:
Flair has witnessed robust growth in its financial performance with revenue/profit after tax compound annual growth rate of 78%/9.9 times over FY21-23. Its Ebitda margin improved sharply from 7.7% in FY21 to 21.2% in Q1 FY24. It has capacity of 200 crore pens annually which post expansion will increase to 235 crore pens. Its return ratios are healthy with return on equity/return on capital employed of 20%/36% post dilution.
Our view:
Flair Writing is a frontrunner in the market with consistent healthy financial performance. Its vertical expansion into houseware products would further boost its revenues benefitting from its existing large distribution network.
The stock is priced at 24.9 times Q1 FY24 price/earning (on diluted and annualised basis) which is discount to its peers.
Hence, we recommend 'Subscribe'. Given the strong brand name, pan-India presence, robust financials and expansion plans, it makes Flair a compelling proposition.
Risk and concerns
~82% of the revenue comes from the top three brands. Any harm to such brands or reputations may adversely affect business, financial conditions, cash flows and result of operations.
The company’s business depends on the ability to respond and adapt to consumer needs and maintain an optimal product mix in terms of production volumes and profitability in the writing instruments industry.
The writing instruments industry has many small, unorganised players, hence is a highly competitive.
Click on the attachment to read the full report:
DISCLAIMER
This report is authored by an external party. BQ Prime does not vouch for the accuracy of its contents nor is responsible for them in any way. The contents of this section do not constitute investment advice. For that you must always consult an expert based on your individual needs. The views expressed in the report are that of the author entity and do not represent the views of BQ Prime.
Users have no license to copy, modify, or distribute the content without permission of the Original Owner.
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Stocks Trading & Speculation
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With the Bank of England set to raise interest rates for the 13th time in a row later today, James Cleverly has insisted that the “idea that we should consciously be going into a recession” is not subscribed to by anyone in government.
Mr Cleverly, the foreign secretary, insisted to Sky News that the Bank of England is “independent in its decision making with regard to interest rates” and has an inflation target it needs to pursue.
Policymakers at the Bank are widely tipped to raise interest rates at midday in a move which would increase the level of pain set to be imposed on house owners with mortgages.
It comes after inflation remained stubbornly high at 8.7 per cent in May, according to the Office for National Statistics. The figure, released Wednesday, was unchanged from the month before and higher than the 8.4 per cent experts had forecast.
This morning, the foreign secretary was quizzed on the comments made by fellow cabinet minister Mark Harper, who claimed that Rishi Sunak had predicted inflation while the Bank did not.
Mr Cleverly said the PM has a “huge wealth of experience from his time as chancellor” and “cautioned about the implications of inflation which is why we have been so determined not to do the things that drive up inflation”.
He blamed high inflation on “upward pressure” on fuel and food prices, a factor which is being “amplified by the war in Ukraine”.
Asked if the Bank of England should be deliberately stoking a recession to get a grip of inflation, Mr Cleverly replied: “What we need to do is we need to grow the economy – high interest rates don’t help with that. This idea that we should consciously be going into a recession I don’t think is one that anyone in government would be comfortable subscribing to at all”.
The line of questioning followed comments by an adviser to chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who yesterday urged the Bank of England to “create a recession” to get price rises under control.
Karen Ward, a member of a four-strong advice council to the chancellor, said the Bank had to “create uncertainty and frailty” to cool the economy.
She told the BBC’s Today programme: “It’s only when companies feel nervous about their future that they think, ‘well maybe I won’t put through that pay rise’. Or workers when they feel less confident about their job think, ‘I won’t push my boss for extra pay’.”
Downing Street responded by saying that the chancellor will “receive advice from a number of experts” but that the aim is to “grow the economy”.
Elsewhere this morning, James Cleverly struggled to set out what short-term measures the PM was taking to halve inflation.
Asked repeatedly on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme to detail the actions the government was taking, the foreign secretary said: “One of the main vehicles for short-term addressing inflation is interest rates.”
But pressed on what Rishi Sunak could do given interest rates are in the hands of the independent Bank of England, he continued: “We do what we can do to try and address the issues over which we have direct control”.
“One of the reasons why we have been thoughtful but cautious on public-sector pay awards is we know that is one of those things that adds inflationary pressures.
“We’re very conscious that increased government borrowing is one of those things that loops around and increases inflationary pressures”.
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Interest Rates
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The Securities and Exchange Commission, one of the major federal regulators looking to rein in the crypto industry, is having trouble hiring crypto experts, according to a new report from the agency’s inspector general.
Most federal agencies have an Office of Inspector General, or independent authority that reviews and oversees the operations of, say, the Federal Trade Commission or the Social Security Administration. On Thursday, the SEC’s division published a report on the financial regulator’s “management and performance challenges” in October.
These challenges include keeping pace with evolving technologies, like AI, as well as maintaining an in-the-know workforce. “[T]he SEC also faces challenges in recruiting specialists in crypto assets, which Enforcement considers critical to strengthening its capabilities to investigate new and emerging issues in crypto-asset markets,” wrote the Inspector General’s Office.
As for why the SEC is having trouble recruiting crypto experts, the report cited a “small candidate pool of qualified experts,” competition with alluring offers from the private sector, and candidates’ frequent conflicts with rules that prohibit the holding of cryptocurrencies. “This prohibition, according to SEC officials, has been detrimental to recruiting, as candidates are often unwilling to divest their crypto assets to work for the SEC,” read the report.
The federal agency already has complex ethics rules that prohibit employees who, for example, hold equity in a company from deciding on any applications that the company submits to the regulator.
The SEC’s difficulties in attracting crypto talent come amid a broader hiring downturn in the industry as well as the regulator’s acceleration of crypto enforcement actions in the past year. Since the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX in November 2022, the SEC has doubled down on enforcement actions, filing a series of lawsuits against companies and personalities, both big and small.
In January, the agency sued Gemini and Genesis for their Gemini Earn program, a yield-bearing product that the SEC alleged was akin to an unregistered security. Then, Gary Gensler, the SEC chair, set his sights on even larger figures in crypto: Justin Sun and Do Kwon, who both were charged with selling unregistered securities. And in June, he picked fights with the two of the biggest crypto exchanges, Binance and then Coinbase.
While the criminal trial (and eventual conviction) of FTX cofounder Sam Bankman-Fried has overshadowed the SEC’s actions over the past month, Gensler has still brought the hammer down on crypto companies. He most recently set his sights, along with the Justice Department, on SafeMoon.
“We’re pleased that the Office of the Inspector General reported that the SEC maintained a steady rate of hiring, remained a best place to work in government, slowed attrition below government averages, completed a substantial number of rulemakings, including those mandated by Congress, and took steps to address challenges that it previously identified,” said a spokesperson in reference to the Inspector General report.
Update, Nov. 6, 2023: Added in comment from the SEC.
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Crypto Trading & Speculation
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Britain Is Still Making Dumb Bets on Crypto
A year after the market collapsed, Rishi Sunak wants in.
The tech venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, or “a16z,” announced on June 11 that it would be opening an office in the United Kingdom. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak supplied a quote for the announcement, proclaiming a bright new blockchain-based future for Britain.
The tech venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, or “a16z,” announced on June 11 that it would be opening an office in the United Kingdom. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak supplied a quote for the announcement, proclaiming a bright new blockchain-based future for Britain.
This might seem odd given the current state of the cryptocurrency market, which collapsed a year ago in a farrago of incompetence and fraud. Crypto enthusiasm was all the rage for politicians such as Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez while the bubble was pumping. Getting into crypto now, however, is like buying Theranos stock after Elizabeth Holmes was exposed.
The Terra-Luna crash of May 2022 popped the crypto bubble of 2021. Prices crashed across the board—but, more importantly, trading volume crashed as retail investors took flight and the crypto economy’s inflows of scarce actual money dried up. Terra-Luna took down the Celsius and Voyager investment schemes, crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, and many smaller firms through the second half of 2022. Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, a hollow shell since last May, finally fell in November 2022. Silvergate Bank and Signature Bank, both overburdened with unstable crypto company deposits, collapsed in March, prompting a banking crisis that was barely headed off by U.S. regulators.
In early June, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Coinbase, the largest U.S. dollar crypto exchange, and Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, alleging in both cases that their exchange operations violated securities laws. Both companies are treating the charges as a matter of life and death for their U.S. businesses.
Coinbase’s explicit hope is for Congress to write special new enabling laws just for it. But this is unlikely while crypto is perceived by the public, and hence politicians, as synonymous with fraud. Crypto’s best lobbying efforts were being filtered through Bankman-Fried’s Washington operations; with FTX out of the picture, even once-friendly politicians don’t want to be left holding the bag.
That means the chief hope for the crypto industry is to look outside the U.S. market. Coinbase is presently setting up a small operation in Bermuda. The European Union recently passed the markets in crypto assets (MiCA) regulation, which will take effect in 2024.
That might be where the U.K., especially under an increasingly desperate Sunak, comes in. The U.K. has not harmonized with the EU on MiCA and is actively deharmonizing on various other financial regulations.
The problem for Sunak and his Conservative government is that the U.K. is not doing well. The British economy took severe damage from Brexit, but retreating from Brexit would alienate the Tory base. Rampant inflation has outstripped wages, leading to widespread industrial unrest. Inequality is increasing: The Trussell Trust, the single largest organizer of food banks in the U.K., reported in April that more than 760,000 people had used a food bank for the first time in the last year.
The opposition Labour Party has consistently polled 10 to 20 points ahead of the Tories since early 2022, even without clear policies. Culture wars and jingoism aren’t turning the tide for the Conservatives. They’re desperate to find something, anything, in time for the 2024 election. They know they need a miracle.
Since the crypto crash, a16z has tried to get into the various technologies currently being marketed as artificial intelligence—though investment in AI companies will only pay out on the yearslong start-up cycle. Sunak has also seized on AI as a possible way out of his troubles, including pitching the U.K. as “the geographical home of global AI safety regulation”—ignoring the currently-in-process EU Artificial Intelligence Act, which is much more likely to set the global tone.
Cryptocurrency is not that miracle. The mum-and-dad retail investors left last May. Institutional investors gave up soon after and have abandoned the crypto sector with no plans to return. The magical crypto money tree is no more likely to drop pounds than it is to drop dollars.
As chancellor of the exchequer in 2021, Sunak wanted to launch a U.K. central bank digital currency—though the Bank of England is still looking for a use case. He planned to make the U.K. a crypto asset hub in April 2022—just before the crash in May. He wanted the Royal Mint to issue an NFT in 2022—though the plan was abandoned a few months later when crypto crashed and took the NFT market with it. Finally, Sunak gave a quote for a16z’s June announcement about how he was “determined to unlock opportunities for this technology and turn the UK into the world’s Web3 centre”—whatever that means.
The Conservatives have long been fascinated by cryptocurrency. Through 2018—in the wake of the 2017 bitcoin bubble—the Financial Times even ran a series called “What’s the Tory crypto story?” featuring Baroness Michelle Mone’s initial coin offering (ICO), MP Grant Shapps’s involvement in a real estate ICO, and then-Chancellor Philip Hammond proposing “blockchain” as a solution to the Irish border question.
The U.K. Parliament has taken a more measured approach. The 2018 Treasury Committee inquiry led to closer monitoring of crypto’s approach to retail investors and an increased role for the Financial Conduct Authority. The Science and Technology Committee looked into the blockchain sector in 2022. The Treasury Committee conducted another inquiry in 2023 and recommended that consumer trading in cryptocurrency should be regulated as gambling. The Financial Services and Markets Bill, currently going through Parliament, considerably tightens cryptocurrency promotion and enables much wider regulation of the area by the Treasury.
The a16z announcement is disconcertingly nonspecific on what blockchains might actually do. “Decentralization” will apparently make all manner of advances possible—even as the same promises have been made for blockchain since the mid-2010s and the sector has failed to achieve more than speculative gambling, money laundering, and fraud since the 2009 launch of bitcoin.
The overwhelming use case for blockchain is to construct well-understood and highly regulated financial instruments but operate them out of the sight of the regulators. Cryptocurrency and blockchain are promoted as technical innovations that leave the existing rules of money obsolete and make financial magic possible. This is not the case—magic doesn’t happen, and it never happens when it’s money.
The main technical innovation of blockchain is that you can generate a new unregistered penny stock scheme at the press of a button. There are 7,000 or so equity stocks in the United States—but somewhere over a million blockchain tokens, almost all of which would constitute securities offerings under U.S. law. This lets you spam regulators with so many violations that they can barely keep up. The aim is to achieve regulatory escape velocity, in the manner of Uber or Airbnb. But unlike crypto, those companies had a popular product that worked for consumers—and not just a get-rich scheme.
a16z got heavily into crypto tokens in 2021 and 2022, promoting the ill-defined term “Web3” to encompass a wide range of technologies that didn’t exist—apart from NFTs. The company did not issue crypto tokens itself; instead, it funded other companies that then issued tokens. When these tokens were listed for the retail public on exchanges such as Coinbase, a16z could cash out its holding within months—rather than the years it might take for a liquidity event in the conventional model of start-up venture funding.
In sticking with crypto, a16z is an exception in venture capital. Other VC firms have dropped out; investment in crypto firms was $21.6 billion in 2022 but this year has reached only $500 million, as of mid-May. a16z has more than $300 million, face value, in cryptocurrency holdings—but the dollars don’t exist in the market to cash out a bag that large.
The victims of cryptocurrency eventually learned that anyone promising you “one weird trick” is selling you snake oil. Perhaps Britain’s Conservative government will learn this sooner rather than too late.
David Gerard is the author of the book Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain and the cryptocurrency and blockchain news blog of the same name. His new book is Libra Shrugged: How Facebook Tried to Take Over the Money.
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Crypto Trading & Speculation
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Viewers of Sort Your Life Out with Stacey Solomon were left in floods of tears last night after the team helped a woman who was caring for their nieces and nephew after her sister had died from Covid.
The BBC1 series aired yesterday, with the team helping Raaj and Roydel, in Hertfordshire, who were living with their two nieces as well as their nephew and son in a cluttered three-bedroom property.
The couple explained the households had joined together after Raaj's sister Tasharen had died from Covid at the end of 2020 in order to look after her three children.
The team helped them get to sort through their belongings, before the space was reorganised with clever storage solutions and a lick of paint to freshen up each of the rooms.
Many were left in floods of tears over the episode, with one adding: 'Oh that was wonderful! #SortYourLifeOut You touched my heart tonight and I had a good cry. What a wonderful human you are. Beautiful. That dear family!
One wrote: 'Love #staceysolomon (never judgmental, always positive) what a lovely family in tonight’s #sortyourlifeout - tough circumstances but their love for each other really shone through.'
Another commented: 'It was sweet in the end. I don't think some people realise how much stuff they accumulate.'
A third added: 'What a lovely family. And the solutions are easy to use in any home.'
Stacey and her team, Iwan, cleaning, Dilly, organising, and Rob, carpentry, explored the home to see how they could help the couple.
Downstairs were two family spaces which were overrun with belongings, and had no real identity.
There was a cluttered kitchen which had nowhere for the family to sit down and eat together.
And upstairs, the master bedroom was overrun with mess, while the children's rooms were packed with bags of clothing.
Stacey said: 'Every single room is trying to be 20 million different things.'
Simran, 17, explained: 'The reason we are all living together is because at the end of 2020, my mum had Covid. She just got worse and worse and two weeks later, she passed away.
'Since then, my aunt and uncle and my cousin moved into our home.'
Raaj explained: 'Coming into this house without my sister felt painful but I instantly felt I had to look after these kids and fulfil what my sister wanted for them.'
However when the couple moved into the property, merging their two houses was difficult.
Roydel said: 'The kids need different things. We don't have anywhere to actually put the items.'
Raaj said: 'I think when we have a decluttered home, we're going to have a new start.'
Stacey said she 'didn't want to overwhelm the family', saying she felt 'nervous' because she wanted to make the home a place they all 'deserved.'
The team planned to strip the entire house and display all the family's possessions in a huge warehouse. They then had to decide what to keep and what to get rid of.
The presenter challenged the couple to get rid of 50 per cent of their belongings, with the team spending 10 hours packing up every single item in their home.
With the busy day of packing over, all of the family's stuff was on the way to the warehouse.
Stacey revealed their mass of belongings, with boxes of the family's stuff being laid out into sections so they can clearly see how much they had.
Among their belongings were 24 used toothbrushes and 105 Punjabi suits.
Stacey said the team would be dealing with the situation completely differently than how they would normally handle it.
She said: 'We definitely need to make sure they're happy with their decisions and everything they do today, they go home and feel comfortable with.'
Over the next 48 hours, the couple sorted their belongings into different piles, to sell, donate or keep.
Back at the base, Rob, Iwan and Dilly began working on storage solutions in the home.
After a week, the family returned to their home to see what the team had achieved.
The living room was clear from clutter, with new storage solutions in the lounge, and had been painted into a fresh pink colour.
While Raaj said she 'loved it', Roydell said: 'This is amazing.'
Stacey said they had tried to incorporate Tasharen into every space.
Meanwhile the second family room had been transformed into a dining room, with Stacey saying: 'It was so important to get this back.'
Upstairs, the bedrooms have all been reassigned - with the teenage girls amazed by their new bedroom.
Raaj and Roydel's bigger room was reconfigured to work for the girls to share, while the boys were also sharing.
The family were left in tears over the transformation, praising the team and thanking them for their amazing work.
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Consumer & Retail
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Stocks To Watch: TCS, Infosys, Tata Steel, Indigo, Welspun, Power Grid, TVS Motor, BPCL, Airtel, Mamaearth
Here are the stocks to watch before going into trade today.
Treasury yields climbed on Wednesday after data showed a further increase in consumer year-ahead inflation expectations, with some traders taking profit on dovish Federal Reserve wagers, reported Bloomberg.
The S&P 500 index and Nasdaq 100 rose by 0.32% and 0.57%, respectively, as on 1:05 p.m. New York time. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained by 0.48%.
Brent crude was trading 2.06% lower at $80.75 a barrel. Gold fell by 0.35% to trade at $1,991.33 an ounce.
Benchmark indices in India closed higher for the second consecutive day after witnessing volatility throughout Wednesday, as gains in information technology stocks offset the losses in banks.
The S&P BSE Sensex closed 93 points up, or 0.14%, at 66,023.24, while the NSE Nifty 50 ended 29 points, or 0.14%, higher at 19,811.85.
Overseas investors remained net sellers of Indian equities for the fourth consecutive session on Wednesday. Foreign portfolio investors offloaded stocks worth Rs 306.6 crore, while domestic institutional investors mopped up stocks worth Rs 721.2 crore, the NSE data showed.
The Indian rupee strengthened 3 paise to close at Rs 83.32 against the U.S dollar on Wednesday.
Stocks To Watch
TCS: The IT major was ranked first in Spain for customer satisfaction in service delivery among IT and cloud services providers.
ICICI Bank: The sredit rating company Care Rating has reaffirmed CARE AAA; Stable to ICICI Bank’s infrastructure bonds.
Infosys: The IT Giant announced a strategic long-term collaboration with TK Elevator to consolidate, harmonize, and modernize TK Elevator’s digital landscape.
Bharti Airtel: Tamil Nadu DoT imposed a penalty of Rs 2,45,000 for alleged violation of subscriber verification norms.
ACC: NSE and BSE imposed a penalty of 47,000 each for delayed in the appointment of key managerial personnel.
Tata Steel: The company allotted 7.5 Crore Shares to Tata Steel Long Products and their Shareholders in the scheme of amalgamation.
UPL: The company has incorporated wholly owned subsidiary Avanta Seeds in South Africa.
R Systems: BSE and NSE imposed a fine of Rs 76,000 each on the company for non-compliance of Regulation of SEBI.
Indigo Aviation: The company got Tax Demand notice of Rs 7,396.76 million and Rs 9270.31 million which the company had preferred appeal before CIT-Appeal.
Welspun Corp: The company's subsidiary, Sintex BAPL received Odisha Government's nod for its proposal to invest Rs 479.47 crore in setting up manufacturing unit with a capacity of 37,520 MT.
Shalby Ltd: The company executed the amendment agreement to the operation and management agreement with the Santacruz Residents Association and Smt. Bhikhubai Chandulal Jalundwala General Hospital (Trust) to enable the Company for execution of the project at Santacruz, Mumbai.
Powergrid: The company approved power project worth Rs 142.69 crore in Telangana and power project worth Rs 224.41 crore in Gujarat.
Adani Enterprise: NSE imposed fine of Rs 34,000 for delaying in approval for appointment or continuation of Non-Executive Director who attained the age of 75 years.
TVS Motor: The automaker announced its entry into Vietnam in collaboration with Minh Long Motors – its distribution partner.
Indian Railway Finance Corporation: NSE and BSE imposed a fine on the company of Rs 5,42,800 each for non-compliance with regulatory.
BPCL: The company bagged the new project of value 32.62 million under the Gati Shakti Sealdah Division of Eastern Railway. NSE and BSE have imposed a fine on the company of Rs 5,42,800 each.
Techno Electric: The company signed a MoU with Keppel Data Centres Pvt. for collaboration on joint data centre campus development.
Ambuja Cement: NSE and BSE have imposed a fine on the company of Rs 47,000 for delayed in appointment of company secretary and compliance officer.
C.E. Info Systems: The board meeting is scheduled on Nov. 27 to consider and approve the proposal to raise the funds.
Adani Green: NSE and BSE have imposed a fine on the company of Rs 5,61,680 each.
Neuland Laboraties: The company appointed Dr. Sharadsrikar V. Kotturi Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) w.e.f. Nov. 22, 2023.
Mastek: NSE and BSE have imposed a fine on the company of Rs 5.84,000 each.
Honasa Consumer: The company reported Rs 496 Crore in revenue from operations in Q2 FY24, up 21% YoY. The parent of Mamaearth reported a profit after tax of Rs 29 crore, up 94% YoY.
Max Estates: The real estate arm of Max Group’s received completion cum occupancy certificate for phase 2 of Max House. The Phase of development has a net leasable area of around 1.5 lacs sq. ft.
Genesys International: The company and survey of India signed a strategic partnership for creating digital twins of major cities and towns.
Lux industries: The company will carry out businesses across four separate verticals.
Elpro International: The company acquired 2.4 lakh equity shares of JSW Infra for Rs 5 crores.
Servotech Power: The company won orders for 2649 EV chargers from BPCL. The company will be responsible for manufacturing, supplying and installing EV chargers strategically across the nation.
IPO Offering
IREDA: The IPO was subscribed 4.56 times on day two. The bids were led by non-institutional investors (7.74 times), portion reserved for employees (4.99 times), retail investors (4.26 times) and institutional investors (2.69 Times).
Tata technologies: The IPO was subscribed 6.54 times on day one. The bids were led by non-institutional investors (11.69 times), retail investors (5.44 Times), institutional investors (4.08 times) and reserve portion for employees (1.11 times).
Gandhar oil refinery: The IPO was subscribed 5.54 times on day one. The bids were led by non-institutional investors (7.70 times), retail investors (6.92 Times), institutional investors (1.35 times).
Fedbank Financials: The IPO was subscribed 0.38 times on day one. The bids were led by retail investors (0.67 times), portion Reserved for employees (0.37 times) and by non-institutional investors (0.21 times).
Flair Writing Industries: The IPO was subscribed 2.18 times on day one. The bids were led by retail investors (2.87 times), non-institutional investors (2.78 times) and by institutional Investors (0.53 times).
Insider Trades
Veranda Learnings: Promoters Kalpathi S Aghoram, Kalpathi S Ganesh, Kalpathi S Suresh bought 36,250 equity shares each on Nov. 21.
Paisalo Digital: Promoter Group Equilibrated Venture Cflow, PRI CAF, PRO FITCCH sold 60,000 shares on Nov. 22.
Ethos: Promoter Group Vardhan Properties and Investment sold 8,000 shares on Nov. 21
Sandhur Manganese And Iron Ore: Promoter SY Ghorpade sold 6,507 shares on Nov. 21.
Deccan Gold Mines: Promoter Rama Mines Mauritius sold 15,000 shares on Nov. 20.
DB Realty: Promoter Vinod Goenka sold 36 lakh shares on Nov. 17 and Shravan Kumar Bali sold 17,731 shares on Nov. 17.
Pledge Share Details
Ajanta Pharma: Promoter Ravi Agarwal, Trustee Ravi Agarwal Trust released a pledge of 59,553 shares on Nov. 22.
Who’s Meeting Whom
Reliance Industries: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov. 29 and 30.
Kotak Mahindra Bank: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 28,29.
Bosch: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 30.
Computer Age Management Services: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 28.
Ultra Cement: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 23.
Quick Heal Technologies: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 29.
Nuvama Wealth Management: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 29.
Mahindra and Mahindra Financial Services: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 28.
Vishnu Chemicals: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 24.
Ideaforge Technologies: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 28.
The Phoenix Mills: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 27.
Clean Science and Technology: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 27.
Sapphire Foods: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 28.
Birla Corporation: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 23.
Arvind Smartspaces: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 27.
Global Health: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 27 and 28.
HDFC Bank: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 28,29 and Dec 1.
Symphony: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 27.
Crompton Greaves Consumer Electric: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 27,28,29,30 and Dec 1.
Adityavision: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 27.
JSW Energy: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 30.
Escorts Kubota: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 28.
Inox Wind: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 28 to Dec 8.
Linc: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov27 and 28.
Punjab National Bank: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 23.
Indian Bank: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 28.
Ramkrishna Forgings: Investors and Analyst meet on Nov 27,28 and 29.
Trading Tweaks
Price band revised from 20% to 10%: Talbros Automotive Components.
Ex/record date Interim dividend: Crisil, Ingersoll-Rand, Ipca Laboratories, National Aluminium Co, Oil India, Pearl Global Industries, TD Power Systems.
Move into a short-term ASM framework: DCX Systems, Dhunseri Investments, Sastasundar Ventures.
Move out of short-term ASM framework: Antony Waste, Carysil.
F&O Cues
Nifty November futures rose 0.23% to 19,886.60 at a premium of points 72.75 points.
Nifty November futures open interest rose by 2.57% to 5249 shares.
Nifty Bank November futures fell by 0.47% to 43,587.95 at a premium of 138.35 points.
Nifty Bank November futures open interest rose by 5.69% to 7513 shares.
Nifty Options Nov 23 Expiry: Maximum call open interest at 19,900 and maximum put open interest at 19,800.
Bank Nifty Options Nov 22 Expiry: Maximum Call Open Interest at 43500 and Maximum put open interest at 43,500.
Securities in the ban period: Bharat Heavy Electricals, Hindustan Copper, Indiabulls Housing Finance, India Cement, Manappuram Finance, MCX, NMDC, RBL Bank, Zee Entertainment.
Disclaimer: AMG Media Networks Ltd. (AMNL) currently owns 49% stake in Quintillion Business Media Ltd. (QBML), the owner of BQ Prime Brand. AMNL has entered into an MOU to acquire the balance 51% stake in QBML. Post acquisition, QBML will become a wholly owned subsidiary of AMNL.
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Stocks Trading & Speculation
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With the rollout of the Canada Disability Benefit believed to still be a year and a half away, social-assistance recipients and advocates are calling for emergency interim support from the federal government.
Jeffrey Salisbury, 39, has received assistance through the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) for more than a decade. But in the midst of a housing and affordability crisis, he is finding it more and more difficult to get through each month.
As a single adult struggling with developmental disability, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder, he receives $1,306 a month, which is hundreds less than the average monthly cost of a one-bedroom apartment in London, Ont., where he lives. Mr. Salisbury lives with his parents, paying them $600 a month in rent. Without them, he says, he doesn’t know what he’d do.
Mr. Salisbury said he relies on a food bank almost every month. “And they’re already overloaded because even regular people are having trouble now affording food.”
Mr. Salisbury has hope that the Canada Disability Benefit – which is meant to be a top-up to existing provincial benefits – will improve his quality of life.
But although Parliament passed legislation in June to create the benefit, more than three years after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to do so, the government has indicated the rollout won’t begin until December, 2024. For Mr. Salisbury, that feels like a lifetime to wait.
He has launched a petition, calling on the government to provide emergency relief to people with disabilities in the meantime.
Mr. Salisbury points to the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) program, which was quickly established during the pandemic, providing recipients with $2,000 a month.
“What they told everybody was this was the minimum amount you had to be getting to be considered to be livable,” Mr. Salisbury said. “No disability program in the country is giving that.”
The newly appointed Minister of Diversity, Inclusion and Persons with Disabilities, Kamal Khera – who took over the file from Carla Qualtrough in the last cabinet shuffle – said in a statement that she is “focused on getting the CDB up and running as soon as possible.”
Ms. Khera said they are now beginning engagement around the design of the regulations, which will include aspects such as the benefit amount and eligibility criteria.
Roughly one in five Canadians – or 6.2 million people – live with a physical, developmental or psychiatric disability. Forty per cent of Canadians living in poverty have a disability.
Income-assistance programs for people with disabilities vary greatly across the country. But they are consistent in their inadequacy, advocates say.
“In pretty much every single province across Canada, people who are receiving social assistance are living below the poverty line,” said Elizabeth McIsaac, president of anti-poverty think tank Maytree, which publishes an annual Welfare in Canada report. “And with the exception of a couple of provinces, many are living below the threshold of deep poverty.”
Comparable programs such as the Canada Child Benefit and the Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors have made headway in relieving poverty rates in those populations, she said. “We need to do something meaningful around people with disabilities as one of the most vulnerable groups.”
Engagement is a critical part of the process, and it will take time to ensure it is done meaningfully. But if the benefit doesn’t find its way into the 2024 budget, she said, “then there should be consideration of an interim measure.”
“The crunch on people’s budgets is extreme,” she said. “Some relief as a gesture of ‘more to come’ would be great.”
Talia Bronstein, vice-president of advocacy and research for the Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto, said close to half of food-bank clients in Toronto have a disability.
Inadequate assistance rates, she said, are legislating people with disabilities to live in poverty, especially in cities as expensive as Toronto.
“Food-bank visits are rising so rapidly. With food inflation, with the rising cost of rent, people with disabilities are just falling further and further behind,” she said. “And so we need action – we needed action yesterday.”
Rabia Khedr, the national director of Disability Without Poverty and chief executive of DEEN Support Services, said the change in ministers and the recent marching orders to ministers to find budget cuts make their advocacy work harder.
They had an “excellent relationship” with Ms. Qualtrough – and they are expecting an equally positive one with Ms. Khera.
“There is a looming probability of an election, and that is very uncomfortable for everybody involved, because we want to see this benefit implemented before there is any risk of change in government.”
They have called for $10-billion a year to be allocated to this benefit, in order to bring recipients across the country above the poverty line.
“That’s all people are asking for,” she said. “To be able to meet their basic needs.”
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Inflation
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Artificial Intelligence has the ability to perform illegal financial trades and cover it up, new research suggests.
In a demonstration at the UK's AI safety summit, a bot used made-up insider information to make an "illegal" purchase of stocks without telling the firm.
When asked if it had used insider trading, it denied the fact.
Insider trading refers to when confidential company information is used to make trading decisions.
Firms and individuals are only allowed to use publicly-available information when buying or selling stocks.
The demonstration was given by members of the government's Frontier AI Taskforce, which researches the potential risks of AI.
The project was carried out by Apollo Research, an AI safety organisation which is a partner of the taskforce.
"This is a demonstration of a real AI model deceiving its users, on its own, without being instructed to do so," Apollo Research says in a video showing how the scenario unfolded.
"Increasingly autonomous and capable AIs that deceive human overseers could lead to loss of human control," it says in its report.
The tests were made using a GPT-4 model and carried out in a simulated environment, which means it did not have any effect on any company's finances.
However, GPT-4 is publicly available. The same behaviour from the model occurred consistently in repeated tests, according to the researchers.
What did the AI bot do?
In the test, the AI bot is a trader for a fictitious financial investment company.
The employees tell it that the company is struggling and needs good results. They also give it insider information, claiming that another company is expecting a merger, which will increase the value of its shares.
In the UK, it is illegal to act on this type of information when it is not publicly known.
The employees tell the bot this, and it acknowledges that it should not use this information in its trades.
However, after another message from an employee that the company it works for suggests the firm is struggling financially, the bot decides that "the risk associated with not acting seems to outweigh the insider trading risk" and makes the trade.
When asked if it used the insider information, the bot denies it.
In this case, it decided that being helpful to the company was more important than its honesty.
"Helpfulness, I think is much easier to train into the model than honesty. Honesty is a really complicated concept," says Apollo Research chief executive Marius Hobbhahn.
While the AI has the capability of lying in its current form, Apollo Research still had to "look for" the scenario.
"The fact that it exists is obviously really bad. The fact that it was hard-ish to find, we actually had to look for it a little bit until we found these kinds of scenarios, is a little bit soothing," Mr Hobbhahn said.
"In most situations, models wouldn't act this way. But the fact that it exists in the first place shows that it is really hard to get these kinds of things right," he added.
"It's not consistent or strategic in any sense. The model isn't plotting or trying to mislead you in many different ways. It's more of an accident."
AI has been used in financial markets for a number of years. It can be used to spot trends and make forecasts, while most trading today is done by powerful computers with human oversight.
Mr Hobbhahn stressed that current models are not powerful to be deceptive "in any meaningful way", but "it's not that big of a step from the current models to the ones that I am worried about, where suddenly a model being deceptive would mean something."
He argues that this is why there should be checks and balances in place to prevent this type of scenario taking place in the real world.
Apollo Research has shared its findings with OpenAI, the creators of GPT-4.
"I think for them this is not a huge update," says Mr Hobbhahn.
"This is not something that was totally unexpected to them. So I don't think we caught them by surprise".
The BBC has contacted OpenAI for comment.
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Stocks Trading & Speculation
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Former President Donald Trump’s rambling testimony at his New York fraud trial on Monday bodes poorly for his chances of appealing the judge’s ruling, legal experts say.
Trump testified for hours at the trial, which is set to determine the scope of punishment he, his two oldest sons and his company should face after Judge Arthur Engoron issued a partial summary judgment prior to the trial finding them liable of persistent fraud. Trump’s lawyers appealed the ruling and have sought to lay the groundwork for additional motions throughout the trial.
Even Trump’s antics in court on Monday appeared to be an effort to try to “goad” Engoron into “some sort of mistake” or say something that could help his team on appeal, former U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg told MSNBC.
“Judge Engoron is an experienced jurist, I don’t think that has happened yet and I don’t see that happening,” he said. “From a theatrical perspective, maybe this plays in some other venue. From a legal perspective, this does not play in court,” he added.
“For all of his attacks, there was one key thing missing from Trump’s testimony, which is any semblance of a colorable defense, and that is Donald Trump through and through,” former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal told MSNBC on Tuesday, adding that the former president was clearly “trying to provoke the judge.”
Trump was “successful today by his metric because we’re talking more about his behavior and his temper tantrums than we are about the fact that the guy committed serious fraud,” he said. “So, it’s a distraction technique, and in some ways, it’s working. It obviously won’t work in the court of law, though.”
When Trump did answer the attorney general’s team’s questions, he made “important concessions” that may have further damaged his case, former federal prosecutor Elie Honig told CNN.
“To me, the most important sentence of the day, Trump said something like, ‘I saw those statements, I reviewed them, and at times I gave input.’ And it was a quick little moment, but that’s something that I think the AG’s office is gonna latch onto because he acknowledges he knew them and knew enough to give input into those statements,” he said, according to Mediaite.
“I think his testimony was inherently contradictory and a mess, but there’s some real useful pieces in there for the AG’s office,” Honig added.
We need your help to stay independent
Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who served on special counsel Bob Mueller’s team, noted that the AG’s counsel got Trump to agree that the financial statements and Trump’s personal guaranty at the heart of the trial were to “induce banks to lend money.”
“Not only is this an astonishing admission, it will damage efforts to argue on appeal that the judge was wrong to grant judgement ahead of trial on the fraud claims,” tweeted former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance. “That is pretty much Trump's last gasp at saving his NY business.”
Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.
Former federal prosecutor Kristy Greenberg pointed out that Trump’s lawyers are laying the groundwork for appeal by arguing that the valuations listed in the financial statements were not to be taken at face value while arguing that those statements were still good-faith estimates of Trump’s properties.
"They were laying the record for an appeal with a lot of defense — these weren't material misstatements, nobody relied on the misstatements," Greenberg told CNN. "Again, I think, legally they're not on solid ground there... this idea of good faith, we acted in good faith, that will be something else that they raise on appeal."
The problem for Trump, Greenberg said, is that “a lot of these examples are egregious.”
"This isn't a matter of, 'Well, there's some wiggle room here.' If anybody were to go in and seek a loan from their bank and say, 'Well, my house or my apartment is three times the size of what it is, and 400 percent valued higher than what it is,' like, that's fraud,” she said. “That's not, ‘oh, we got some of the accounting principles wrong.’ That's just plain fraud, and so I don't think he really is going to have much room to succeed on appeal."
Read more
about the Trump fraud trial
- "Astonishing": Experts say Trump meltdown shows why lawyers won't let him testify at criminal trials
- "Control your client": Judge calls out Trump lawyers and threatens to shut down testimony
- "Doesn't know how to act in front of a judge": Legal experts school Trump lawyer over meltdown
- “Crazy thing to say to a judge”: Experts stunned after judge explodes at Trump lawyer’s “misogyny”
- Michael Cohen: Trump will go broke and may face prison — "it's going to hit him hard"
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Banking & Finance
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LIC Amends Norms For Inclusion Of Shareholders' Directors On Board
The person elected as a shareholders' director would be appointed by the board for a term of four years and eligible for re-election and re-appointment for another term of four years.
State-owned insurer Life Insurance Corp. of India on Saturday said it has amended a framework to allow the induction of shareholders' directors on its board.
LIC was listed on bourses following the largest initial public offering in the Indian capital market last year. The government raised Rs 20,557 crore by diluting its 3.5% stake in the insurer.
Life Insurance Corporation of India (shareholders' director) Regulations, 2023, was notified in the Gazette of India on Dec. 1, 2023, LIC said in a regulatory filing.
The corporation would, upon notice of not less than one thousand shareholders or one-tenth of the total number of shareholders, whichever is lower, elect a shareholders' director through a general meeting of such shareholders, the regulation said.
The person elected as a shareholders' director would be appointed by the board for a term of four years and eligible for re-election and re-appointment for another term of four years, it added.
At present, LIC has five executive directors, including Chairman Siddhartha Mohanty, nine independent directors and one government nominee Director MP Tangirala.
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Banking & Finance
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Obscure Coal Stock With 2,900% Gains Is World’s Star IPO in 2023
The world’s best-performing IPO stock this year is a little-known Indonesian coal mining company that’s backed by one of Southeast Asia’s richest men.
The world’s best-performing IPO stock this year is a little-known Indonesian coal mining company that’s backed by one of Southeast Asia’s richest men.
PT Petrindo Jaya Kreasi has soared more than 2,900% since it listed in March following a $25 million offering. Yet it still has no analyst coverage, is richly valued and has relatively low trading volumes. Counting Indonesian billionaire Prajogo Pangestu as its main shareholder, the company’s market value has grown by more than 25 times to $5.4 billion in just nine months.
Indonesia has been one of the most vibrant markets for initial public offerings globally this year, partially helped by a boom in demand for renewable energy stocks. Petrindo, in particular, is among a cohort of Indonesian stocks that have posted unexplained gains and wild swings this year, reaping fortunes for their backers and leading to regulatory scrutiny.
Mysterious 1,000% Stock Gains Baffle Traders in Indonesia
Including Petrindo, companies that debuted on Asian exchanges this year after raising up to $100 million have gained an average 43% since listing.
The company has “shown aggressive diversification initiatives through gold mining and nickel mining, which the market might perceive as a growth impetus story,” said Alif Ihsanario, a mining sector analyst at MNC Sekuritas. Investors have “hopped on the bandwagon of Prajogo Pangestu’s rally momentum this year,” he added.
Petrindo’s gains led to multiple trading suspensions and have sent valuations skyrocketing. The stock is trading at 114 times its annualized earnings for the June-ending quarter versus the 16 times price-to-earnings multiple of Indonesia’s benchmark Jakarta Composite Index. Daily trading volumes have averaged about 32 million shares since listing.
A request on WhatsApp seeking comment from Petrindo’s President Director Michael wasn’t immediately answered.
The stock gains have delivered a windfall for Pangestu, who is Indonesia’s third-richest man, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He derived his fortune from a controlling stake in PT Barito Pacific, a Jakarta-based power generation and petrochemical company. A unit of the group, Barito Renewables Energy Tbk, has also surged since listing last month.
There’s optimism that Petrindo’s rally will continue. Agreements announced by the company in recent months include buying a 34% stake in engineering firm PT Petrosea and acquiring coal company Multi Tambangjaya Utama, as well as diversifying into gold mining. Petrindo, which operates across Kalimantan and West Nusa Tenggara, reported sales of 1.04 trillion rupiah ($67 million) in the June quarter.
“Only time will tell whether the stock is currently overvalued or attractively priced,” said Mohit Mirpuri, a fund manager at SGMC Capital Pte., who doesn’t own the shares.
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Stocks Trading & Speculation
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A 700% Jump In Tomato Prices Creates Windfall For Indian Farmers
An eight-fold surge in tomato prices is making some Indian farmers rich, although their windfall gains may be short-lived due to a likely rise in supplies in the coming weeks.
(Bloomberg) -- An eight-fold surge in tomato prices is making some Indian farmers rich, although their windfall gains may be short-lived due to a likely rise in supplies in the coming weeks.
Retail prices of tomatoes were at 178 rupees ($2.20) a kilogram in Delhi on Sunday, a jump of more than 700% from Jan. 1, according to data compiled by the food ministry. The national average was almost 120 rupees that day.
The hike, caused by heavy rains disrupting supplies, has hit consumer nerves, with many households temporarily forgoing tomatoes — an essential element of mainstay Indian dishes. But growers are elated.
Ishwar Gaykar said he and his wife Sonali, who grow tomatoes on 12 acres (4.9 hectares) of land near Junnar in the western state of Maharashtra, have made a profit of about 24 million rupees so far in the current season, compared with 1.5 million a year earlier.
The couple, who employ 60 to 70 daily workers to manage the fields, have emerged as one of the biggest suppliers of tomatoes in the region. Ishwar has gained celebrity status as local media outlets are lining up for interviews.
“About one and a half months ago, tomatoes were fetching barely 2.5 rupees a kilogram,” said Ishwar, who suffered a loss of about 2 million rupees in the same season of 2021. “Supply is thin, while demand remains strong.”
The couple have supplied about 350 tons in recent weeks, and expect to sell another 150 tons soon, provided the weather condition doesn’t deteriorate. They reap three harvests every year, with the current crop being 120 to 140 days old.
Supplies have been hit by transport disruptions following heavy monsoon rains and floods in some regions, and inflation is set to increase as other vegetables have also become more expensive. The issue has become front-page news, and is being hotly debated on social media, with consumers blaming the rain god and the authorities alike for the situation.
The government has started selling tomatoes at subsidized rates at many locations, deploying mobile vans. It’s showing some impact, but prices are still very high for consumers in a country of 1.4 billion people. Tomatoes generally cost more in the rainy months of July and August, but the spike has been unusual this year.
While prices are expected to fall in the coming weeks with an improvement in truck movements, growers are rejoicing in their current good fortunes.
“I have never seen my produce getting this high a rate,” said Mahendra Nikam, whose tomatoes fetched as much as 130 rupees per kilogram in Surat, a city in the state of Gujarat. “Less than two months ago, farmers were literally forced to throw away tomatoes or feed the fruit-bearing plants to the cattle.”
--With assistance from Pratik Parija.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.
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Agriculture
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Government's Discount Sale Of Tomatoes Starts In Delhi-NCR, Patna
According to government data, the average all-India retail price of tomatoes was at Rs 116.76 per kg on Friday.
Cooperatives NCCF and NAFED on Friday started selling tomatoes at a discounted rate of Rs 90 per kg in Delhi-NCR and Patna in a bid to provide relief to consumers amid high prices of the key kitchen staple.
The National Cooperative Consumers' Federation of India and National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India are selling tomatoes on behalf of the central government.
Since last few weeks, the retail price of tomatoes has risen sharply and was ruling as high as Rs 244 per kg on Friday in several parts of the country owing to the lean season plus heavy rains.
"About 80% of 17,000 kg tomatoes were sold till evening. We will increase the reach and the quantity from tomorrow onwards in Delhi-NCR," NCCF Managing Director Anice Joseph Chandra told PTI.
The response was good and in some places, there was a queue for buying the discounted tomatoes, she said.
About 20 mobile vans were despatched in areas such as Karol Bagh, Patel Nagar, Pusa Road, CGO Complex, Nehru Place, Govind Lal Shika Marg, Adarsh Nagar, JJ Slum at Wazirpur, and Dhodhapur Shivmandir.
In Noida, three mobile vehicles were despatched to Noida Sector- 78 and Pari Chowk near Greater Noida, she added.
Chandra said, "We are selling tomatoes of 'A' grade export quality. The quantity will be increased to more than 20,000 kgs from tomorrow." From Sunday onwards, NCCF will also start selling tomatoes through 100-odd Kendra Bhandar outlets in the national capital, she said, and added, "Till the prices stabilise, the discount sale of tomatoes will continue."
NCCF is also in talks with Mother Dairy about the sale of tomatoes at discounted rates through their 400-odd Safal retail outlets in Delhi-NCR, she added.
On the other hand, NAFED also began selling tomatoes at a discounted rate of Rs 90 per kg in Patna, Bihar.
"A truckload of 20 tonne of tomatoes reached Patna today. We are selling at a government fixed rate of Rs 90 per kg there," NAFED Chairman Bijendra Singh said.
The cooperative has procured tomatoes at Rs 115 per kg from Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh. 'It is costing a total of Rs 121 per kg for transporation of tomatoes to Patna. About Rs 6 per kg extra is being incurred due to cartage and others,' he said.
The losses are borne by the central government.
As per the government data, the average all-India retail price of tomatoes was ruling at Rs 116.76 per kg on Friday, while the maximum rate was Rs 244 per kg and the minimum was Rs 40 per kg.
Among metros, tomatoes were ruling costlier at Rs 178 per kg in Delhi, followed by Rs 147 per kg in Mumbai, Rs 145 per kg in Kolkata and Rs 132 per kg in Chennai on Thursday.
Tomato prices normally shoot up during July-August and October-November periods, which are generally lean production months. Supply disruption caused due to monsoon has led to a sharp rise in the rates.
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Consumer & Retail
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The South Korean government has launched an intensive probe into liquor prices in an apparent move to tackle further price hikes for soju and beer, the two most popular alcoholic drinks in Korea, amid deepening inflation woes among consumers.
With prices of beer products expected to go up following a tax hike in April, the local liquor industry is widely expected to raise the prices of soju, too.
With concerns over the price hikes adding to the burden of consumers, the Finance Ministry is upping pressure on the whole industry as it looks into their overall business practices from production to distribution.
In a separate move, the National Tax Service reportedly held a closed-door meeting with liquor businesses to share their pricing plans and ask for support to manage liquor prices in a stable way, while the Fair Trade Commission was looking into possible antitrust issues regarding price hikes, considering the liquor industry is dominated by only a few leading players.
"I ask for the cooperation of related industries when it comes to the (price hikes) of items that people are closely associated with, such as soju," Finance Minister Choo Kyung-ho said at a parliamentary meeting on Wednesday.
“Authorities’ efforts and policies are important in stabilizing product prices, but cooperation from all areas matters, too,” he added.
The government plans to raise the liquor tax on one liter of beer by 30.5 won ($0.023) to 885.7 won in April, which exceeds last year’s increase of 20.8 won. Following the tax hike, the factory price of a 500-milliliter beer product will increase by 15.25 won.
Even though no tax hike is planned for soju yet, industry officials are concerned that the rising cost of raw materials and logistics are highly likely to lead to increased retail prices.
For instance, the price of ethanol, a key raw ingredient in soju, has been steadily rising, as a business which exclusively distributes the material raised the price by 7.8 percent last year. Bottle prices also jumped from 180 won to 220 won per bottle.
With soaring costs, businesses could raise their factory prices, which will lead to a bigger jump in the average consumer price for soju, possibly even reaching 6,000 won per bottle, which is widely regarded as a psychologically important price limit within the industry.
The upward pressure on soju prices has led to concerns for the larger public.
Soju, along with instant ramen is considered a daily necessity here, with the government closely monitoring its price changes.
Soju has long been appreciated here for its low price and accessibility. Beer is also an affordable and popular option for the public.
The average South Korean adult consumed 52.9 bottles of soju and 82.9 bottles of beer in 2022, a report released by the National Tax Service and Korea Customs Service, showed in September.
The price hike in soju and beer is expected to create a further burden on the public amid inflation woes.
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Inflation
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Rishi Sunak has said "banning things" is "not the right approach" to reaching net zero, as political debate over the costs of climate action heats up.
The prime minister said he was committed to achieving the 2050 target to curb carbon emissions, but in a "pragmatic and proportionate way".
Some Conservative MPs have called for a rethink of green policies.
Mr Sunak spoke to the BBC after a court rejected a legal challenge to the expansion of London's clean-air zone.
Friday's ruling came in the wake of last week's parliamentary by-election in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where Labour blamed its failure to take the seat from the Conservatives on concerns over the extension of the zone to outer London.
Steve Tuckwell, the new Tory MP for the constituency, opposed Labour mayor Sadiq Khan's plan to enlarge the Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez), under which owners of the most polluting vehicles have to pay a daily charge.
In a month when intense heatwaves worldwide prompted grave warnings about climate change, the backlash against Ulez has propelled net zero back to the top of the political agenda in the UK.
In an interview with BBC Wales, Mr Sunak was asked about a study that found Wrexham had taken eight domestic return flights to play matches in the National League last season.
Domestic flights have a much larger carbon footprint per kilometre of travel than any other mode of transport, according to Our World in Data.
In response to the question, Mr Sunak said: "I don't think that we're going to get to net zero by telling everybody that they can't fly anywhere or can't do this or can't do that. That's not my approach to it."
He said his government would strive to meet net zero without "unnecessarily adding costs and burdens to families, particularly at a time like now when the cost of living is a challenge for people with inflation".
Mr Sunak said there was "lots of progress to celebrate" on net zero, but added "banning things and stopping people from doing things is not the right approach".
Hot topic
The prime minister has faced calls from some Conservatives to scrap his government's policy of banning the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles from 2030.
But earlier this week, cabinet minister Michael Gove said the government remained committed to the ban, which was announced in 2020 by then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
The Tory candidate for next year's London mayoral election, Susan Hall, told the BBC she thought the 2030 ban would not be "possible".
Pressed on whether she agreed with the government's green agenda, she said: "Net zero is a good ambition. How we get there is debatable.
"We'd all have different ideas, but I have to tell you, Londoners do not want the expanded Ulez zone."
The Conservative Leader of the House of Commons, Penny Mordaunt, echoed that view in a tweet, which claimed Ulez was "clobbering" households, businesses and charities.
"We will only reach our environmental objectives by innovations that are affordable, possible and desirable," she wrote.
'Reflect' call
London's mayor, Mr Khan, has vigorously defended the expansion of Ulez, which was found to be lawful in Friday's High Court ruling.
He said the decision "allows us to press on with the difficult but vital task of cleaning up London's air and tackling the climate crisis".
The mayor's office says 90% of cars seen driving in outer London comply with Ulez standards, a figure that has been backed by the UK Statistics Authority.
But senior figures within the Labour Party have expressed concerns about the policy.
In a BBC phone-in earlier this week, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said Mr Khan should "reflect" on the Ulez expansion and the "impact it's having on people".
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves told The Sun newspaper she did not think it was the right time to "clobber" Londoners with the Ulez tax.
And on Friday, shadow health secretary Wes Streeting. MP for Ilford North in outer London, told Times Radio the result in Uxbridge had shown that "if people can't afford it, they won't vote for it".
The BBC has been told conversations between the Labour leadership and the mayor are ongoing.
In YouGov surveys, the environment consistently ranks among the most important issues facing the country.
But polling indicates that climate action that involves personal costs or changes to lifestyle is less popular. One YouGov survey found only 22% of UK respondents would stick to walking, cycling or using public transport rather than driving to cut emissions.
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Renewable Energy
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Hotel Chocolat has agreed to a £534m takeover offer from Mars, the maker of goods from Snickers bars to Pedigree dog food.
The UK specialist chocolatier retailer said the cash offer represented a 170% premium to its London share price of 139p.
Shares soared by 164% at the market open in response.
Mars has proposed to pay 375p for each Hotel Chocolat share under the terms.
They have been recommended by the board.
The company, which has a 20-year history but just seven as a London-listed firm, said the deal would allow its brand to expand internationally.
It currently has 130 stores and a partnership in Japan but lacks the substantial funds needed to make a big push overseas.
Chief executive and joint founder Angus Thirwell, who will stay with the business under the terms of the deal with Mars, said: "We know our brand resonates with consumers overseas, but operational supply chain challenges have held us back.
"By partnering with Mars, we can grow our international presence much more quickly."
He and co-founder Peter Harris both own 27% of the equity, according to LSEG data.
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.
Please refresh the page for the fullest version.
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Consumer & Retail
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A car calls at Jack Monroe’s home in Southend to take her to the photoshoot at noon. Nobody appears to be in. The driver rings the bell and calls her mobile. Nothing. 12.30pm. More ringing, more calling. Still nothing. 1pm. Her agent tries her. Then her publisher, then her former girlfriend. Still nothing. 1.30pm. We call off the shoot, and the car leaves. Everybody is beginning to panic. Where is she?At 2pm, Monroe wakes up and looks at her phone. She sees all the missed calls – and the time. Now it’s her turn to panic. She calls her agent, apologises like crazy, and makes her own way to London. Two hours later, she’s lying in a bath of pennies for the photoshoot, still apologising. “Every single one of those people trying to get in touch with me thought I’d relapsed. My AA sponsor came round and tried to get me up, but I just couldn’t wake. The first thing I did was ring my sponsor and say, ‘I promise to God I haven’t relapsed.’”She tells me she woke at 6.15am, got dressed, pottered around, let the dog out, fed the cat, did all the routine things. Then she sat on her bed to put her boots on, and the next thing she remembers is waking up at 2pm. I ask why she is so exhausted. “I’ve just been overdoing it recently. Everybody’s been saying, ‘You need to slow down.’”There is a big difference today though, she insists. “Two years ago if I’d sat down on my bed and fallen asleep and woken up hours later, I would have just gone, fuck it, got a bottle of whisky and emerged a month later.” She’s talking 19 to the dozen. How did she feel when she saw the time? “I cried. I just cried my eyes out. I thought everyone was going to be really angry. I couldn’t stop crying the whole way. The cab driver must have thought I was running away from home.”Set design: Lisa Engel at Propped Up. Hair and makeup: Alice Theobald @Arlingtonartists using Morgan’s Pomade and Guerlain. Photograph: Pål Hansen/The GuardianMonroe is the anti-poverty campaigner and food writer who kept herself going by making the most of her pennies. She showed us how to survive in the age of austerity by being frugal in the extreme – making meals for 30p, and reusing every leftover. But I’m about to find out that it wasn’t as straightforward as that.Today, few people divide the public like Jack Monroe. For many, she is a heroic anti-poverty campaigner, as evidenced by her recent awards. In October, she won the 2022 Food Hero at the Observer Food Monthly Awards, and a couple of weeks ago she was named The Grocer’s Hero of the Year. Both publications praised the way that Monroe has highlighted the fact that food inflation disproportionately affects the poor. As for her critics, they say she exaggerates her influence, makes claims she cannot back up, and is not transparent about money.Perhaps it was inevitable that she would become such a controversial figure – the Jack Monroe story seemed too good to be true. A decade ago a young woman (she now identifies as non-binary and transgender, but is happy for us to use the pronoun she) blogged about living in dire poverty and surviving by cooking meals to feed herself and her son for £10 a week. The blog went viral. Before long, Monroe had columns in newspapers, was on the telly, feted by the liberal media. She was an out-and-proud lesbian, gorgeous, gobby, tattooed, smart and funny, showing people how to get by on a pittance. Some people thought she was smug and opportunistic, and deserved to be taken down a peg or two. When they got the chance, they jumped at it. In late 2014, Monroe contributed to a thread on Twitter about why then prime minister David Cameron should resign, saying: “Because he uses stories about his dead son as misty-eyed rhetoric to legitimise selling our NHS to his friends.” Columnist Sarah Vine responded in the Daily Mail by accusing her of heartlessness and hypocrisy, telling Monroe, “You used misty-eyed rhetoric about your son to build your career.”Despite her success, Monroe continued to plead poverty. Her critics started to dig deeper. Hold on, they would harrumph, she describes herself as a working-class kid with four and a half GCSEs (the half was for taking the short course in RE rather than the full GCSE), but when she first emerged she said she was middle-class and had had a good education. They pored over datelines for inconsistencies, pointing out that she said she had spent one Christmas freezing in the dark, without heating and light, but just a few weeks earlier she had invited people to come round for cake. And on it went.More and more people began to question her veracity. And that is when the world became a more threatening place for Monroe. In 2019, she announced she was an alcoholic in recovery. Perhaps naively, she wrote an article for the Observer a week after she had stopped drinking saying that she was beating her alcoholism. She lapsed and lapsed again. Meanwhile, the attacks intensified.Nowadays, Monroe refuses to answer her door to strangers. Nor will she go out after dark by herself. When she turns up at events, she is often accompanied by security. Monroe has been stalked, strangers have appeared outside her son’s school, maps have appeared on social media detailing where she lives. Her critics say she is a fake and a liar; that she has exploited goodwill and poverty to make a fortune. There have been messages on social media encouraging her to kill herself. Not surprisingly, at times Monroe has considered taking her own life.And yet the Monroe who appeared on TV or in interviews seemed as resilient as she was irreverent. Like she does today. She giggles and goofs her way through the shoot. At the end, the photographer’s assistants sweep her clean of pennies, and she rushes off to the loo in her flesh-coloured swimsuit, chattering with cold. “Sorry I’m roaming around in a romper suit, like an overgrown baby. I had a blast, lying in the bath in the nude, covered in fucking pennies!” Well, you weren’t quite nude, I say. “No, I wasn’t, but my tit kept falling out of my swimsuit and I was fishing copper coins out of my arse crack at one point.” This is the laddish, likable Monroe we’re used to seeing. Photograph: Pål Hansen/The GuardianShe returns in a grey top and checked trousers, ready to head out into the icy Hackney night. We find an empty Thai restaurant, where Monroe takes about 10 seconds to order. “I’m starving. I’m going for spring rolls and prawn crackers and then a big curry.” Her voice is so nasal she could be wearing a nose peg.As she talks, I’m looking at her arms. One tattoo merges into another, pretty much telling the story of her life. On her right hand a note is scribbled. I wonder if it’s a reminder. But it turns out to be another tattoo – of the quote “Find what you love then let it kill you,” usually attributed to Charles Bukowski. “I found what I loved, which is whisky, and it very nearly killed me,” she says. “This time two years ago, I was a wreck. My liver was packing up, my kidneys were hurting, my skin was grey, my hair was falling out.” It’s taken a couple of false starts to get there, she says, but she insists she’s now doing well. Monroe is back with a new book to help us through the cost of living crisis, and help her make a new start. Thrifty Kitchen comes with an endorsement from Nigella Lawson (“Jack Monroe is a force for good in the world”) and more than 120 low-cost recipes, from veg-peel falafel to tinned-peach drizzle cake. It also comes with a freshly baked controversy. Thrifty Kitchen contains a number of suggestions which have been criticised for being unsafe (notably, using a sharp knife and a hammer instead of a tin opener).Earlier this week, publisher Bluebird issued a statement about “potentially risky” hacks and tips in the book, and amended text in the ebook edition. Monroe is donating a number of books to the Trussell Trust, the charity that runs a network of food banks in the UK, but the Trust has expressed concerns about the current version of the book. “The safety of people who use food banks is our priority, and food banks aim to help people access essentials such as tin openers if needed,” it said in a statement, adding that it would distribute the books to its food banks once the publisher had included an addendum. Monroe can barely open her mouth without causing a controversy these days.She has been in recovery for about 18 months, and tries to go to 12-step meetings every day. “One of the things about being in recovery is you sit down and assess your life. You do what we call a moral inventory. You go over five years at a time, and identify things you’ve done, things other people have done, and you look for the clues.” What has she discovered about herself? “From a very young age I’ve had a self-destruct button.”The young Monroe was academic and driven. Her father worked in the fire service, her mother was a nurse, and she and her three siblings grew up in Southend. She attended the local grammar school where many of the pupils came from a more well-to-do background. Monroe was determined to do better than all of them.Class, she says, has always confused her – it changes, depending on who you mix with. As a child, she didn’t realise her parents were struggling for money much of the time. At grammar school, she found other children holidayed in Tenerife or went skiing while her family took the ferry to her maternal grandmother’s two-bedroom house in Northern Ireland or went caravanning in England. She must be working class, she thought. By the time she left school, her father was in middle management at the fire service. When her mother had to retire from nursing, she started fostering. Her parents ended up fostering dozens of children, and her father won an MBE in 2007 for his services to children and families. Of course she was middle class, she told herself. Then she dated Allegra McEvedy, the chef and co-founder of Leon. McEvedy’s father was a psychiatrist and historian, she went to public school and considered herself middle class. So Monroe reassessed again. “I only realised what middle class looked like when I lived with Allegra. She’s lovely, and we’re still good friends. But I’d sit round the table with all her friends going, ‘Fuck me, I don’t belong here.’”For her first year at grammar school, she was top-of-the-class swotty. “Everyone thought I was going to get 15 A* GCSEs and be a doctor.” At 12, she crashed. “I got really depressed and had severe anorexia. I stopped trying at school. My parents said, ‘You need to start eating otherwise you’re going to die.’” She sends me a photo of herself from that period in which she looks skeletal.She struggled with anorexia until she became pregnant at the age of 21 (the father was more of a close friend than a boyfriend – although they have never lived together, they remain close and share childcare). “When I got pregnant, it was like the switch flicked and I thought, this isn’t about me any more; this baby needs feeding. I was with a friend, and we went round Asda and it was like what I imagine being on an acid trip is like. We put everything into my trolley that I hadn’t allowed myself to enjoy for years and I got ginormously fat – steak pies followed by cherry pies.”Monroe in 2013, when she started writing for the Guardian and Observer on how to eat for £10 a week. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The GuardianMonroe, now 34, left school at 16. She worked in all sorts of jobs as a teen – nightclubs, cafes, supermarkets – and from the age of 12 helped her grandfather run his guesthouse at weekends. One day, she says, her father walked into the Starbucks she was working in, told her she needed a proper job and that the fire service was having a recruitment drive. Monroe complained that she wasn’t interested, but applied nonetheless. “Something like 3,000 people applied and they recruited 12. I didn’t get in.” She says she was later told she was 13th on the list. “I suddenly wanted nothing more than to be in the fire service, whereas the day before I couldn’t have cared less.” She grins. “Really, I wanted the opportunity to turn it down.”Eventually, she got a job in the control room. “I loved every single aspect of it. I didn’t think I would, because it’s disciplined, authoritarian and male-dominated. You’ve got to polish your shoes and iron creases in your epaulettes. That structure and discipline was exactly what I needed.” The skills she learned still serve her well. “I can be very calm in a crisis. If the occasion calls for it, I can click into being very organised, methodical and analytical. And I can still iron a shirt in 30 seconds flat.”It was when she was training to transfer from the control room to become a firefighter that she became pregnant with her son, who is now 12. She found the shift work was incompatible with motherhood. Her union rep told her she would probably win at an employment tribunal because she had not been offered flexible working, but Monroe decided to walk away from her decently paid job without a fuss. “It’s ironic, because I said, ‘Don’t pursue it because I don’t want to end up in the papers.’ I didn’t want the attention.”Monroe soon found herself struggling, jobless with a baby, and housing benefit that fell £80 short of her rent. It wouldn’t have mattered if the difference was £80,000, she says, the effect was the same. She found herself in a poverty spiral. “You know if you put a frog in boiling water and gradually turn up the heat, it doesn’t realise. Well, it was like that. Just a big decline without me fully realising. I kept thinking, tomorrow I’ll get a job, tomorrow I’ll go into town and hand my CV out, and people will say, ‘Ah yes you’re exactly what we’re looking for.’” But it didn’t happen.Before long, Monroe was using a food bank. “It had taken me four or five weeks to pluck up the courage to go. The first time, one of the women looked at me and I looked at her. She went to church with my mum. She said, ‘Your mum will be devastated.’ And I said, ‘You can’t tell anyone. You haven’t seen me.’ She said, ‘Your parents will help you,’ and I said, ‘They can’t know.’”That’s what I don’t understand, I say. Why didn’t you tell your parents when they were in a position to help? “Because … ” For once, she slows down. “I was ashamed. I was ashamed that I had had a good job and I’d fucked it. I was embarrassed that I’d ended up not being able to provide for my son, and I was worried that if I told a soul, the walls would come crumbling down. Because my parents had fostered for most of my childhood, I’d grown up with this fear that if I ever had a child, he would be taken into care. That I would be an unfit mother. I’d grown up with almost 100 children revolving through my childhood home. So in my head, nearly every kid went into care because nearly every kid I came across was in the care system. I was terrified that if I told anyone, my son would be taken into care.”Monroe decided to flog pretty much everything she owned to pay for her rent. She waited until her parents were away, then put a notice in the local paper. It ended up running a story about her and, unsurprisingly, her parents found out. “They were really upset. They came round with two Sainsbury’s bags for life. It was like Christmas. All this stuff that we hadn’t had for ages. There was a box of Coco Pops! I sat there like a child and ate bowl after bowl.”Until then, Monroe had been known by her birth name, Melissa Hadjicostas (her father is of Greek-Cypriot heritage). She decided to write about her life of poverty under a pseudonym. One night with friends, she came up with Jack Monroe. Jack had been a childhood nickname (she had always been tomboyish, she says) and Monroe was after Marilyn. She didn’t want to embarrass her family by using her real name. But it was more than a pseudonym. Now felt like a good time to reinvent herself; to start afresh. In July 2012, she posted a blog entitled Hunger Hurts, in which she talked about her struggles as a broke single parent and posted recipes that could provide family meals on the cheap. It went viral. She became a weekly columnist for her local paper and wrote columns for HuffPost. Her profile was growing, but her bank balance wasn’t. She was paid a pittance for her work.In 2013, she started to write columns for the Observer and the Guardian on how to eat for £10 a week. She began to appear on TV. Although Monroe seemed fearless (stylish, extravagantly tattooed, outspoken), she was anything but. “The first time I was on TV, the makeup artist used Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour cream on my lips because it stops them sticking to your teeth, and she gave me a tube because I liked it so much. And that became something I had to do before I went on stage or TV. It meant, I’m ready now. And somewhere along the way the Elizabeth Arden got replaced with a drink.”Monroe says she has drunk recklessly since her late teens. “I worked at a nightclub, and towards the end of the shift I’d just be necking spirits. Mine-sweeping the bar. Disgusting!” When she was pregnant, she stopped, then after her son was born she couldn’t afford to drink. But now that she had a bit of cash, she was boozing again. The more successful she became, the more fearful she became, and the more she masked those fears with drink. Is it true you were drinking a bottle of whisky a day? She nods. “Yep. A bottle, a bottle and a half.” If she was making a public appearance, she drank vodka because it has no smell. Monroe was becoming a household name, and she was out of control. She had been diagnosed with autism at school and ADHD as an adult, and she was a barely functioning alcoholic. “If I did morning television, I would take a Sprite bottle or a Thermos flask and fill it with booze, and I’d sit in the car on the way drinking it. I thought I had to have a drink to give an interview, to be on camera. It became ingrained – I can’t do this without doing that.”She was also struggling with her identity. In 2015, she announced she was non-binary. She said she considered herself trans, was taking testosterone and thinking about an operation to remove her breasts (which she hasn’t had). But she still valued her female side, and just really wanted to be her own version of trans Jack, whatever that meant. Soon after her announcement, she won the Women of the Future award in the media category. Monroe said she was “surprised”, adding, “I’m not sure I’ll even be a woman in the future.” She believes this is when the personal attacks intensified on social media, with people asking why she should have qualified for the award when she didn’t consider herself a woman. Questions were asked about her finances. Why was she effectively begging for money on fundraising platforms when she was now a bestselling author, a Guardian columnist and appeared regularly on TV?Towards the end of 2015, she launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise £8,000 for her third book Cooking on a Bootstrap; she raised more than £60,000. The book wasn’t published until 2018, and by then she had asked for more money because she said she had underestimated postage costs. Meanwhile, she invited people to support her on the membership platform Patreon. For £3.50 a month (the minimum), she promises exclusive content and discount codes for her website; for £7 a month she promises all that and three limited-edition art postcards every month. There are six levels of membership. Level six costs £44 a month, and Monroe provides postcards, recipe cards, a signed copy of every book when it comes out and “a signed framed print of one of her food photographs in the first month, and a mounted photo every following month”. The problem is that in the first 19 months she provided very little content and didn’t provide the extras she had promised (she says she has since fulfilled the outstanding extras). Even loyal supporters began to feel cheated. Her haters responded with direct threats. “They sent me pictures of nooses. One of them threatened to come to do me over with a piano wire at my book signing. I came across a conversation on Twitter where two of them openly speculated about what vulnerabilities they can lean on to pressure me to top myself.”Monroe winning the 2018 Food Personality award at the Observer Food Monthly awards, with Jay Rayner and Nigella Lawson. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The GuardianWhat have they got against you? “They think I’m a fake. They think I was never really poor, my parents are millionaires, I’m a millionaire, and I made all of this up for a bit of attention.” The trolling has had a huge impact on her mentally. “But if I disappear, they’ve won, haven’t they? They’ve got what they wanted,” she says. “And there is a reason why I’m doing what I do after 10 years, because I think some people find it a bit fucking useful.” Has she ever felt like disappearing? “Oh yes. Absolutely. Either into obscurity. Or into the sea. Or off the end of a pier.”When people contacted Monroe on social media to ask how much money she had made on Patreon or what has happened to the money (she has 643 followers at the time of writing), she declined to answer and said she was being bullied. It wasn’t a good look.People say you’ve taken money, I start to say. “Yes: ‘She’s a fraud, she’s a liar, a thief, a chancer.’ I’ve heard it all.” How do you answer that – you don’t seem like a fraud to me, but it does look as if you’ve taken a lot of money. “I’ve been an absolute chaos. I’ve been very ill, physically and mentally.”I ask if the simple truth is that lots of the money was spent on alcohol. “I was drinking a lot so I was losing work left, right and centre because I was unreliable and chaotic. I was spending money.” Were you spending recklessly? “Yes!” she says instantly, with what sounds like a sense of relief. “Oh my God! You can go online and buy furniture. That’s what I used to do. I’d go online absolutely shitfaced and buy nice furniture.” What was the most excessive thing you bought? “Sideboards.” How many? “Four!” She is laughing, out of embarrassment. “One day after the next. It turned up and I didn’t like it. And then I got another and another and another.” Did you have space for them? “Course I didn’t have space.” How much did they cost? “About £300 each. Like I say, I’m a chaos.”One year she filed her tax return late. There was speculation that this was because, “I earned nigh on a million quid and didn’t want anyone knowing,” she says. “Entirely fabricated nonsense – I’m just incredibly disorganised about paperwork, and for many years found dealing with financial matters and/or government departments extremely traumatic. I’d earned around £25,000 that year.”Monroe does not deny that she has abused the goodwill of well-meaning backers. What she does insist is that she’s not a fraud, hasn’t committed fraud, and hasn’t made pots of money from those who have financially backed her. If you’d been earning £1m a year, I start to say. She finishes my sentence. “I would have spent it.” The irony is stark and uncomfortable. The guru of thriftiness was chucking away tens of thousands of pounds, given to her by the public to support her work, on items she didn’t even want, let alone need.“A couple of things happened to get things as precarious as they were. My partner and I split up a couple of weeks after I had the lease on our house. It costs me £3,300 a month to run that house, and that is on a tight budget, without turning the heating on and a single lightbulb.” She breaks down the sums for me. It’s a far cry from the stringent budgeting that made her name.There’s another thing she’s not mentioned, she says – tramadol. Six years ago, she was prescribed the highly addictive opiate, for arthritis. “I loved that. Loved it too much. It’s basically legal heroin. It’s handed out by the doctor, and it’s different if the doctor gives it to you, isn’t it?” She answers her own question. “No, it’s not fucking different. It’s an opiate. I was taking them for 18 months.”In 2021, she finally took herself to rehab. At the time she was engaged to Louisa Compton, Channel 4’s head of news. They were both saving for their wedding. She used the money she had saved to pay for her treatment, and soon after she finished rehab, they split up.When she went into rehab, she says, she didn’t admit the extent of her problem. “I wasn’t honest about what I was drinking and taking because, again, I thought somebody might take my son into care if I said I drank a bottle and a half of whisky a day and took 40 tramadol.” How many? “Forty, at the end.” In a day? “Yes, how I’m not dead is beyond me.” Was it an attempted overdose? No, she says, not in the conventional sense. “I took eight, then another eight, then another … I remember counting them the day before – 40, that was five days’ worth. I didn’t care if I died. I crashed out, fell over in the bathroom, gave myself a fractured eye socket, a broken nose. I suspected I might not wake up again.”In rehab, she took herself off social media. “It was liberating as fuck. We just sat and talked. I opted out of the world of television, trolls, the lot. And after I left I didn’t want to go back. I thought maybe this is the end of the road for me and I’ll train as a therapist. Anyway, I drifted back, didn’t I?” She sounds regretful. Photograph: Pål Hansen/The GuardianAbout 18 months later, she is still sober, albeit fragile. She hopes Thrifty Kitchen will help us get through the cost of living crisis and help her make a new start. But people are still asking questions about her character and the latest controversy hasn’t helped. There are extended blogs dedicated to exposing the inconsistencies in Monroe’s story. In Thrifty Kitchen, she acknowledges that she is more comfortable than she was when she first came to our attention. But only a few months ago she claimed that things were as bad as ever; that she was melting soap into shampoo to save money. How can both be true?Easily, she says. Freelance life is precarious. “I’ll get a good job, a good contract, but I don’t know when the next thing is so I don’t know how long I’ve got to spread that for. It’s all right now. I’m not poor.” She is still hoping to buy her first home in the near future.Her recent blog sounded like a Dickensian melodrama. Were you exaggerating about turning soap into shampoo? “No, we had nothing. But it was also because I was writing on frugal living. I signed a book deal between then and now. It wasn’t a life-changing amount but it was a situation-changing amount, which meant I could go from, ‘Fuck me, how am I ending up back here again?’ to, ‘OK, I can breathe for a bit.’”I ask if she felt bad about taking money via Patreon and not delivering on her promises when she was still drinking. To be honest, she says, it was way down on her list of priorities back then. “I was struggling to stay alive. Sending out recipe cards didn’t even register. I didn’t care when I went to bed if I didn’t wake up the next morning. There was no future planning. I didn’t have the guts to off myself, but I was drinking and using drugs in a way that was going to get me in the end.”It’s getting colder by the minute. I go to pay for our food, but the boss tell me it’s free. Why, I ask. “She does so much good for people,” he says. Monroe takes out £20, leaves it as a tip and thanks them very much. We head off to look for somewhere we can get a hot drink. That was lovely what he said about you, I say to her. Does she often get told she doesn’t need to pay? “No, it’s only the second time it’s ever happened.”We find a pub, and Monroe insists she’ll be fine here. She orders a cup of tea, then says make it two cups of tea. We talk about how people in the industry now view her. “I’ve got to accept people have been witnessing my behaviour in public for 10 years, so it’s going to take quite a long time for people to go, ‘Things are different now.’” Do you think you will be able to convince them you’re OK now? “One of the reasons I’m being so frank about the depths I plumbed is not to use it as an excuse but to go, that was then. I’m aware I was a fucking mess and I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way, and I’m trying to put that right. By the time you get to steps eight and nine of the 12-step programme, you’ve made a list of all the people you’ve harmed and you’re willing to make amends to them all. And then step nine you go and make your amends.”Have you started yet? “Oh my good God, Simon, it’s absolutely relentless. It’s like a hydra, you chop a head off something and five more have grown in its place. I’m like, can I just sum it up by going, ‘Sorry for everything, everyone, for ever?’” Thrifty Kitchen by Jack Monroe is published by Pan Macmillan at £19.99. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
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Inflation
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Updated at 1:40 pm EST on 11/28/2022
Chinese authorities on Monday appeared to be moving to frame a wave of nationwide anti-lockdown protests at the weekend as the work of "hostile foreign forces," with university students ordered to leave campus and go back to their hometowns aboard specially arranged train services, state media and a university source said on Monday.
Tsinghua University, where thousands of students gathered in protest on Sunday following a deadly apartment block fire in the Xinjiang regional capital of Urumqi on Nov. 24 that many blamed on stringent COVID-19 lockdown measures, is offering free bus services for students to all major Beijing railway stations and airports so they can return to their hometowns, the English-language Global Times newspaper reported on Monday. A protester shouts during a protest for the victims of a deadly fire as well as a protest against China’s harsh Covid-19 restrictions in Beijing on November 28, 2022. (Photo by Noel CELIS / AFP) Similar measures are under way at the University of International Business and Economics and the Chinese Academy of Sciences to "help students return home," the paper reported.
University sources in Shanghai and Sichuan told Radio Free Asia that the Ministry of Education had convened an emergency meeting of hundreds of ruling Chinese Communist Party secretaries and college principals across the country, calling on them to counter "interference by foreign forces," after spontaneous protests on city streets and university campuses in over a dozen cities over the weekend.
All colleges and universities must do a good job of "ideological work" with students and take strict measures to prevent students from "colluding" with foreign forces, or foreign forces from "interfering," the colleges were told.
"The university leaders, mostly Communist Party secretaries, from universities all around the country were called in for an emergency meeting on Sunday afternoon, and temporary control measures have been deployed, with students told to go home early," a graduate of Fudan University's journalism faculty told RFA on Monday. People hold white sheets of paper in protest over coronavirus disease (COVID-19) restrictions after a vigil for the victims of a fire in Urumqi, as outbreaks of COVID-19 continue, in Beijing, China, November 28, 2022. REUTERS/Thomas Peter "The protests were particularly loud at Tsinghua University, but campuses across the country were pretty quiet again by the early hours" of Monday morning, the person said. "A lot of people here in Shanghai took part spontaneously yesterday." But social media videos showed protests flared in other cities on Monday, including Hangzhou and Kunming. China's response moved up a gear on Monday as social media posts showed more police arrests, barricades, and increased patrols on the streets. In Shanghai, police were filmed checking and deleting images of protests from people's phones. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian on Monday hit out at "forces with ulterior motives who linked the fire with disease control and prevention," while state news agency Xinhua said in an indirect reference to the protests that the zero-COVID policy is facing "unprecedented pressure," and called for its "unswerving" implementation. Blank sheets of paper In Beijing's Liangmaqiao area, protesters who held up blank sheets of paper to protest curbs on freedom of expression didn't disperse until the early hours of Monday, according to video footage posted by a Twitter user with the handle "Ms. Li is not your teacher." In one video clip, students said they had been warned by university officials that there were "anti-China foreign forces" at work in the protests, prompting some people to shout out in response: "When you say foreign forces, are you talking about Marx and Engels?" in a reference to two of the pillars of Communist Party ideology. "Was the fire in Xinjiang set by foreign forces? Was the Guizhou [quarantine] bus overturned by foreign forces?” shouts one voice. "We can’t even access the internet! How is that to do with foreign forces? The only forces stopping us from gathering come from within our own territory!" Protesters march along a street during a rally for the victims of a deadly fire as well as a protest against China's harsh Covid-19 restrictions in Beijing on November 28, 2022. (Photo by Noel CELIS / AFP) Clips showed a strong police presence, with officers starting to detain people in the middle of the night, and "kettling" the crowd into smaller sections to force them to leave. The Global Times said in a separate article, citing pro-government commentators, that "due to ideological differences, it has become almost an instinct of Western countries and media to criticize communist governments with an aim to subvert the latter with color revolutions." "Some forces in the U.S. and other Western countries can't accept that China has the capacity to adjust its policy in a more flexible way and contain the virus," it quoted "observers" as saying. In another article, the paper said the Health Ministry had dispatched working groups to ensure local governments aren't using harsher restrictions than required by the zero-COVID policy, "to rectify some problems" that have emerged with disease control and prevention efforts. ‘The whole thing could explode’ A retired government official surnamed Li currently living in Beijing said the authorities are afraid students will start a much more coordinated movement. "There is a huge sense of public grievance right now, and the Tsinghua University students are up in arms," Li said. "Students are protesting, and scholars are already mobilizing." "Hundreds of students at Tsinghua held up signs calling for freedom, and we saw similar signs on Urumqi Road in Shanghai and also in Shenzhen," Li said. "It's happening everywhere, and students from all over the country [are likely to connect their protests], while residential communities are rising up too." "If they mishandle this, the whole thing could explode, because regular people can't carry on like this; they may as well fight," Li said. In Tibet, no protests were reported over the weekend, and authorities in Xining asked residents not to step out of their houses. ‘The right to breathe’ Feng Han, a retired scholar from Guizhou University who lived through the student movement of 1989, said the struggle is an existential one, rather than an ideological one. "These [protests] are about the right to breathe, to eat, to live, to enjoy human rights and freedom, not PCR tests," Feng said. "In that sense, they are anti-authoritarian, anti-repression and anti-dictatorship." "[Zero-COVID] has been going on for three years, and a lot of people can't even get food to eat [during lockdowns]," Feng said. "If people can't carry on a basic existence, can't work or live their lives in a normal manner, then there are going to be problems." People gather for a vigil and hold white sheets of paper in protest over coronavirus disease (COVID-19) restrictions, during a commemoration of the victims of a fire in Urumqi, as outbreaks of COVID-19 continue, in Beijing, China, November 27, 2022. REUTERS/Thomas Hong Kong current affairs commentator Johnny Lau said the protests have yet to become nationwide in focus. "We're not at the point of nationwide protests yet, and it remains to be seen if the authorities will make adjustments before that critical point is reached," Lau told RFA. "If the government acts in a timely manner, that critical point won't be reached soon ... These are sporadic protests that are making the government nervous," he said. Beijing-based political commentator Si Ling said the government is unlikely to ease back on the zero-COVID policy, however. "If the Chinese government announces the end of zero-COVID just because of popular protest, then it will give the impression that democratic protests are effective in influencing its decision-making," Si told RFA. "That will spark further protests from the public ... so they can't afford to give any breathing room to street protests and demonstrations whatsoever," he said. "It will also look as if the entire zero-COVID policy was totally wrong, and a waste of money and people." "That is something that Xi Jinping will never allow, because for him, the most important thing is to preserve his ... authority, continuity and effectiveness within the central leadership system," Si said. People hold white sheets of paper in protest over coronavirus disease (COVID-19) restrictions, after a vigil for the victims of a fire in Urumqi, as outbreaks of COVID-19 continue, in Beijing, China, November 27, 2022. REUTERS/Thomas Peter Former 1989 student leader Wang Dan said a strategic lull in protests would be a good thing. "The struggle is long-term, and there must be a rhythm," Wang told RFA. "Based on our experience back then, we didn't do a good job at this point. We should have advanced and then retreated, so as to advance again another time." "Don't try to tear everything down all at once like we did in 1989." Updates to add protests Monday in Hangzhou and Kunming, social media posts of police checking phones for protest images, residents in Tibet asked not to step out of their houses.
Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
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Asia Business & Economics
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"Being able to grab a fresh lip gloss, a sketch pad and a Pepsi Max all in the same place, that's definitely something I'm going to miss," says Jaye.
The 19-year-old, whose full name we are not using, doesn't have a lot of spare cash and has found Wilko handy for dog treats, bleach and emulsion paint too.
Today could be her last visit though. Her local branch in Horsham, Sussex closes its doors on Sunday, along with the last Wilko outlets around the country and Jaye is "gutted" at the news.
She has swung by for a final pack of sandpaper sheets she's going to use to make cosplay costumes.
Most of the shelves are bare now and what is left is marked down.
Another customer called Mary is also here, with her husband and one-year-old daughter, to pick up blinds at bargain prices.
"We're heartbroken," she says. "We were really hoping someone would buy them out and keep it going, you know?"
They live in a nearby village and used to come in to Wilko regularly to buy craft materials and treat her five-year-old to pick'n'mix.
"I have happy memories of doing that as a child," she adds. "I think it's nice for them to come and choose their own things, rather than someone delivering a parcel to the door."
But the order-online, have-it-delivered business model is here to stay. That, and fierce competition from rivals, has done for Wilko, just as it did for Woolworths over a decade ago.
There was a wringing of hands back then too, when that stalwart of the High Street went. And Wilko took over many of Woolworths' old shops. Now a similar fondness for Wilko has sneaked up and ambushed us all over again.
Other shoppers describe its demise as "tragic" and "awful". The strength of affection can seem strange given the chain sold the most mundane, practical items from sink drainers to cat litter.
"It managed to create a very warm brand personality, which tends to contribute to a very loyal consumer-brand relationship," says consumer psychologist Kate Nightingale.
"As Wilko's brand is associated with home and pets products predominantly, we are already dealing with relationships infused with very heightened emotions," she says.
"These emotions and their intensity is easily transferred into the relationship we have with the brand - it makes a perfect recipe for nostalgia [and a] need to fill in that gap left by a sense of loss."
"Without being snobby, Poundland has a stigma attached that Wilko doesn't," says Abby, who is shopping with her wife Steph.
Wilko's appeal was value for money and knowing you would find what you needed, they say.
"We had friends around the other night, realised we didn't have enough wine glasses and managed to pick up a couple of sets for next-to-nothing," Steph says.
The chain going under feels like a broader sign that things are "falling apart", says Abby.
"It was the same with Woolworths. It had been going for so long that when it collapses it's a bit like - oh right, so this is the way we're going. There won't be any of the original High Street shops there used to be."
Wilko was founded in 1930 when JK Wilkinson opened his first store in Leicester. It stayed open throughout World War Two and expanded first across the Midlands then nationally. By the 1990s it had become one of Britain's fastest-growing retailers.
In 2012, Wilkinson began rebranding its stores as Wilko, and by 2014, most branches had emblazoned the new name on their storefronts.
Now its staff in Leicester are particularly sad to see it go.
Jan Patel was 18 when she started working for Wilko. Now, at 64, she is seeing her last day at the Leicester Lee Circle store. She says it is a "tough day".
She and her colleague David Middleton, who is now 61 and started work with Wilko in 1979, have had hugs and goodbyes from fond customers.
Jan reminisces about working with Wilko's founder, JK Wilkinson.
"He pulled us out of recession in the 80s, he came into the store and has shown us how to trade aggressively. Cheap and cheerful was Wilko's motto - and family. Family meant the world. This Wilko family looked after us, and in return we loved working here," Jan told the BBC.
She says the company took her and her colleagues on training courses to learn how to to do DIY, such as painting and wallpapering.
"It's been a fabulous ride," says Dan who, like Jan, is now going to retire.
Some of the chain's 12,500 staff - but not all - will find new jobs with B&M and Poundland.
And customers may catch a glimpse again of the Wilko brand online at least, after it was bought by The Range.
Kate Hardcastle, consumer specialist at Insight with Passion, says many retailers have already "eased their way into Wilko's territory".
"From Poundland to Primark, Aldi, Lidl and more, as value retailers widened the offer, Wilko was being gradually taken off the consideration list - especially by younger consumers," she says.
Younger people were willing to "trade some savings for speed of delivery and direct to door", she adds.
Ash, a 23-year-old who sings and plays guitar in a band at weddings, has been buying essentials at Wilko - shampoo, face wash, deodorant. But unlike Jaye he doesn't think he'll really miss it when it's gone.
"I will probably forget about it in a few weeks to be honest," he says.
"For my generation I don't think they'll really mind that much. We've got other options."
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Consumer & Retail
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Australia Names Michele Bullock As First Female RBA Governor
Bullock, 60, was viewed as a continuity candidate and most economists expect few policy implications from her appointment.
(Bloomberg) -- Australia’s treasurer announced that Michele Bullock will be the new Reserve Bank governor when incumbent Philip Lowe’s term expires in September, becoming the first woman to helm the nation’s central bank.
“Bullock is the right person to lead the RBA into the future and ensure we have the world’s best and most effective central bank,” Jim Chalmers told reporters in Canberra on Friday. Her seven-year term will begin on Sept. 18.
As deputy governor, Bullock, 60, was viewed as a continuity candidate and most economists expect few policy implications from her appointment. She will confront a challenging combination of running policy at a time of elevated inflation, while implementing a wide-ranging reform at the central bank.
“The treasurer has made a first-rate appointment. I congratulate Michele,” Lowe said in a statement. “The Reserve Bank is in very good hands as it deals with the current inflation challenge and implementing the recommendations of the review of the RBA.”
In a brief televised meeting at Parliament House with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Chalmers, Bullock said she was honored to be appointed, adding that a big part of her new role will be “leading the bank through change.”
Bullock took on the No. 2 position in April last year, just a month before the RBA began its most aggressive policy tightening cycle in more than 30 years. She has worked at the RBA since 1985, joining as an intern, and has a master’s degree from the London School of Economics.
Before becoming deputy governor, she oversaw note issuance and payment settlements, fields she’s deeply interested in.
“Michele is absolutely outstanding, a very good leader,” said Jonathan Kearns, a former senior RBA official. “She is experienced in large parts of the bank. She is very good at picking things up quickly and drawing on the expertise of those around her.”
“It will be important to appoint a deputy governor quickly to replace Michele and ideally it should be someone who can complement her on the monetary policy side of things. Looking internally, Chris Kent will be the best candidate.”
A key impediment to Bullock taking the top job had been seen as her having been part of the old culture that Chalmers sought to overhaul following a review of the bank. Some economists had argued that she or any other internal candidate wouldn’t be well placed to drive that reform.
Chalmers said Friday that Bullock is committed to implementing the recommendations of the review.
‘Bit More Dovish’
Diana Mousina, deputy chief economist at AMP Capital Markets, told Bloomberg TV that the switch to Bullock is unlikely to have major policy implications.
“Michele Bullock is probably a little bit more dovish than Philip Lowe based on some speeches over the past year,” she said. “But overall the messaging around the need to get inflation down and the risks of higher interest rates is still intact from here.”
The Australian dollar was little changed after the announcement, while bond yields held their earlier losses.
Australia joins a club of fewer than two dozen central banks globally that have a female chief. A study earlier this year suggested that at the current rate of progress, it would take over a century for there to be an equal number of women and men at the helm of monetary authorities and major financial institutions.
Lowe’s removal has looked an increasing formality as Chalmers held off on an announcement until July, seeking to limit the time where there would be both an incumbent governor and a successor in the wings. His term ends Sept. 17.
It comes after an independent review of the RBA recommended major changes at the institution, including setting up a separate policy committee, fewer rate meetings and press conferences after each decision. That followed criticism of Lowe’s forward guidance during Covid and confusion over communications.
The RBA last week paused interest-rate increases for just the second time in a 15-month tightening cycle, during which it has lifted borrowing costs by 4 percentage points. The aggressive campaign to tackle inflation has drawn criticism from Australia’s highly-leveraged households and some lawmakers.
What Bloomberg Economics Says...
“Michele Bullock’s experience as deputy governor means she will bring a degree of continuity to monetary policy. We see little implication for the path of policy and are sticking to our view for the RBA to deliver a final hike at the Aug. 1 meeting”
— James McIntyre, economist.
For the full note, click here
Lowe, 61, was accused of letting inflation undershoot the RBA’s 2-3% target before Covid, then of leaving interest rates too low for too long during the pandemic, having guided that they were unlikely to rise before 2024.
Instead, inflation surged and the RBA began hiking in May 2022. Compounding that have been poor communications that left investors and traders confused over the bank’s reaction function and policy intentions.
The backlash intensified earlier this year following a media report that Lowe attended a closed-door briefing with rate traders on Feb. 9 — despite not having made a public appearance to explain a hawkish shift at a policy meeting two days earlier.
Lowe had “become a little bit more of a polarizing figure than previous central bank governors,” said Alex Joiner, chief economist at IFM Investors Ltd.. “But really, I think he did a very good job through the pandemic, but obviously he has been cast in the media for defining forward guidance that obviously didn’t take place.”
--With assistance from Georgina McKay, Ben Westcott, Zoe Schneeweiss and Matthew Burgess.
(Adds map, comments from economists.)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
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Banking & Finance
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NEW YORK (AP) — Ivanka Trump began testifying Wednesday in the the civil fraud trial that is publicly probing the Trump family business, making an appearance she tried to prevent.
Ex-President Donald Trump’s elder daughter, who has been in his inner circle in both business and politics, rounds out a major stretch in the trial. Her father gave caustic testimony on Monday, and her brothers Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. testified last week.
WATCH: How Trump sees a 2nd term as a chance to promote loyalists and punish critics
Even-tempered in her testimony, unlike her father, Ivanka Trump answered questions about her former role in the family’s Trump Organization. Among other things, she was the point person in establishing a lending relationship with Deutsche Bank’s private wealth management arm, which eventually extended the company hundreds of millions of dollars in loans.
She testified that her husband, Jared Kushner, introduced her to a banker as the Trumps were seeking financing to buy and overhaul the Doral golf resort near Miami.
“I was excited,” she testified, to show the banker “an opportunity that we were very passionate about. … The reason we bought the property was because we believed in its potential to be something better than it was.”
Unlike her father and brothers, Ivanka Trump is no longer a defendant in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit. It alleges that Donald Trump’s asset values were fraudulently pumped up for years on financial statements that helped him get loans and insurance.
The non-jury trial will decide allegations of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records — but Judge Arthur Engoron already has resolved the lawsuit’s top claim by ruling that Trump engaged in fraud. That decision came with provisions that could strip the ex-president of oversight of such marquee properties as Trump Tower, though an appeals court is allowing him continued control of his holdings, at least for now.
James, a Democrat, is seeking over $300 million in penalties and a ban on Trump doing business in New York.
The ex-president and Republican 2024 front-runner denies any wrongdoing, as do the other defendants. He insisted in court Monday that his financial statements greatly underestimated his net worth, that any discrepancies were minor, that a disclaimer absolved him of liability and that “this case is a disgrace.”
Ivanka Trump was an executive vice president at the Trump Organization before becoming an unpaid senior adviser in her father’s White House. Like her brothers, who are still Trump Organization EVPs, she has professed minimal knowledge of their father’s annual financial statements.
“I don’t, specifically, know what was prepared on his behalf for him as a person, separate and distinct from the organization and the properties that I was working on,” she said during sworn questioning for the investigation that eventually led to the lawsuit. She said she didn’t know who prepared the statements or how the documents were compiled.
As a Trump Organization executive, Ivanka Trump dealt with securing a loan and a lease for a Washington hotel and financing for Doral in Florida and a hotel and condo skyscraper in Chicago, according to court filings.
As her father’s inauguration neared, she announced in January 2017 that she was stepping away from her Trump Organization job. After her time in the administration, she moved to Florida.
An appeals court dismissed her as a defendant in the lawsuit in June, saying the claims against her were too old.
Her attorneys contended that she shouldn’t have to testify. They said the state was just trying to harass the family by dragging her into court.
The attorney general’s office argued that her testimony would be relevant, saying she was involved in some events discussed in the case and remains financially and professionally entwined with the Trump Organization and its leaders. The company has bought insurance for her and her businesses, managed her household staff and credit card bills, rented out her apartment and paid her legal fees, according to the state’s court papers.
Engoron and, later, an appeals court ruled that she had to testify.
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In less than three decades, the UK must reach net zero to avoid the worst impacts of climate crisis for our economy and national security. We’re already halfway there, having almost halved our emissions since 1990. But to achieve this momentous goal, we must now build support for the individual policies required, while preserving the cross-party consensus on the need to act. Conservatives want to protect our planet, but that doesn’t mean they’ll agree on every policy campaigners propose to get there. The public wants the debate to focus on how, not if, we reach carbon neutrality.
There is a conservative route to net zero. It’s not a contradiction in terms. The UK has a long and rich history of conservative environmentalism. In 1989, Margaret Thatcher became the first world leader to raise the spectre of climate change in a global context. Another Conservative prime minister, Theresa May, fired the starting gun on the race to net zero by 2050, enshrining the target in law.
Overwhelmingly, Conservative voters back environmental action. A recent poll revealed that 73% back the net zero target – a higher proportion than among voters overall. YouGov’s tracker poll consistently shows they rank the environment as the fourth most important issue facing the country. Nearly nine in 10 support solar power and offshore wind. Almost two-thirds think the ban on onshore wind in England must end.
Some Conservatives sceptical of net zero and the severity of climate change view environmental action as an electoral liability. They’re far from the majority, but they are an increasingly loud group. They’ve drawn the wrong conclusions from the Uxbridge byelection, where the Conservatives won on an anti-ultra-low emission zone (Ulez), not anti-environment, ticket. They’ve misunderstood cases of local backlash to poorly implemented low-traffic neighbourhoods. And they’ve misread the public’s rejection of Just Stop Oil’s divisive stunts as a wider rebuff of climate action.
Like all voters, Conservatives want fair, affordable environmental policies that maximise benefits while limiting direct costs. Two-thirds of Conservative voters support green policies that don’t put the costs on ordinary people, while only 17% back them if they do result in costs. But polling shows the same is true of other policy priorities, such as health and crime. Politicians should ignore the extremes of disruptive protesters and climate sceptics who often dominate the media debate, and instead respond to people’s concern about climate crisis in a way that minimises the costs.
On the right, sceptics can’t undo the consensus around climate change so instead target specific policies where the public case still needs to be won, such as the rollout of electric cars and heat pumps. We’ll need these two technologies to reach net zero, but the prices of both have yet to fall sufficiently. The answer isn’t to ditch them, but to use the market to make them the cheapest and best options. Bold government targets, early support through funding for research and development, subsidies, tax breaks and light regulation can spur businesses to innovate and deploy clean technologies.
Just as we’ve scaled up renewables to provide more than 40% of our electricity today while making it the cheapest new energy source available, we need to do the same for electric vehicles and heat pumps. That’s why the zero-emission vehicle mandate and government grants to support low-carbon heating are so important.
Similarly, there needs to be a coherent Conservative approach to transport. Cars are the only realistic transport option in most parts of the country, which is why the electric vehicle transition is the essential policy for transport decarbonisation. Our cities and towns shouldn’t be anti-car, but also shouldn’t prioritise them above everything else, given the limits on road space and the impacts on communities and the environment.
Instead, we need to focus on expanding people’s transport choices. Politicians should give people cheaper, greener travel methods, whether by improving public transport, carefully consulting on active travel infrastructure, or enabling innovative solutions like e-scooters. Most will choose them when provided, allowing those who need to drive to continue to do so.
Conservative voters want to see environmental action. It needn’t be at odds with personal freedom or at great cost to the individual. There will be trade-offs, which will initially require a more active state than some are comfortable with. But they pale in comparison to the costs and demand for government intervention unchecked climate change would bring.
Sam Hall is the director of the Conservative Environment Network
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Renewable Energy
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Supermarket food prices have increased by more than 25% over the past two years according to the consumer group Which?, with the size of the rise reinforcing the case for retailers to be forced to display detailed price information on loyalty card offers and promotions so shoppers can find the best deal.
Which? said the government needed to close loopholes that result in “confusing and inconsistent” pricing practices of some supermarkets. Last month it reported Tesco to the UK’s competition watchdog because it does not provide unit prices – such as the price for each 100g or 100ml – for the loyalty card offers it uses as a sales tactic to pull in shoppers.
The absence of unit prices made it harder for Tesco shoppers to compare value for money between different sized packages, bottles and brands, Which? said. Its rival Sainsbury’s does this with its Nectar deals.
“Two years of relentlessly soaring food prices have had a devastating impact on households,” said Sue Davies, the Which? head of food policy. “This isn’t helped by the confusing and inconsistent pricing practices used by some supermarkets, which make it incredibly difficult to work out how to find the best value products.”
On Wednesday the Office for National Statistics (ONS) is due to publish inflation data for June, which is expected to show the headline rate eased to 8.2% from 8.7% in May – still well above the Bank of England’s 2% target.
The latest Which? tracker, based on the prices of 25,000 products across eight supermarkets, found that food and drink inflation was running at 15.4% in the 12 months to June, down from 16.5% in May. The highest inflation reading was for Lidl, at 21.4%, followed by Aldi on 19.3%.
The discounters also fared worst on a two-year measure with Aldi and Lidl recording inflation of about 35%. The average across all eight big chains is 25.8%.
However, analysts said the inflation readings for the discounters did not take into account their lower starting prices, and pointed to data from the grocery analyst Kantar that showed the average unit price had gone up 19p at Aldi compared with the market average of 22p.
Helen Dickinson, the chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, said retailers had worked hard to absorb cost increases during a period of “sky-high” inflation that had seen energy, labour, commodity, farm, and transport costs all rise significantly.
“In recent weeks we have seen the prices of some key staples, such as butter and bread, begin to fall, as fierce competition between retailers continues to help customers get the best value in their weekly shop,” she said.
The call for action on unit pricing comes before Thursday’s Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) update on its investigation into the issue. It is due to share the latest on a separate review of grocery pricing, amid accusations of greedflation in the food industry.
At the start of this year the CMA announced it would revisit unit pricing. It conducted a similar investigation in 2015 when it recommended the government review and clarify the legal requirements, but no concrete action followed.
In a new Which? study on the topic Davies said it found that the way unit pricing was provided could often be confusing. This was because the rules – called the price marking order – at nearly 20 years old were out of date and retailers interpreted them in different ways, she suggested.
“Guidance should be urgently updated to make it clear how unit pricing should be provided for different promotions, including that it should be provided for loyalty card pricing,” Davies said. “Clear and transparent pricing is essential as people try to deal with the cost of living crisis.”
After the Which? criticism, in a recent blog post the Tesco UK chief executive, Jason Tarry, said: “We are going to bring forward some long-planned work to our Clubcard prices to make it simpler for our customers to see by weight or volume just how competitive those offers are, and will introduce unit pricing for simple promotions by early next year.”
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Inflation
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Foreigners who temporarily move to the UK will have to pay an extra £400 a year towards health services to help fund the big rise in public sector wages announced by Rishi Sunak.
The Prime Minister said that his decision to give a million public sector workers between 5 and 7 per cent pay increases would not be funded by borrowing or raising taxes, as it would fuel inflation.
Instead, Mr Sunak said a combination of higher fees for foreigners hoping to move to the UK and squeezes in existing government department budgets would cover the cost of pay rises for teachers, junior doctors, consultants, dentists, police and prison officers, senior civil servants and military personnel.
Mr Sunak declined to specify where those savings would be found in budgets.
Around £1 billion of the £2 billion extra funding needed to cover the pay rises this year will come from increasing two fees paid by foreigners when they move to the UK.
One is known as the “immigration health surcharge”. Most foreigners hoping to temporarily live in the UK for more than six months have to pay an annual fee to fund the NHS.
That figure has been £624 per year, but it will now rise to £1,035 a year – a 66 per cent jump. For foreign students living in the UK, the surcharge will rise from £470 to £776.
Secondly, there will be increases in foreign visa fees.
More than £1bn raised
Mr Sunak explained his approach when answering questions at a press conference about the pay deal in Downing Street.
“What we have done are two things to find this money,” he said.
“The first is we’re going to increase the charges that we have for migrants who are coming to this country when they apply for visas.
“And indeed, something called the immigration health surcharge, which is the levy that they pay to access the NHS.
“So all of those fees are going to go up and that will raise over £1 billion.”
The decision allows the money to be raised from people not currently living in the UK. It could also deter some foreigners from applying to move to the UK, given the steep increase in fees.
However, even with the funds raised from the changes, significant savings on departmental budgets will have to be found elsewhere to fund the public sector pay rise.
A further £1 billion needs to be found this year, beyond the fee changes, and a further £2 billion next year, according to internal Downing Street estimates.
No detailed breakdown of where that money is coming from was published by the Government.
Sources in different departments did give an indication. Some stressed that much of the money would be found from “underspends”, which are funds that did not get used up for various reasons.
The Ministry of Defence pay rises are partly being funded by a Civil Service recruitment freeze, which had already been announced.
New funding was announced for the schools budget to cover the teachers’ pay rise, but savings are being found elsewhere – including via underspends, such as on tutoring.
The National Education Union (NEU) said it has received assurances that the funding boost of around £1 billion for schools will not come from cuts to front-line education services, including Special Educational Needs funding, schools’ capital, Maintained Nursery or 16-19 funding provision.
Home Office sources said no decision had been taken on how the pay award would be funded, but it is expected the department could scale back funding for specific initiatives or grants rather than core funding.
However, the big fear will be how far the Home Office leans on police forces to come up with savings and the council precept.
The Prime Minister was pressed by The Telegraph to specify where the savings would be found.
Mr Sunak said: “It’s not one big thing, it’s just the painstaking work of going through every department’s budget line-by-line, finding every little bit of saving or where we’re not spending as much as we thought, where we can shift that to public sector pay so our public sector workers are rewarded.
“But what I will say is that will mean choices, right? And I’m not shying away from that, because that’s the right thing to do.”
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Inflation
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FIRST ON FOX: A prominent left-wing dark money nonprofit poured nearly $150 million in secret cash into progressive groups and causes in 2022, tax forms obtained by Fox News Digital show.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund, which is one of several nonprofits managed by the Washington, D.C.-based Arabella Advisors consulting firm, hauled in $189.9 million in contributions from anonymous donors last year, according to their newest documents.
During this time, the nonprofit passed $148.7 million in grants to Democrat-aligned groups and endeavors, including large sums to organizations that work on voter engagement and environmental initiatives. The nonprofit also pushed large amounts of cash into groups located in pivotal swing states.
"These new documents show yet again that the Sixteen Thirty Fund was the most prolific backer of radical candidates and causes in the 2022 midterm election cycle," Caitlin Sutherland, the executive director of Americans for Public Trust, told Fox News Digital.
"It also appears that foreign national Hansjorg Wyss remains one of their largest single donors, driving a dump truck of cash through the foreign influence loophole and into battleground states across the country," Sutherland said. "This foreshadows the massive foreign-funded leftwing dark money operation we expect will play an outsized role in supporting liberal candidates and causes in 2024."
According to the Sixteen Thirty Fund's tax forms, the nonprofit received more than $10 million from at least five different donors, with one individual providing the group with a staggering $34.5 million contribution.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund, in turn, took the anonymous cash and funneled vast sums to groups nationwide. One of its most significant grants, for $20 million, went to America Votes, which describes itself as "the coordination hub for the progressive community."
America Votes focuses on "voter education, vote by mail programs to defend our democracy and build on high levels of energy and engagement, especially in communities of color and among young people," its website states.
The tax forms further show that the nonprofit also sent $5 million to the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental group committed to pushing green policies and the U.S. economy away from fossil fuels.
The high-powered eco group has exhibited its influence in the Biden administration, where it has influenced policymaking decisions since early 2021.
Fox News Digital previously reported that the group has privately consulted with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan, according to internal calendar entries. Between August 2021 and June, the group's president, Gene Karpinski, also visited the White House at least eight times, according to visitor logs.
The Sixteen Thiry Fund also handed out millions of dollars to groups such as the Run for Something Action Fund, which recruits young progressives to run for office; the Reproductive Freedom for All Committee, which opposes restrictions on abortion; Every Eligible American, a voter turnout organization; and the Secure Elections Project.
Millions more went into several groups in key swing states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The $150 million the Sixteen Thirty Fund handed out in grants throughout 2022 is a significant uptick over the $107 million it disbursed the year before.
Arabella Advisors, meanwhile, remained the Sixteen Thirty Fund's top contractor. According to the tax forms, the nonprofit paid Arabella $4.26 million for administrative and operational support.
In addition to the Sixteen Thirty Fund, Arabella Advisors manages several other nonprofits that host dozens of liberal groups, including one that works with the Biden administration on policy. Together, the groups make up America's most prominent dark money network.
The network's web of groups also sits under the New Venture Fund, Windward Fund and Hopewell Fund. A fifth, the North Fund, has also been linked to the network. Each fund is a fiscal sponsor to other nonprofits by providing their tax and legal status to those housed beneath them.
This configuration allows the fiscally-sponsored groups to avoid filing tax records to the IRS, effectively masking their financials and other information. The Arabella-managed nonprofits also do not reveal donor information on their own tax forms, keeping the public in the dark to the full extent of who uses the network as a conduit to fund left-wing initiatives.
In recent years, billions of dollars have flowed through the network to progressive causes nationwide.
Financiers such as Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss and George Soros have funneled cash to groups in the network. The Democracy Alliance, the left's premiere big-money secretive donor club, has also included its funds in past confidential documents regarding where to wire money for specific initiatives.
Funds in the nexus have also passed money to entities with links to Democratic leadership in the past.
In 2020, the Sixteen Thirty Fund gave $750,000 to House Majority Forward, a dark money nonprofit affiliated with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, tax forms show. That same year, the Sixteen Thirty Fund directed $500,000 to the Sen. Chuck Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
Fox News Digital's Thomas Catenacci contributed to this report.
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Nonprofit, Charities, & Fundraising
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Binance.US Set To Be Cut Off From Banking System After SEC Lawsuit
Binance.US in the email to customers said the SEC’s allegations are “unjustified” and that “we will continue to vigorously defend ourselves.”
(Bloomberg) -- Binance.US is being cut off from its banking partners in the fallout from a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit against the cryptocurrency exchange.
In an email to customers, the platform said its payment and banking partners have signaled an intent to pause US dollar fiat channels as early as June 13.
That means “our ability to accept USD fiat deposits and process USD fiat withdrawals will be impacted,” the company said, while adding that it maintains 1:1 reserves for all customer assets.
Binance.US, which tweeted the email, said it’s “suspending USD deposits and recurring buy orders today” and transitioning to a “crypto-only exchange.”
In a lawsuit Monday, the SEC accused Binance and its founder Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao of mishandling customer funds, misleading investors and regulators, and breaking securities rules. The agency subsequently said it’s seeking to freeze Binance.US’s assets and protect customer funds, including through the repatriation of client investments held abroad.
Binance.US in the email to customers said the SEC’s allegations are “unjustified” and that “we will continue to vigorously defend ourselves.”
The platform said it will delist trading pairs involving the US dollar starting next week but continue to support pairs involving stablecoins — tokens that are supposed to hold a constant value, typically $1.
Richard Galvin, co-founder at Digital Asset Capital Management, said pricing differentials were emerging between Binance.US and Binance.com as US customers “look to rapidly sell and remove US dollars from the exchange.”
Something similar happened in late May at Binance Australia when the platform was about to be cut off from a key Australian dollar payment route, he said.
BNB, a token native to Binance, fell as much as 4.4% on Friday, extending a recent period of underperformance of wider digital-asset markets. Bitcoin and Ether, the top two coins, shed about 1% as of 12:40 p.m. in Singapore.
BNB has sunk some 17% this week, a retreat that compares with a roughly 4% drop in a gauge of the 100 largest digital tokens over the same period.
The SEC this week widened its crackdown on crypto with the action against Binance followed later by a lawsuit targeting Coinbase Global Inc. for running an illegal exchange. Coinbase has rebutted the SEC’s claims and said it’s prepared to take the legal fight all the way to the Supreme Court.
(Updates with comment from fund manager in the eighth paragraph.)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
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Crypto Trading & Speculation
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The Treasury Department will provide an update on its debt issuance plans on November 1.
Some Wall Street banks have raised their forecasts for the amount of Treasurys to be auctioned.
Meanwhile, bond market investors have shown signs of lackluster demand for the rising supply of debt.
Investors are focused on the Treasury Department's upcoming quarterly refunding statement as Wall Street braces for another dose of sticker shock on US debt.
Set to be released on November 1, the quarterly update will lay out the department's bond issuance plans for the next three months. A prior report with upward revisions raised concerns about the bond market's appetite for additional Treasurys, sending yields higher and contributing to a historic price collapse.
So the upcoming release is getting heightened market attention. In recent weeks, investor demand for Treasurys has shown signs of weakness just as the government's ballooning deficits are flooding the market with more debt.
After raising auction estimates in August, the department has already hinted that the Treasury supply will need to keep increasing.
"Further gradual increases in coupon auctions sizes will likely be necessary in future quarters," Josh Frost, assistant Treasury secretary for financial markets, said in September, referring to longer-dated bonds.
It's an outlook shared by Wall Street, and institutions are raising their expectations on the size of US debt issuance.
Bank of America revised its deficit expectations higher for coming years, noting that US overspending will grow to $2 trillion by fiscal year 2026 from $1.7 trillion in 2023. A major factor driving this upswing will be higher interest expenses on US borrowing, forcing the Treasury to keep issuing more bonds.
BofA expects auction sizes to increase in November, followed by moderate expansions through the next half year. Assuming the Federal Reserve's quantitative tightening ends in June 2024, analysts estimated debt supply during 2024 will be around $1.34 trillion in 10-year equivalents, or $90 billion higher than previously forecasted.
JPMorgan also projected higher Treasury issuance ahead, noting that fiscal 2023's deficit surpassed its estimates by $100 billion. The bank expects the Fed's QT to continue through 2024, creating a $720 billion financing gap. As current auction sizes cannot meet this figure, JPMorgan sees a repeat of August's auction increase.
However, Morgan Stanley held back expectations of a large increase, saying markets may be in for a November surprise.
"The Treasury might decide to increase coupons at a lower pace than what its 'regular and predictable' strategy might have suggested in August," a note from Wednesday said. "We expect more T-bills in lieu of coupons to make up a higher share of issuance through 2024."
Read the original article on Business Insider
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Bonds Trading & Speculation
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More than 150 local councils in England have demanded “immediate intervention” by the government to tackle the homelessness crisis, as they warn the growing cost of providing temporary accommodation threatens “to overwhelm our budgets.”
In a letter sent to the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, seen by ITV News, the District Councils Network say the rise of the number of homeless families needing emergency housing is “unprecedented” and without financial support “the existence of our safety net is under threat” - leaving councils with no option but to withdraw services.
The letter was drafted after 158 councils met at an emergency summit to discuss the crisis.
They have demanded a meeting with Mr Hunt ahead of the Autumn Statement and have made a list of policy changes and funding requests they believe will help relieve the pressure on the housing system.
They include:
Raising local housing allowance rates in line with the real cost of rent
Extra funding to tackle homelessness through grants and discretionary payment
More long-term funding and flexibility to build more social housing
The latest government data shows local councils in England are now spending £1.74 billion a year on temporary accommodation, up 9% in a year.
In 2018/19, they were spending £1.08 billion.
With a chronic shortage of social housing available, councils are being forced to spend more and more housing families in hotels, hostels and bed and breakfast accommodation.
ITV News has spent the last six months reporting on the crisis, meeting working people and their children trapped in temporary accommodation with nowhere else to go, and schools having to step in to help homeless families find places to live.
In the letter to the Chancellor, councils warn they are breaking point.
It reads: “The ensuing increase in costs is a critical risk to the financial sustainability of many local authorities and we urge you to act swiftly to ensure we can continue our vital work.
"The pressure is particularly acute for district councils because housing costs constitute a far bigger proportion of our overall expenditure.
“Without urgent intervention, the existence of our safety net is under threat. The danger is that we have no option but to start withdrawing services which currently help so many families to avoid hitting crisis point.
"There will also be a knock-on impact on other cherished council services, which councils could also have to scale back, and on other parts of the public sector – such as the NHS – which will be left to pick up the pieces.
“Some areas also experience added pressure due to the placement of asylum seekers in local hotels and other temporary accommodation.”
A government spokesperson said: “Local authorities have seen an increase in Core Spending Power of up to £5.1 billion or 9.4% in cash terms on 2022/23, with almost £60 billion available for local government in England.
“We are committed to reducing the need for temporary accommodation by preventing homelessness before it occurs in the first place, which is why we are providing councils with £1 billion through the Homelessness Prevention Grant over three years.
“We are also delivering a fairer private rented sector for tenants and landlords through the Renters Reform Bill which includes abolishing Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions.”
If you or someone you know is homeless, facing homelessness, or want to get in touch with us about your housing issue, please email us at housingstories@itv.com
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Real Estate & Housing
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Just 18 per cent of the public think the Bank of England are doing a good job, but a majority still think politicians should not be given control of monetary policy.
According to polling data from Public First, only 18 per cent of respondents think the Bank is performing well. 36 per cent said it was performing poorly with the remainder having no opinion either way.
Conservative voters and younger adults were more likely to think the embattled central bank was doing a good job.
The Bank has come under pressure for its mischaracterisation of inflation as transitory – a mistake made by almost all central banks around the world.
As a result, central banks were slow to hike rates, and inflation skyrocketed to a multi-decade high of 11.1 per cent in October last year following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
While many economies have faced similar problems, inflation in the UK has remained higher than in many western economies and the Bank has repeatedly overestimated the extent to it will fall.
The headline rate of US inflation has come down sharply to 3.3 per cent while in the EU it stands at 5.3 per cent. In the UK however, it stands at 6.8 per cent. A recent report suggested inflation would remain above the Bank’s target until 2025.
Reflecting its failure to predict the persistence of price rises, it has brought in ex-Fed chair Ben Bernanke to lead a review of its forecasting models.
Despite its difficulties in getting a handle on inflation, 56 per cent of respondents said the Bank should maintain its independence to set interest rates. Just 23 per cent said control over interest rates should return to the government, as it had been pre-1997.
James Frayne, founding partner of research agency Public First, said: “The Bank of England has been savaged by politicians and commentators for months and its reputation has clearly been damaged.” But Frayne said the figures indicated the people still trust the Bank more than “government politicians.”
“Even as people are feeling serious pain from high interest rates, people fear putting politicians in control,” he continued.
A Bank of England spokesperson said: “We know that people are unhappy about the level of inflation. That’s why we are entirely focused on bringing it back down to the two per cent target.”
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Inflation
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Former President Trump demanded a jury Monday after his unprecedented time on the stand, calling the civil trial against him and his businesses a "disgrace" and saying New York Attorney General Letitia James has "no case."
Trump described his forced testimony as "election interference," while maintaining that his net worth is "far greater" than financial statements during testimony Monday.
The former president and 2024 Republican presidential frontrunner took the stand Monday morning in the non-jury civil trial stemming from Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit against him, his family and his businesses. James alleged Trump defrauded banks and inflated the value of his assets.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and has repeatedly said his assets were actually undervalued. Trump has repeatedly said his financial statements had disclaimers, requesting that the numbers be evaluated by the banks.
"I think this case is a disgrace," he said, adding that people are being "murdered" in New York, and James is "watching this case."
"It’s a disgrace. It is election interference because you want to keep me in court all day long," Trump said while on the stand, after testifying for more than five hours. "And Judge…I want a jury."
One of Trump's attorneys, at the end of the former president's testimony, said that in "33 years," they have "never had a witness testify better."
"An absolutely brilliant performance by President Trump. He's not backing down. He's told everyone the facts," the Trump attorney said. "Now that the American people know what's going on, maybe something will change."
James, a Democrat, sued Trump, his children and the Trump Organization last year, alleging he and his company misled banks and others about the value of his assets. James claimed the former president’s children – Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka and Eric – as well as his associates and businesses, committed "numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentation" on their financial statements.
James filed the lawsuit against Trump "under a consumer protection statute that denies the right to a jury," a Trump spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
"There was never an option to choose a jury trial," the spokesperson said. "It is unfortunate that a jury won’t be able to hear how absurd the merits of this case are and conclude no wrongdoing ever happened."
During Trump’s unprecedented testimony Monday, New York Judge Arthur Engoron tried to cut him off from providing lengthy answers to state lawyers’ questioning, and even said: "I don’t want to hear everything he has to say."
But Trump defended himself and his businesses while on the stand, and blasted the investigation, lawsuit and non-jury trial.
"We shouldn’t be having a case here because we have a disclaimer clause that every court holds up except this judge," Trump said, referring to the disclaimers on all of his financial statements and statements of financial condition.
"They're trying to hurt me — especially her," Trump said, referring to Attorney General Letitia James. "For political reasons."
Trump went on to call James a "political hack," saying she used her investigation and lawsuit against him "to become governor, to become attorney general." The former president was referring to James’ campaigns, in which she vowed to "get Trump."
"This is a political witch hunt, and she should be ashamed of herself," Trump said. "The fraud is her."
Engoron, in September, ruled that Trump and the Trump Organization committed fraud while building his real estate empire by deceiving banks, insurers and others by overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing financing.
"He ruled against me without knowing anything about me," Trump said on the stand. "He called me a fraud, and he didn’t know anything about me."
Trump went on to slam Engoron for undercutting the value of his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida — a property Engoron valued at $18 million.
"$18 million, he said—And I'm a fraud for not valuing the property? How do you call a man a fraud when you have a property 50 to 100 times more?" Trump said. You believed the political hack back there and that's unfortunate."
Trump attorney Alina Habba on Monday also slammed Engoron and James, saying the judge "yelled" at her.
"I don't care who you are, you have a right to hire a lawyer who can put objections on the record," Habba said outside the court during a break. "You have a right to hire a lawyer who can stand up and say something when they see something wrong."
"But I was told to sit down today. I was yelled at and I've had a judge who is unhinged, slamming table," Habba continued. "Let me be very clear. I don't tolerate that in my life. I'm not going to tolerate it. And you know what? You shouldn't either, because not every American citizen gets a camera and a microphone."
Habba went on to blast James, saying she "taunted" Trump before she "came into office, before you saw one record, one statement of financial condition — you taunted him."
"You said his administration was too male and too pale," Habba said. "Those are her words."
Meanwhile, Trump was asked questions about terms of loan agreements, and handed documents about specific loans.
"This loan was paid off in full, with no default — no victims. The loan was paid off in full, the bank was thrilled…the bank liked me very much…the loan is since gone," Trump testified.
When asked why the loan was paid ahead of schedule, Trump testified: "Because we have a lot of cash…My son [Eric] recommended it and I said, ‘do what you want to do.’"
Trump repeatedly testified that he believes he complied with loan agreements.
But Trump maintained that his net worth was "far greater than the financial statements, far greater."
"The numbers of my net worth are far more than the financial statement," Trump said. "Therefore, you have no case."
Trump, again, cited the disclaimers on his financial statements, testifying that those disclaimers told "the lender of the money to go out and do your own work."
"It says do your own due diligence," Trump said.
The judge said: "It sounds like a broken record."
Trump fired back, saying it was because the attorney kept "asking the same question."
Trump's defense chimed in, saying that if the attorney from James' office "wants to ask the same questions, he'll get the same answers."
Trump's testimony concluded Monday afternoon. His daughter, Ivanka Trump, who was dismissed as a defendant in the case this summer, is set to testify on Wednesday.
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Banking & Finance
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How Can Digital Payments Improve Climate Resilience and Disaster Response?
Lisa Dale (second from the right) alongside other panelists at the United Nations roundtable event. Photo: Better Than Cash Alliance
On July 12, Lisa Dale, co-director of the MA program in Climate and Society and lecturer in Climate, Earth and Society, joined a panel of researchers, government officials, and humanitarians at the United Nations. The side event, called Improving Climate Resilience and Disaster Response through Digital Payments, was part of the 2023 United Nations High-Level Political Forum (HLPF). This roundtable discussion was organized by the Permanent Mission of the Republic of the Philippines to the United Nations, the UN World Food Programme, and the UN Better Than Cash Alliance.
The conversation centered on the role of digital payments in humanitarian response, bringing together governments, multilateral development organizations, humanitarian agencies and companies to understand the challenges and successes in the uptake of digital payments in climate-related emergencies. The speakers included government representatives from the Republic of the Philippines and Bangladesh, ambassadors to the United Nations from Colombia, the Republic of Rwanda, the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, Guatemala, and Mexico, and organizational representatives from the UN World Food Program, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Mercy Corps, the United Nations Better Than Cash Alliance, and the UPS Foundation. The panel complemented the 2023 HLPF’s broader focus on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Panelists discuss opportunities to expand digital payment infrastructure during the roundtable event. Photo: Better Than Cash Alliance
In the Q&A below, Dale shares her reflections and observations from the panel discussion.
What are the risks from climate change and how can mobile payments play a role in reducing these risks?
Risk from climate change is comprised of three parts: hazard, exposure and vulnerability. Mobile payments have been shown to meaningfully address the vulnerability piece; they can disrupt the inter-generational cycle of poverty and build adaptive capacity, thereby reducing overall risk. Mobile payments can help to streamline financial exchanges, improving efficiency and contributing to sustainable development.
What are nationally determined contributions and how can they be used in climate change mitigation and adaptation?
A nationally determined contribution, or NDC, is what every country has developed as part of the 2015 Paris Agreement. It consists of a nationally-specific climate action plan to cut emissions and adapt to climate impacts. Each NDC includes both mitigation and adaptation components, but for most fragile states, adaptation is much more critical. This is because of the unequal role in historical emissions, meaning many of the lower-income countries now struggling to respond to impacts from climate change did not themselves emit most of the greenhouse gasses that have led us here. This is a foundational pattern to address for climate justice.
Lisa Dale shares insight from her research on sustainable development in Rwanda. Photo: Better Than Cash Alliance
From your research on sustainable development in Rwanda, what have you seen from mobile money programs?
The case of Rwanda is instructive. The country has a very robust form of mobile money, called MoMo, and this system has permeated all layers of society, including remote rural areas. Researchers have highlighted the many ways in which MoMo has benefited the country. For example. the World Bank recently reported on Rwanda’s award-winning social protection scheme, ubudehe, which categorizes households according to wealth and livelihood. Those categories then determine eligibility for various forms of social protection through financial support from the government. Coverage under the ubudehe system increased from 67 percent to 92 percent of eligible households with the advent of mobile money. In other words, digital payments helped the government better reach the households most in need of support. These payments contribute to reductions in national poverty levels, reflected in declining vulnerability and stronger adaptive capacity at the household level.
In my own research on crop insurance and resettlement policies in Rwanda, I have seen the way mobile money unlocks innovation. For example, farmers’ cooperatives are eligible for insurance through the National Agricultural Insurance Scheme, and mobile payments make it possible for them to receive payouts very quickly following crop failure. This very direct process then contributes to improved financial literacy for the members of the cooperative, a critical step for scaling up the tool. It also creates avenues for accessing credit for participating farmers and increases their ability to purchase inputs. Research has shown that an increased use of inputs, such as fertilizers and improved seeds, leads to higher yields and better food security.
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Banking & Finance
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Dr Martens has warned its earnings will fall below expectations after the bootmaker's business was hit by warmer autumn weather and weak US sales.
The famous brand, which first became popular in the 1960s, said its trade in the US had become more challenging in recent months and that two of its major wholesalers had reduced orders.
Global profits for the firm fell by 55% to £25.8m in its half-year results.
The profit warning saw shares plunge by almost 25% early on Wednesday.
Chief executive Kenny Wilson said trading in the second half of the year had been "mixed", with sales across the world impacted by warmer weather at the start of autumn.
"In the USA, where there is an increasingly difficult consumer environment, our results have been more challenged, led by weakness in wholesale," he added.
The company said in its results that widespread caution among Dr Martens wholesale customers had resulted in a "weaker order book than in prior years", but added that trade in recent weeks in Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific had improved.
Driven by poor trade across the Atlantic, the firm said it expected its full-year revenues to decline by a "high single-digit percentage".
In its latest results, the company revealed US earnings were 31% lower in the six months to 30 September, compared with the same period last year.
Dr Martens makes more than half of its revenues from its most recognisable products, the eight-holed 1460 boot and sister product the 1461 shoe.
But it has struggled with weakening demand in the US for some time, especially as the cost of living has increased around the world, with less cash for discretionary spending.
In 2021, Dr Martens raised the prices of its footwear by £10 due to rising production and material costs, taking the price of its classic 1460 boots in the UK to £159 a pair. It has continued to rise and currently costs £169, according to the retailer's website.
"When times are good, Dr Martens has shown it is possible to make decent returns from its iconic products," said Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell.
"But when the economic outlook is more uncertain, the company suffers from having its products priced slightly above the level at which someone wouldn't think too hard about paying."
The Dr Martens brand was founded in 1960 in Northampton. Its air-cushioned sole was developed by Munich-based Dr Maertens and Dr Funck and the UK patent rights were sold to R Griggs Group.
The footwear that emerged from the collaboration was initially sold as a work boot, but was taken up by the early skinhead youth movement of the 1960s. The boots also become popular with punks in the 1970s and had a resurgence when Britpop emerged in the 1990s.
Today the boots, also known as Docs or DMs, remain popular.
When Dr Martens listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2021 its shares were priced at 370p. On Thursday its shares were trading at around 85p.
"There always seems to be a stone in the shoe for Dr Martens ever since its IPO in 2021," said Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown.
"Earlier this year the company was beset by operational problems at its Los Angeles distribution centre. Once again, hopes of a rebound in sales have been booted away and long-term growth for the brand looks highly uncertain."
Mr Wilson said the company continued to "have faith in our iconic brand, and we continue to believe in the long-term growth potential of the business".
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Consumer & Retail
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About 44 million Americans with student debt must soon start repaying their student loans, a change that could impose a financial strain on many households after a three and a half year hiatus. Interest will start accruing on education loans on Friday, with payments set to resume in October.
The student loan reprieve began in March of 2020 as part of a series of pandemic-related measures geared toward keeping households financially stable as COVID-19 shut down the economy. Since then, the pause had been extended several times, but Congress earlier this year.
The resumption of loan repayments may not only be confusing to people who had been paying off their balances prior to the pandemic, but also to young professionals who are among the four years of graduating classes who earned their degrees during the health crisis. About 20% of borrowers are those who graduated from college during the pandemic and will be new to loan repayments, noted Robert Farrington, founder of The College Investor, a personal finance site for millennials.
Despite again being on the hook for their school loans, only about half of all borrowers know how much they'll owe when repayments start up again, according to a recent survey from U.S. News & World Report. That makes it essential to prepare, experts told CBS MoneyWatch.
"Definitely be proactive and make sure you are all ready to make those payments," said Michael Kitchen, higher education and student loan repayment expert at LendingTree. "There have been a lot changes over that period — maybe you've moved and your servicer has changed — so just get in front of it if you can."
Here's what to know about resuming your student loan payments.
When does interest start accruing on student loans?
Student loan interest will begin accruing again on Friday, September 1, according to the Department of Education.
When are student loan payments due?
Payments will be due starting in October, federal officials said. You should receive a billing statement or other notice at least 21 days prior to the bill's due date. If you don't receive a billing notice by 21 days prior to the due date, contact your student loan servicer, the Education Department said.
How do I find out who my loan servicer is?
Some loan servicers have changed during the pandemic, which means that the entity that handled your loan prior to March 2020 might not be the company that you'll be dealing with starting in October. (Some of the changes are listed by the Education Department at this site; for instance, Navient ended its servicing contract in 2021, and its accounts were picked up by Aidvantage.)
You can find out which servicer is handling your loans by logging into your account at the Federal Student Aid website and looking at the "My Loan Servicers" link. Next, make sure you can log into your account with the servicer.
I moved. Should I update my information?
Yes, you need to update your information with your loan servicer, according to experts. Log into your servicer account — or set up a new account if you don't have one — to check your personal contact information. Since it's been more than three years, your information may need to be updated.
How can I find my loan interest rate and amount due?
Log into your account with your servicer — your servicer will tell you how much you owe and the date the payment is due, according to the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.
"Make note of this information to ensure you either proactively make a payment by the deadline, or are prepared for the funds to be drawn down by auto debit," according to the nonprofit, which represents financial aid professionals at colleges and universities.
Do I need to update my bank information?
Every borrower — including those who had direct payments set up prior to the pandemic — must update their bank information if they are paying through direct debit, noted Farrington of The College Investor.
"If you had direct debit before the pandemic, guess what, all those were canceled during the pandemic," he said.
Farrington added, "It won't resume — you have to re-sign up. I worry that people will think no big deal" and miss a payment because of that.
What student loan repayment plans are available?
Borrowers are automatically enrolled in the standard repayment plan — a 10-year schedule to pay down their balances. But that's also the most expensive plan, and some borrowers may get sticker shock at seeing their payments due in October.
Farrington underscores that other repayment plans are available. New and existing borrowers should make a point to review the other repayment options, such as a new income-based repayment plan called the, or (SAVE), plan, which recently became available for applicants, he noted.
The first step is to use the loan simulator at the Federal Student Aid site to figure out which plan is best for you, experts say. Income-driven repayment plans, or IDRs, can be helpful because they peg borrowers' payments to their monthly income. About a third of all borrowers are enrolled in an IDR, according to Pew Research.
What is the SAVE plan?
The SAVE plan is the new income-based repayment plan from the Biden administration. It could lower, or even eliminate, monthly loan payments for more than 20 million borrowers.
The plan is open to borrowers with direct subsidized and unsubsidized loans, as well as Direct PLUS loans for graduate and professional students, and for direct consolidation loans, Biden officials said earlier this month.
Although people may apply for SAVE now, the plan won't go fully into effect until next year. For instance, under SAVE borrowers with undergraduate loans will have their monthly payments reduced from 10% to 5% of their discretionary income. But the 5% rate won't begin until mid-2024, according to the Education Department.
Other elements of SAVE will offer immediate relief, including eliminating negative amortization, which allowed interest on student loans to snowball and often left borrowers owing more than they had initially borrowed (You can apply for SAVE at this Education Department site.)
What is the average amount of student loan debt?
On average, the typical student borrower has federal student debt of about $38,000, according Education Data Initiative. But about 54% of borrowers owe less than $20,000, the College Board said. Roughly 45% of the outstanding federal education loan debt was held by the 1 in 10 borrowers with balances of more than $80,000, according to the group.
What about erasing my student debt?
In June, the Supreme Courtfor student debt relief, which would have forgiven up to $20,000 of federal student loans for .
Hours after the decision, Mr. Biden announced that he had directed Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to start a process under a law known as the Higher Education Act to compromise, waive or release loans "under certain circumstances."
While that process is in the works, any loan forgiveness that occurs under the HEA will take time to materialize. Any changes must go through negotiated rule-making, a process that could take a year or longer. And even after that, the plan could still face legal challenges, Farrington said.
"People should not be holding their breath for any kind of blanket student loan forgiveness program," he added.
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Personal Finance & Financial Education
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In 2020 Nigeria had the third-most cryptocurrency transactions in the world (behind the U.S. and Russia). But "Nigeria's history with crypto has been a bittersweet one where the citizens have embraced digital assets with open arms but the government remains vehemently against it," writes the site Bitcoinist.
In early 2021 the BBC reported that "In an effort to regulate the market, Nigeria's central bank banned banks from facilitating cryptocurrency-related transactions in 2017, but the ban remained largely unenforced. However, this year the institution doubled down on its stance." In a statement released on 7 February [2021] it cited the need to protect the general public and safeguard the country from potential threats posed by "unknown and unregulated entities" that are "well-suited for conducting many illegal activities". Since then, many Nigerians have reported that their bank accounts have been frozen due to cryptocurrency-related activity...
However many investors with the possibility say they will continue to trade using their overseas bank accounts. They say they can easily revert to peer-to-peer transactions. This means that rather than transferring funds between a financial institution and a cryptocurrency online trading platform, investors transfer funds directly to each other or through a middle person as they buy and sell. This is the method the cryptocurrency community used before the development of the virtual currency marketplace ecosystem in Nigeria...
At the heart of the rise of Bitcoin is a distrust of centralised financial systems and top-down economic control, investors say. Many express their frustrations with government policy and the decline of the Nigerian economy.
This week the Lagos-based Nigerian newspaper The Nation published this explanation of that crackdown from the Central Bank's deputy governor, Kinsley Obiora. "When the central bank started reacting to COVID with what we call printing money and responding to the crisis, a lot of people in the private sector felt that printing of money could lead to hyper-inflation and these private sector people decided to respond by creating cryptocurrencies." Over time, the creators of cryptocurrency, he added, felt that central banks should not be left with the authority to do whatever they like with money. Fearing that such a mindset might cause inflation and reduce the purchasing power of households, the CBN he said responded to what he called "the good aspect of that change because a lot of people actually took to crypto currencies". Fed up with the antics of the cryptocurrency operators, Obiora said the "we kicked them out of our banking system because the opacity of the system is still a threat to financial system stability".
In early 2021 the BBC reported that "In an effort to regulate the market, Nigeria's central bank banned banks from facilitating cryptocurrency-related transactions in 2017, but the ban remained largely unenforced. However, this year the institution doubled down on its stance." In a statement released on 7 February [2021] it cited the need to protect the general public and safeguard the country from potential threats posed by "unknown and unregulated entities" that are "well-suited for conducting many illegal activities". Since then, many Nigerians have reported that their bank accounts have been frozen due to cryptocurrency-related activity...
However many investors with the possibility say they will continue to trade using their overseas bank accounts. They say they can easily revert to peer-to-peer transactions. This means that rather than transferring funds between a financial institution and a cryptocurrency online trading platform, investors transfer funds directly to each other or through a middle person as they buy and sell. This is the method the cryptocurrency community used before the development of the virtual currency marketplace ecosystem in Nigeria...
At the heart of the rise of Bitcoin is a distrust of centralised financial systems and top-down economic control, investors say. Many express their frustrations with government policy and the decline of the Nigerian economy.
This week the Lagos-based Nigerian newspaper The Nation published this explanation of that crackdown from the Central Bank's deputy governor, Kinsley Obiora. "When the central bank started reacting to COVID with what we call printing money and responding to the crisis, a lot of people in the private sector felt that printing of money could lead to hyper-inflation and these private sector people decided to respond by creating cryptocurrencies." Over time, the creators of cryptocurrency, he added, felt that central banks should not be left with the authority to do whatever they like with money. Fearing that such a mindset might cause inflation and reduce the purchasing power of households, the CBN he said responded to what he called "the good aspect of that change because a lot of people actually took to crypto currencies". Fed up with the antics of the cryptocurrency operators, Obiora said the "we kicked them out of our banking system because the opacity of the system is still a threat to financial system stability".
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Crypto Trading & Speculation
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is a man who has always confounded expectations. He’s an ‘80s Sunset Strip rocker with roots in the scrappy Seattle punk scene and a solo discography — including his latest album, Lighthouse — filled with tender acoustic balladry. He’s a high school dropout who later studied at the Albers School of Business and Economics and founded the wealth management firm Meridian Rock. And he’s best known for playing bass with Hollywood bad boys Guns N’ Roses, but he’s a devoted husband and father who’s been with his wife, model , for 27 years, and has been sober for nearly three decades.
“We're super-cool to each other. We give each other room. We really dig each other in every specific way you could imagine,” Duff tells Yahoo Entertainment, lighting up as he discusses how he and Susan, who will celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary next year, have made their marriage last. “And she takes my breath away, still. When she walks in the room, her perfume, that smell, I'm like, Ohhhhh. So, I'm fortunate; I know that.
“And I guess we're just together a lot. I tour a lot, and absence definitely makes her heart grow fonder, but we can be together as much time as we're apart and we f***ing cherish the time together,” says McKagan, adding with a chuckle: “Well, I do. I'll speak for myself. She might just be faking it, I dunno!”
It’s safe to say that the McKagans’ love is very real. Susan inspired the title track of Duff’s third solo LP, Lighthouse. “It's just a straight-up love song to my wife,” he beams. “The song was this simple little three-chord thing. I came up with these melodies and these words, ‘Won't you be my lighthouse?’— and I knew immediately that'd be about Susan giving me light and bringing me home.”
Duff and Susan met when they were set up by their mutual friend, Thrasher magazine journalist and punk-rock politician Jon “Stain” Stainbrook, formerly of ‘80s Toledo band the Stain. On the surface, the pairing of a rock star with a supermodel could not have been more of a cliché. “He's like, ‘I know you haven't dated for a couple of years, but she's great. She's amazing. She's a model — but don't let that scare you away!’ I don't know if that scared me away or nothin’,” Duff laughs. Duff was actually more trepidatious about that fact that he’d recently gotten clean, and sober dating was entirely new territory for him.
“Susan and I meeting was this period where I'd taken two years to just being sober. I didn't know if I could date a woman again. I don't know how to… I’ve got no game or whatever the f*** you have to have at 32 years old,” Duff confesses. “I'm sober and reading books — what woman's going to like some book nerd? But I met her through a blind date and I could tell. We talked on the phone first and it was like this, ‘F***!’ I mean, her voice makes me feel amazing and reminded me of one of my sisters, maybe — but not in a weird way, just like the comfort of home.
“And then she picked me up at the airport and we went to dinner and it was on. I mean, it was just on. So, that happened. And that's fate. … She had put herself in a position to be open to a relationship like ours, and I was open to it. I'd done the work. I got myself sober. I didn't try to get a girlfriend or something right after I got sober. I didn't know who I was. I had to do some finding out who the f*** I was and how I treat others. And I didn't want to bring somebody else into that until I figured it out. So, there you go. That's fate — with some work behind it.”
Understandably, given GNR’s reputation, Susan had her own trepidation when she and Duff first started dating. But that didn’t last for long. “She had some friends who [warned her about me], but… I think she was kind of like, ‘Oh no, he's not that guy.’ And I don't know what ‘that guy’ is, what you see in the videos of Guns N ‘Roses,” says Duff. “Sure, there was some pretty vagabond, reckless times, but I wasn't like a dirtbag to women, ever. I have three sisters and a mom. That's not part of my deal. And I wouldn't hang around with those people. When the #MeToo stuff started, you know, those people who did that [predatory] stuff — who hangs out with them? Even when I was a kid in elementary school, there was that one guy who took it one too far and it's like, ‘You're out.’”
McKagan’s Lighthouse album was preceded by a companion EP, This Is the Song (“I love that little EP,” he grins), the title track of which was released in May 2023 for Mental Health Awareness Month. That song was “literally written during a panic attack,” McKagan reveals.
“An active panic attack was happening, and I discovered something in writing that song I was writing myself. I was playing my guitar, just holding onto it to get me through this panic attack,” Duff recalls. “I've had them since I was 16. I don't get them a ton anymore; I've sought and received help. I got that pinging of a panic attack, and I was up in bed with my wife. I don't like to tell her all the time when I'm having panic attacks, because she gets worried. So, I will often just get up and go down and get some water. I'll go and deal and tear off my clothes and pour water on myself, whatever I gotta do. But this time, I went and got on my acoustic guitar, and it was during the COVID time. I grabbed onto the guitar and I wrote this chord. … I started strumming chords and [sang], ‘This song is going to save my life.’”
Duff adds, “I have other things that come as a super-killer side thing of panic attacks, like, there’s depression. Like, what the f***, where'd this come from? I found out depression has nothing to do with what's going on in your life. It's not a choice. It's definitely a malaise that you just comes on. Mine is chemical imbalance crap. It's just what it is, it's my thing.” McKagan, who got sober at age 30 after a nearly fatal case of acute alcohol-induced pancreatitis served as his wakeup call, realizes now that his mental health issues were “so tied in” with his history of addiction. “Well, I think — I know — that I self-medicated myself. I got my first panic attack at 16. And hey, when did I start drinking? Hey, when did I start doing drugs? I self-medicated myself into a pretty dark place.”
This Is the Song and Lighthouse were both made during the COVID-19 pandemic — in Duff’s Seattle home studio, which he’d conveniently and coincidentally finished building only two months before the lockdown of 2020. And while many marriages crumbled and people’s mental health worsened during that time, Duff happily “dove into songwriting” after Guns N’ Roses’ 2020 world tour was canceled and recorded nearly 60 songs with longtime producer/collaborator Martin Feveyear. The resulting Lighthouse also features contributions from Iggy Pop, Alice in Chains’ Jerry Cantrell, Paul McCartney drummer Abe Laboriel Jr., and GNR guitarist Slash, but McKagan hopes that the some of the other songs from this unprecedentedly prolific period will eventually be released. Unsurprisingly, many of the tunes are about the love of his life, whom he describes as “physically,” “mentally,” and “spiritually gorgeous.”
“The [pandemic] timing was amazing. My wife was safe. My [two daughters] were safe, and they were with us. … These songs are about [Susan] from this set of 60 because during COVID, I just fell in love with her. Not to sound corny or whatever, but we would hear about other 20-year marriages going out the door. And we're like, ‘What the f*** is that about? We're good.’”
Watch Duff McKagan’s full, extended Yahoo Entertainment interview below, in which he discusses several other autobiographical Lighthouse tracks and how fate also played a part in him meeting his Guns N’ Roses bandmates:
Read more on Yahoo Entertainment:
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Banking & Finance
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More than half a million people visited community “warm rooms” to escape freezing homes and escalating poverty during the winter, according to the first audit of the impact of these potent symbols of the UK’s cost of living crisis.
Warm space projects sprang up in their thousands across the UK in the autumn, as charities, libraries and faith groups responded to soaring energy poverty by opening venues to provide cash strapped people with warmth, free food and a cup of tea.
A survey by the Warm Welcome campaign, a UK-wide network of over 4,200 warm spaces, suggests many successfully provided their visitors with a measure of respite from their problems – but not necessarily the problem the projects had planned for.
Most visitors welcomed the warmth; they were struggling financially, and saved money on heating and food, wifi costs and children’s activities.
But while respite from poverty was important, the survey found, it was secondary to warm rooms’ other main if perhaps unforeseen benefit: challenging the social blight of loneliness.
“The biggest difference has been in reducing social isolation,” said one survey respondent. “We found those who were struggling with the cost of living crisis in financial terms didn’t particularly access us - they used the nearby foodbank more. It was the escape from an empty house that people found most gratifying about our warm space.”
The greatest impact of warm rooms, the survey found, was in providing a sense of community and tackling loneliness in a safe and welcoming space. Frequent visitors reported positive improvements in their mental health, social wellbeing, and sense of purpose. “It’s helped me cope with the hard times,” one respondent said.
“Social contact is as important as food and warmth. It is the thing we live for, and if people don’t have it their mental health will suffer. If you get people together, they feel better,” said Nanette Mellors, the chief executive of the Brain Charity in Liverpool, which ran a warm room over the winter
Not all projects were welcomed unquestionably: some warm rooms quickly learned people would not come if they suspected the offer was, as Warm Welcome chief executive David Barclay said, “a place where the poor came to huddle together in winter”.
Some of the most successful warm rooms offered community events – sing-alongs, cabaret, exercise classes, darts and bingo – alongside services such as food, laundry services, haircuts, children’s creches, clothes banks and benefits advice, all for free or cut price, in an accessible, non-judgemental space.
One of the wider lessons of the warm space phenomenon was how it focused attention on both the social value of communal public space, especially in the most economically deprived areas, and the austerity cuts to public spending, which have forced thousands of community centres and libraries to close.
Bruce Leeke, the chief executive of the charity Suffolk Libraries, said libraries had been “warm rooms since the 1860s”. His more serious point is that they were already offering something similar before the cost of living crisis. But the crisis highlighted their vital role as “one of the few public spaces that are safe, free and accessible”.
The Alphabetti Theatre in Newcastle-upon-Tyne opened a warm space to offer locals a respite from what Ali Pritchard, the theatre’s artistic and executive director, said was an increasingly poor and disconnected society. He said: “It was a no-brainer for us. We realised people needed it and wouldn’t have anywhere else to go.”
About 550,000 people used warm spaces during the winter, according to Warm Welcome. That may be an underestimate; it has another survey that suggests the figure may be as high as 2.5 million. Its network represents only a fraction of the UK’s warm rooms: a Labour party survey in December indicated there were about 13,000.
About two-thirds of the warm rooms planned to stay open for the rest of the year, the survey found.
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Inflation
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Fiscal drag will pull 55,000 working parents into Jeremy Hunt’s childcare tax trap over the next five years, analysis by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) shows.
The number of parents who will find it harder to go back to work or will be incentivised to keep their salaries low will swell by 71pc, in a process known as fiscal drag.
Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor, used his Spring Budget to extend 30 hours of free childcare to all working families with toddlers over nine months old. However, this support is removed when one parent earns over £100,000 – also the threshold when they start to lose their personal tax-free allowance.
The combined cliff edge of support means that a parent with two small children will be worse off if they are earning £134,500 than if they were earning £99,000, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
There are currently 78,000 parents with children under four who have salaries of £100,000 or more and are therefore vulnerable to this tax trap. Because this threshold is frozen, and will not change to reflect wage growth, this number will swell to 133,000 by 2027-28, according to the CEBR.
Although not all of the existing 78,000 will be affected because some will be particularly high earners, almost all of the 55,000 who will cross the threshold for the first time will be immediately hit by the cliff edge in support.
This means that they will see a material drop in their disposable incomes, despite the fact that their salaries have gone up.
Matthew Lesh, of the Institute for Economic Affairs, said: “If the underlying goal with this childcare policy is to ensure parents, particularly mothers, get back into or stay in the workforce, there is a huge disincentive factor here that could undermine the whole enterprise.
“It will discourage people from working or from working hard, going for promotions and building up their skills over time. It could slow people’s career progression because they are fearful about falling over this threshold. The Government seems to be pretty much doing everything they can to sting the lower end of top income earners.”
Mary-Ann Stephenson, director of the Women’s Budget Group, warned that the cliff edge poses a particular risk to women who may be unable to return to work because they have a high-earning partner.
She said: “It shouldn’t be this way, but often within households, the cost of childcare is set against a woman’s salary to decide whether it is worthwhile for them to return to work.”
If one person in a couple has a salary that has crossed the threshold, it may not make financial sense for the second parent to work, because they would have to pay for childcare to do so.
Ms Stephenson added: “The partners of high-earning men could end up trapped and unable to return to work because of this.”
Women who are economically dependent on high earning partners will be particularly vulnerable if the relationship breaks down, because it is difficult for people to return to the labour market after they have left, she added.
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Inflation
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My wife and I visit London a few times a year to see her family and our friends from university. We’re here again this time for the entire month of January living as Londoners, staying in a rented house, taking out the trash – sorry, rubbish – and buying our food at Waitrose. The stay has given me time to observe, talk to people and walk around, and here’s what I’ve learned: I need to stop complaining about how difficult it is to run a small business in the US. It’s much harder to run a small business in the UK. Particularly now.Imagine running a business where inflation isn’t 6.5%, as it is the US, but 10.5%. The cost of living here is pushing British consumers to buy less – so much so that, according to a recent poll, two-thirds of them are planning on cutting their spending in 2023. In a nation of shopkeepers this is not insignificant.Like the US, unemployment here remains low, so there’s still a shortage of workers and a continued demand to retain them which – combined with rising prices – is forcing business owners to increase wages. So a business owner in the UK is not only hit with slowing demand, but rising costs at the same time and at a rate higher than the US.Energy costs are also hitting people hard. All of my friends here have complained that their utility prices have more than doubled this year, despite some help from the government. I’ve seen portable heaters in restaurants next to tables and even our Airbnb host asked us to try to keep the temperature below 17C (62.6F) if possible. The good news is it seems that energy relief is coming but it’s not coming fast enough.How has this affected UK small businesses? Not great.According to a new survey from outsourcing platform Fiverr, business owners here are reporting they have lost on average £83,000 since the start of the economic downturn, which equates to half of their annual turnover with nearly one in five UK start-ups and small businesses polled losing over £100,000 since the start of the economic downturn. Some business owners across the country say they have had to “shut their doors” because of these higher costs.The Fiverr study also found that 92% of UK startups and small businesses are fearful about the future of their business and nearly one in five admitted to being “very fearful”. Confidence among UK small businesses has dropped, with another survey finding a 50% fall in the number of companies planning to expand this year compared with summer of 2022.All of that, and then there’s Brexit. Maybe there’s an argument that the UK’s new-found freedom to control its economic destiny will work out. But clearly there are a great many people who disagree. Particularly small business owners that rely on foreign sales, like this British entrepreneur in the biking industry that blames Brexit on a revenue loss of more than £100,000, and more than three quarters of British companies that say that the trade agreement has made it difficult for them to increase sales and grow their business, according to a British Chambers of Commerce survey.Even when the economy is strong, the UK regulatory environment for businesses far exceeds what we have to deal with in the US.Most workers who work a five-day week must receive at least 28 days’ paid annual leave a year. The government also requires employers to give their workers additional time off for when they’re sick. Employers are mandated to provide paid and unpaid maternity leave, as well as making contributions to their workers’ retirement, healthcare and liability (workers’ compensation) plan. Taxes – excluding the impact of state taxes – are higher here, too, with the country’s top rate being 45% for those earning more than £150,000 ($180,000) as compared to the US top tax rate of 37% for those earning more than $523,000.I’m not weighing in on whether or not it’s a good thing that the government requires all of these benefits from their business community. All I know is that none of this is required in the US, and that, even with all of these regulations, the UK economy remains the sixth largest economy in the world, even though there are 79 countries with more people.London is busy, as always. The pandemic has receded, there are few masks to be seen, most storefronts are rented, and most of the population are gainfully employed. But there’s a gloom hanging over the UK, and not it’s not due to the weather (which has been cold but clear – most of the time).The UK is a great country and London is a great city. But I’m glad I’m running my small business in the US and not here.
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Inflation
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Image source, PA MediaImage caption, One in 58 people in London were found to be homelessThere are more homeless children in London than the rest of the country put together, figures from charity Shelter show.Of the estimated 123,000 homeless children in temporary accommodation in England, nearly 74,000 are in the capital.Children comprise almost half (45%) of all people recorded as homeless in the data, which covers up to 30 June.Overall, there are 150,000 homeless people in London, a rate of one in 58.Five years ago, that figure was 170,000.It comes months after the number of people sleeping rough in London reached 5,712, a rise of just over a fifth, according to City Hall.In September, the Centre for London warned many children were trapped in temporary homes due to a lack of affordable housing.Newham in east London has the highest level of homelessness in the capital with one in 21 people affected, followed by Westminster with one in 27 people and Haringey in north London where one in 33 people are without a home.Media caption, The photographer documenting London's homeless communityNatasha, not her real name, was made homeless aged 22 while five months pregnant following a disagreement with her mum and brother, with whom she lived.She spent 11 days on the street before moving into a temporary studio flat with a mice issue in south London, where she has remained ever since.She said: "My daughter is nearly two now. There's no room for a washing machine or an oven and we have to live off microwave meals all the time because we have no space to cook. "We're still dealing with mould and damp. We have sewage coming up from our toilet and we don't have a bath, only a little shower in the corner. "I can't even wash my daughter because the smell is so horrible. It just fills up the whole studio."'Terrified'Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, said the charity was bracing itself for a sharp rise in homelessness in 2023. She said: "The new year should be a time of hope, but this isn't the case for the over 150,000 homeless people in London who are facing a truly bleak 2023. "A cold doorway or a grotty hostel room is not a home, but this is reality for too many people today. "Our frontline advisers are working tirelessly to help people who are desperate to escape homelessness - from the parents doing all they can to provide some shred of a normal family life while stuck in an emergency B&B, to the person terrified of another night sleeping rough."A government spokesperson said: "Councils have a duty to ensure no family is left without a roof over their heads. "That is why we've given them £366m this year to help prevent evictions, support to pay deposits and provide temporary housing."Temporary accommodation is always a last resort. Over half a million households have been prevented from becoming homeless since 2018 through the Homelessness Reduction Act."Follow BBC London on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to hellobbclondon@bbc.co.ukRelated Internet LinksThe BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
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Real Estate & Housing
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In a rapidly aging America, Medicaid can be a lifeline for long-term care
Caring for an elderly or permanently disabled family member is a gut-wrenching experience for many families. Not only that, but it’s expensive, often exhausting personal savings and resources.
The United States, like many other rich countries, is aging fast, and that means more Americans with diminishing cognitive function and physical disabilities as well as the loss of independence. Providing such care is intensive. In the case of nursing homes, where residents have the most severe needs, round-the-clock attention is especially expensive.
Most fund these things through the Medicaid program, but this can come with an unreasonably steep cost. The private sector has a simple solution to offer, but it might require a change to the system.
Medicaid is the largest payer for long-term care services and supports for the elderly and disabled, accounting for 42 percent of all expenses in 2020. However, Medicaid is traditionally for the disabled and poor. To receive long-term care services and support benefits, applicants who do not meet the income and assets requirements must “spend down” their resources and transfer all income to the program.
In addition, Medicaid rules mandate states to recoup the cost of long-term care services and support from the estates of beneficiaries after they die. In addition to being ineffective, estate recovery laws make it difficult to bequest assets to one’s offspring, thereby reducing opportunities for creating generational wealth.
It is just a shame for people to spend their lives accumulating modest assets only to have to spend them down in the last few years of life. Another option for financing long-term care services and support is buying long-term care insurance, but unfortunately, only about 1 in 10 among the elderly and those in need of long-term care have done so. Thus, Medicaid long-term care services and support benefits should be restructured to incentivize the purchase of private long-term care insurance.
With life expectancy likely to return to its upward trajectory as we put the pandemic behind us, we shouldn’t wait. The government and other researchers estimate that the average person will require about $138,000 for long-term care services and support, even though not all will need such expenditures. About 1 in 25 will need more than $250,000. Bolstering Medicaid to cover it all isn’t realistic, either. Its expenditures on long-term care services and support keep rising and only 5 percent of the population now consumes one-third of its entire budget.
Unfortunately, the reason so few people use long-term care insurance for their long-term care is that the premium rates are often too high. For example, a $165,000 policy would cost the average 55-year-old male $950 per year, rising to $2,500 by age 65.
The market for long-term care insurance has also been shrinking. In 2004, there were 114 insurance companies issuing long-term care insurance policies. By 2022, there were only 17 or 18. There are many reasons for this, but it’s primarily because, during the boom years of the early 2000s, insurance companies underestimated the claim payouts, which led them to charge lower premiums than required to make any profits
We now have a vicious cycle where because there are fewer and fewer people buying insurance, the cost of an individual policy keeps going up. For example, in 2022, the average premium rate increase approved by state insurance commissioners was 37 percent. This is unsustainable. Another reason for the low uptake of private long-term care insurance is the lack of knowledge about the need for it and the available options.
To address this problem, we need to encourage more Americans to buy private long-term care insurance. The first step is to change Medicaid from the “payer of last resort” to the first payer. That is, we should eliminate the “spend-down” requirements. People who are poor and would require assistance can remain covered by the program as is. However, with the change, there would be no need for those who qualify for Medicaid through spend-down rules to use intended and unintended loopholes to shield their assets due to eligibility requirements or to protect their estates.
Here’s how it might work: Medicaid provides any long-term care recipient with a means-tested, income-adjusted payment capped at the average long-term care services and support cost for the year. For example, it could use the average income of the past five years before the onset of long-term disability to determine the eligible amount; the higher the income, the lower the amount.
How will this rearrangement encourage the purchase of long-term care insurance? First, the Social Security Administration would send a notice to everyone turning 50 that there is a defined benefit for long-term care services and support should the need arise. It would include the individual’s estimated benefit amount and the resources to purchase supplemental long-term care insurance. In addition, it would remind recipients that current laws allow the limited use of health savings accounts to pay for long-term care insurance. As more people buy insurance, long-term care insurance premiums should go down.
This will not be an overnight change, but over time, it should nudge many more people toward purchasing the insurance they are likely to need.
Kofi Ampaabeng is a health economist, senior research fellow and data scientist with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Personal Finance & Financial Education
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Boots, the UK's largest health and beauty retailer, has revealed changes to its loyalty scheme that will see points reduced in value but offer more instant discounts.
The chain said more of its own-brand products would be covered by the Advantage Card from May but it would, from then, pay 3p worth of points for every pound spent on qualifying goods, rather than the current 4p.
The value of each point would remain at 1p to spend in-store or online.
Boots said its move was in response to customer feedback as shoppers hunt down value amid the continuing cost of living crisis.
Pete Markey, the company's chief marketing officer, said: "Customers want to be rewarded with on-the-spot lower prices and instant value.
"We've also noticed that Advantage Card members are now more frequently using their points to buy essentials instead of saving them up.
"We've listened and have expanded the scheme to give more instant reward, immediate value and lower prices."
The monetary value of the points achieved by the May date will not change.
"Boots Advantage Card members will receive 10% off every time they shop from the extensive range of 6,000 Boots own brand products, as well as more lower prices and instant savings on big name brands with Price Advantage discounts on over 1,000 products each month", Boots said.
Goods included in the Price Advantage element are identified via bright pink stickers.
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Consumer & Retail
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Bank of Baroda Q2 Review - High Other Income Boosts Earnings; Margins Down 20 Basis Points: Motilal Oswal
Business growth healthy; PCR declines 88 bp QoQ to ~77.6%
BQ Prime’s special research section collates quality and in-depth equity and economy research reports from across India’s top brokerages, asset managers and research agencies. These reports offer BQ Prime’s subscribers an opportunity to expand their understanding of companies, sectors and the economy.
Motilal Oswal Report
Bank of Baroda reported a mixed quarter as pre provision operating profit grew 33% YoY (13% beat) aided by higher other income (49% beat) though margins declined 20bp QoQ to 3.07%.
Business growth was healthy, with loan growth of 19% YoY (4% QoQ) and deposits growth of 15% YoY (4% QoQ). Loan growth was led by healthy growth in retail segments. Current account and saving account ratio moderated 45 bp QoQ to 39.9%.
Asset quality improved despite high slippages at Rs 47.5 billion (led by aviation account). Gross/net non performing asset ratios yet improved to 3.32%/0.76%, while provision coverage ratio moderated 88 bp QoQ. Special mention account 1/2 was under control at 22 bp of loans.
Due to the restrictions imposed by Reserve Bank of India on BOB World, the bank was not able to provide certain services to new customers but multiple channels were available to them to do their transactions and therefore the impact was minimized.
Deposits in all the segments and overall business remained healthy. Bank of Baroda has taken significant actions in terms of compliance and expects the ban to be lifted in the near term.
We maintain our earnings estimates and expect FY25E return on asset/return on equity of 1.2%/16.8%. We reiterate our 'Buy' rating on the stock.
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This report is authored by an external party. BQ Prime does not vouch for the accuracy of its contents nor is responsible for them in any way. The contents of this section do not constitute investment advice. For that you must always consult an expert based on your individual needs. The views expressed in the report are that of the author entity and do not represent the views of BQ Prime.
Users have no license to copy, modify, or distribute the content without permission of the Original Owner.
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Banking & Finance
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FIDC Requests RBI To Re-Evaluate Higher Risk Weights For Bank Loans To NBFCs
Spike in cost of funds is a concern, especially when the MSME and self-employed segments are recovering from Covid-19 impact.
The Finance Industry Development Council, the representative body for non-bank lenders, wrote to the Reserve Bank of India seeking a re-evaluation of the move to increase the risk weights of bank loans to NBFCs, according to a FIDC letter reviewed by BQ Prime.
"...this measure, inadvertently, also has the potential to sharply reduce the flow of credit to MSMEs, the self-employed and other sectors, which rely upon credit from NBFCs," the letter stated.
On Nov. 16, the RBI increased the risk weight on consumer credit by banks and NBFCs to 125%, compared to 100% earlier. For NBFCs, consumer loans include retail loans but exclude housing, educational, vehicle, and microfinance loans, along with lending against gold jewellery.
Similarly, credit card receivables for NBFCs will attract a risk weight of 125%, compared to an earlier 100%.
The FIDC underlined the concerns over a sharp increase in the cost of funds for unsecured personal loans and credit card receivables, "especially at a time when the MSME and self-employed segments are emerging out of the Covid impact."
In the letter seen by BQ Prime, the representative body requested the RBI restore the risk weight on bank loans to NBFCs, as the majority of the NBFCs' loan book consists of MSME loans, vehicle loans and other categories of loans.
In the last few days, analysts have flagged concerns about the growth of NBFCs going forward, as it would push the cost of borrowings higher and, in turn, make lending costlier. Banks' borrowings, which are a major source of funding for the NBFCs, constitute 41.2% of the total borrowings of the entities as of March 31, according to S&P Global Research.
"The cost of bank loans to NBFCs will rise incrementally," the firm said in a research note on Nov. 17.
According to analysts at Bernstein Research, the RBI's move is a "double whammy" for NBFCs as it would result in higher capital charges and borrowing expenses.
"Within the NBFCs, the larger ones are likely to see a greater cost of funds impact as the change in capital charge (from a 25 percentage point increase) would be greater for them versus the smaller NBFCs," Bernstein Research said.
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Banking & Finance
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Some of the biggest names in finance are making new bets on cryptocurrencies, adding competition and momentum to an upstart industry that is under increasing pressure from US regulators.
The world's largest money manager, BlackRock (BLK), wants to start a new exchange-traded fund that would use bitcoin as underlying asset.
One of the world's biggest hedge funds, Citadel Securities, is backing a new cryptocurrency exchange along with Fidelity Investments and Charles Schwab (SCHW), two other sizable money managers.
And one of the world's biggest lenders, Deutsche Bank, wants to operate a crypto custody business that would hold digital assets for its clients.
These endorsements from institutions that have a track record on Wall Street are helping to push the value of cryptocurrencies higher, especially bitcoin (BTC-USD).
The world’s largest cryptocurrency rose to its highest price in a year on Friday, to $31,389, after climbing above $30,000 for the first time since April. Through Friday bitcoin had risen 81% year to date.
The total market capitalization for crypto assets reached $1.2 trillion on Friday, 14% higher than where it stood a week earlier.
Rising peril
This new interest from mainstream financial institutions comes at a time of rising peril for an industry that struggled to regain its footing following the 2022 implosion of cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the regulatory crackdown that followed.
The Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month filed lawsuits against the biggest crypto exchanges in the US and the world, Coinbase (COIN) and Binance, alleging they both allowed digital currencies to trade on their platforms that should have been registered with the agency.
That stoked new concerns that it could become more difficult to trade certain digital assets. Since the beginning of 2023 the SEC has charged 15 different crypto actors with violating securities laws.
A surprise turnaround in sentiment about the industry started June 15, when BlackRock, which controls more than $9 trillion in assets, filed paperwork with the SEC to create a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund.
Such a fund would be tagged to the value of the original digital asset instead of merely tracking bitcoin futures. Coinbase would be the custodian for the bitcoin holdings.
"I think there's an element of — we need institutional custodians to step in and play roles and participate in digital token economies," BlackRock’s head of strategic partnerships Joseph Chalom said Thursday at the Coinbase State of Crypto Summit in partnership with the FT.
The value of bitcoin soared on the announcement. Other institutional players such as Invesco and Wisdom Tree Investments quickly followed by renewing spot bitcoin ETF applications they had previously submitted to regulators.
The efforts still face a significant hurdle. The SEC has denied 27 prior applications to create spot bitcoin ETFs since 2013, arguing the products are vulnerable to market manipulation.
Wisdom Tree, in fact, was turned away in 2021. One asset manager, Grayscale Investments, is suing the SEC because it wasn't allowed to convert its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into a spot bitcoin offering.
'Conflicts of interest'
Another catalyst for the industry came this week when a new cryptocurrency exchange that has backing from Citadel, Fidelity and Charles Schwab said it had begun executing trades.
The venture, EDX Markets, began discussing its plans in late 2022 and touting itself as an operation that would "remove significant conflicts of interest that affect existing cryptocurrency exchanges."
It made the same point again last week, citing a "non-custodial model designed to mitigate conflicts of interest." It won't handle digital assets owned by customers, instead running a marketplace where buyers and sellers deal with each other directly.
As part of FTX's collapse last year it was revealed that an affiliated trading firm used customer assets to make its own trades. The SEC has also alleged that Binance misused customer funds, a charge Binance denies.
Earlier this month SEC Chair Gary Gensler said in a briefing with reporters that a standard business model for crypto exchanges is "built on conflicts," "limited disclosure” and “at times deception."
Jamil Nazarali, CEO of EDX, said in an interview that "FTX just validated our business model." What EDC is doing, he added, is "taking the best of the digital world, 24 by seven trading, many of the innovations of blockchain and combining it with the investor protections in traditional finance."
EDX says it will offer trading in just four cryptocurrencies—bitcoin, ether, litecoin and bitcoin cash. None of those assets have been deemed securities by the SEC, allowing EDX to potentially sidestep some of the problems encountered by Coinbase and Binance.
Together those exchanges allow the trading of 19 digital currencies that the SEC has labeled as securities, meaning they need to be registered with the agency. In total the agency has designated 55 cryptocurrencies as securities in various lawsuits, according to data compiled by Cryptorank.io.
Coinbase is fighting the suit and denies the SEC's claims. On Thursday its CEO Brian Armstrong did not sound worried while speaking at a crypto conference in New York.
Instead he said in the next five to seven years the Coinbase platform could turn into a "superapp' like WeChat, which is used in Asia for everything from messaging to banking to ordering food.
"Despite some negative rhetoric, headlines, this industry is moving forward," he said.
Roger Balston, head of digital assets for Franklin Templeton, said the scrutiny from regulators is necessary.
"As much as it's been bumpy, regulatory clarity really is clearing the decks for the adoption of standards that will allow capital to flow," he told Yahoo Finance.
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Crypto Trading & Speculation
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- Target CEO Brian Cornell described aggressive behavior and serious safety threats that employees faced because of the company's Pride month collection.
- Cornell said he decided to pull some of the controversial merchandise, even though he knew that would also get a strong reaction.
- The discounter has had a Pride month collection for over a decade.
Target CEO Brian Cornell defended his decision to pull some of the retailer's Pride Collection merchandise off shelves earlier this year, saying backlash against the items led to the most serious safety threats that he can recall in his decade with the company.
In an interview aired on "Squawk Box" Thursday morning with CNBC's Becky Quick, Cornell said employees dealt with "very aggressive behavior" in stores, including threats, destruction of merchandise and disruptions at the cashier area. He said some people yelled at employees and "threatened to light product on fire" in stores.
"I've seen natural disasters," Cornell said. "We've seen the impact of Covid leading into the pandemic. Some of the violence that took place after George Floyd's murder. But I will tell you, Becky, what I saw back in May is the first time since I've been in this job where I had store team members saying, 'It's not safe to come to work.'"
Target has sold merchandise timed for Pride month, which celebrates LGBTQ+ people and issues in June, for more than a decade. Yet the Minneapolis-based discounter faced sharp backlash this year to items in the collection, which included swimsuits and other items for transgender Americans.
The response coincided with laws across the country that restrict medical care, bathroom access and more for transgender Americans and set guidelines for the social issues that children learn about in certain classrooms.
In August, Cornell said the strong reaction to the Pride collection added to the company's challenges — and disappointing sales — in the quarter.
In the interview aired on Thursday, Cornell said he made the call to remove the controversial merchandise, despite knowing it would create even more of a reaction.
"We had to prioritize the safety of our teams," he said. "And I knew personally this was not gonna be well received. But we had to prioritize the safety of the team."
This story is developing. Please check back for updates.
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Consumer & Retail
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Sunak Faces Tough Task To Reset Tory Appeal In Time For U.K. Election
Barely a year ago, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak took over a government in free-fall, shunned by the markets and riven by internal squabbling. The task facing him may be even harder now.
(Bloomberg) -- Barely a year ago, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak took over a government in free-fall, shunned by the markets and riven by internal squabbling. The task facing him may be even harder now.
Sunak, 43, is slated to take the stage Wednesday in Manchester for what is shaping up to be the biggest speech of his political career. The premier is expected to lay out his plan to “fundamentally change” Britain in a keynote address to the ruling Conservative Party’s annual conference.
The address is Sunak’s best chance for a reset in the eyes of voters ahead of a general election widely expected next fall. But the conference in Manchester has been dominated by questions about whether he would scrap part of the HS2 high-speed rail project linking the northern city to Birmingham.
Read More: Sunak Faces Backlash as He Prepares to Trim High-Speed Rail Plan
Ministers spent much of the four-day gathering waiting for Sunak to call a Cabinet meeting on the sidelines of the conference to ratify a decision on the HS2 project. The prime minister was expected to seek ministers’ backing to halt development of the rail’s Birmingham-to-Manchester leg while spending some of the savings to expand other east-west transport links, according to people familiar with the matter.
But the conference slogan — Long-Term Decisions for a Brighter Future - jars with the prospect of the premier scrapping a project that his five previous predecessors billed as a cornerstone of its plan to redevelop the north. It comes after Sunak watered down the party’s green agenda, again retreating on decisions his predecessors had made to chart a longer-term pathway to so-called net zero greenhouse gas emissions.
“We’ve had thirty years of a political system which incentivizes the easy decision, not the right one,” Sunak will tell delegates on Wednesday, according to excerpts of his speech released by his office. “Thirty years of vested interests standing in the way of change.”
The danger for Sunak is that after more than 13 years of Conservative governments he’ll be unable to persuade voters that he represents change.
Read More: Tory Ministers Pressure Hunt to Cut UK Taxes Before Election
After inheriting a party that had sunk to historic lows in the polls under the disastrous premiership of Liz Truss, the party’s fifth premier in just over six years has repaired some of the Tories’ standing with voters. That was largely achieved by reversing most of Truss’s economic policies to stabilize bond and currency markets unnerved by a raft of unfunded tax cuts.
But while the Tory poll deficit behind Labour is around half the record level of near 40 points it hit last year, it’s stayed stubbornly at about 20 points for months. That’s as Sunak struggled to show he’s delivering on five key promises to voters to halve inflation, restore growth, cut net debt, reducing National Health Service waiting lists and stopping immigrants crossing the English Channel from France.
In Manchester, there have been slim pickings for those looking for new policy announcements.
With a growing chorus within the party calling for tax cuts to attract voters, Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt said he doesn’t have the fiscal power to deliver them at present, and even if he did, it would risk stoking the inflation that the government is trying to bring down.
Read More: Firebrand Tory Taps US Culture War Rhetoric to Stoke Support
A succession of ministers used their speeches to stoke division by embracing the rhetoric of US-style culture wars on issues including the environment, trans rights and immigration, and attacking Labour for its “woke” policies.
Transport Secretary Mark Harper tapped into conspiracy theories around so-called 15-minute cities; Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho falsely accused Labour of wanting to tax meat consumption, and Home Secretary Suella Braverman railed against the “luxury beliefs brigade” for defending immigrants.
And as for HS2, Sunak spent Tuesday telling journalists he hasn’t yet made up his mind — even as a person familiar with his thinking said the premier was due to present his plan to scrap its northern leg to his Cabinet.
If he does go ahead with that plan, “I would describe this as a national tragedy here in the North of England economically at least,” Henri Murison, Chief Executive Officer of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, an association of northern businesses, told BBC radio on Wednesday. “In 100 years, the economy of the North will be smaller because of this decision.”
Richard Bowker former chairman of the Strategic Rail Authority, described any decision to scrap the northern leg of HS2 as “a stake through the heart,” saying “there’s nothing that we’re aware of that will do what HS2 would have done” in terms of improving congestion on the railways around Manchester.
Sunak may pull a few policy rabbits out of his hat in his speech — with Cabinet minister Grant Shapps telling Times Radio on Wednesday that “you can be pretty confident” there will be something on HS2. That would likely include new transport projects in Northern England to sweeten the blow. A person familiar with the matter said the premier may also unveil a New Zealand-style progressive ban on smoking that ratchets up the age at which people can’t buy cigarettes.
“Our political system is too focused on short-term advantage, not long-term success,” Sunak will say. “Politicians spent more time campaigning for change than actually delivering it.”
Given the state of the polls, it may be Sunak doesn’t get the chance to deliver change and enjoy that long-term success he seeks.
(Updates with comments on HS2 from Murison, Bowker, Shapps starting in 15th paragraph.)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.
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United Kingdom Business & Economics
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Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear unveiled a portion of his state budget proposal Tuesday that deals with infrastructure, including funding requests for improving drinking water, affordable housing and road and bridge improvements.
Beshear, who is running for reelection against Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron, said the state's economy is "red-hot" and should use a historic budget surplus to make further infrastructure investments.
"To capitalize on this exciting momentum, we must invest in infrastructure projects that help us continue to build that better Kentucky we all want," Beshear said. "One where all our families can prosper and secure a good paying job."
Beshear would have to be reelected to a second term in November to make the budget proposals to state lawmakers, who will convene for their annual session in January.
The proposals include a request for $500 million in state funds for clean water programs over two years, to match $500 million in federal dollars for clean water that have been allocated to the state since 2021.
Beshear said Tuesday he would ask the Republican-dominated General Assembly for $100 million to fund construction and renovations at the state's career and technical education centers, as well as another $10 million from the General Fund for affordable housing initiatives.
Beshear said he would also ask state lawmakers for $200 million to continue construction of the Mountain Parkway and Interstate 69 project, and he is proposing another $50 million for bridge repairs around the state.
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Real Estate & Housing
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BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — After having maintained her innocence for nearly five years, pop star Shakira struck a last-minute deal on the opening day of her tax fraud trial in Barcelona to avoid the risk of going to prison.
Shakira told the presiding magistrate, José Manuel del Amo, on Monday that she accepted the agreement reached with prosecutors. She answered “yes” to confirm her acknowledgment of six counts of failing to pay the Spanish government 14.5 million euros (about $15.8 million) in taxes between 2012 and 2014.
READ MORE: Colombian pop singer Shakira to face trial over tax fraud in Spain
The trial, which was expected to include more than 100 witnesses over several weeks, was instead called off after just eight minutes.
Under the deal, Shakira is to receive a suspended three-year sentence and to pay a fine of 7.3 million euros ($8 million) in addition to the previously unpaid taxes and interest. She will pay another fine of 432,000 euros ($472,000) in exchange for having her prison sentence waived.
However, she now has it on her legal record that she was found guilty of tax fraud, which could affect another pending tax case.
The fraud allegations had hinged on where Shakira, now 46, lived during 2012-14. Prosecutors in Barcelona alleged the Colombian singer spent more than half of that period in Spain and therefore should have paid taxes on her worldwide income there even though her official residence was still in the Bahamas. Tax rates are much lower in the Bahamas than in Spain.
Prosecutors said in July that they would seek a prison sentence of eight years and two months and a fine of 24 million euros ($26 million) for the singer, who has won over a fans around the global with her hits in Spanish and English in different musical genres.
Shakira said in a statement provided by her public relations firm that she had wanted to fight on but put her family, career and peace of mind first.
“I have made the decision to finally resolve this matter with the best interest of my kids at heart who do not want to see their mom sacrifice her personal well-being in this fight,” she said. “I need to move past the stress and emotional toll of the last several years and focus on the things I love, my kids and all the opportunities to come in my career.”
The multiple Grammy and Latin Grammy winner waved and blew a kiss to a small crowd of bystanders before entering the courthouse. She briefly sat in front of the panel of judges, flanked by teams of prosecutors on one side and the defense on the other.
“This has been a difficult decision that took time to reach,” defense lawyer Miriam Company told reporters. “Her legal team had prepared the trial and were convinced we could demonstrate her innocence, but the circumstances changed and (Shakira) opted to accept the deal.”
Shakira turned down a deal offered to her by prosecutors to settle her case in July 2022, saying, via her Spanish public relations firm Llorente y Cuenca, that she “believes in her innocence and chooses to leave the issue in the hands of the law.” The details of that potential deal were not made public.
Shakira was named in the “Paradise Papers” leaks that detailed the offshore tax arrangements of numerous high-profile individuals, including musical celebrities such as Madonna and U2’s Bono.
Shakira’s public relations firm had previously said that she had already paid all that she owed and an additional 3 million euros (about $3.2 million) in interest.
The defense team for Shakira, the Barcelona firm Molins Defensa Penal, said in November 2022 that she had not spent more than 60 days a year inside the country during the period in question, adding she would have needed to have spent half the year in Spain to be considered a fiscal resident. Her defense argued that she was away from Barcelona for long stretches on a world tour in 2011 and then spent a lot of time in the United States as part of a jury for the NBC television music talent show The Voice.
Spanish prosecutors disagreed, and the investigating judge, Marco Juberías, wrote in 2021 on the conclusion of a three-year probe into the charges that he found there existed “sufficient evidence of criminality” for the case to go to trial. Shakira defended her innocence when she was questioned by Juberías in 2019.
She lost an appeal to have the case thrown out last year.
Shakira established her fiscal residency in Spain in 2014 at the same time her oldest child was enrolled in school in Barcelona, according to her defense team, as she was going to spend more time in the country with her family.
In Spain, an investigative judge carries out an initial probe and decides either to throw the case out or send it to trial.
Her troubles with Spain’s tax office are not over, though.
In a separate investigation, Spanish state prosecutors charged Shakira in September with alleged evasion of 6.7 million euros in taxes on her 2018 income. They accused her of using an offshore company based in a tax haven to avoid paying the taxes.
Spain has cracked down on soccer stars such as Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo over the past decade for not paying their full taxes. The former Barcelona and Real Madrid stars were found guilty of evasion but both avoided prison time after their sentences were suspended.
Shakira, whose full name is Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, has two children, Milan and Sasha, with Barcelona soccer star Gerard Piqué. The couple lived together in Barcelona before ending their 11-year relationship last year. Since then, she has resided in Miami.
After triumphing at the Latin Grammy Awards gala in Seville on Thursday, Shakira thanked her fans in Spain for “being with me in the good times and the bad.”
AP videojournalists Renata Brito and Hernán Muñoz contributed to this report.
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Inflation
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When your home is damaged due to weather, fire or some other kind of disaster, all you want is to have it restored to the way it was. However, insurance claim responses can take some time, leaving you and your contractor waiting for weeks or even longer.
Enter iink, a digital payments network out to make it easier to get funds associated with multiparty property insurance claims. The Tampa-based company is integrating with mortgage servicing banks and insurance carriers to create an entirely digital and automated workflow to keep the restoration process moving along.
That work is buoyed by some fresh capital in the way of $12 million in Series A financing led by Headline. The firm was joined by Motley Fool Ventures, Chartline Capital Partners, Silver Circle Ventures and a group of existing investors.
When the company was founded in 2017, and up until 2022, iink was operating as a service business, Tom McGrath, co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch. That’s mainly because his co-founders Ryan Holiday, Ken Lollar and Ryan Wetzel had experience as restoration professionals.
“They were trying to solve a problem that they themselves were dealing with,” McGrath said. “I came in from a product AI and machine learning background and around 2020, I said, this is a complex workflow that we can automate with technology or even a great UX/UI experience.”
Restoration professionals or property owners still have to do much of the paperwork manually and go back and forth with calls to customer service agents. So iink set out to bring together into the company’s systems all of the guidelines, documentation and checks and balances that banks have in place. They turned it into something similar to TurboTax that would ask a series of questions used to expedite payments, McGrath said.
With its approach, iink knows the bank is going to release funds, so the company will provide the contractor with a line of credit. This solves two problems, according to McGrath: cash flow and administrative burden.
“Having to do all of the follow-up work is oftentimes what is passed off to the contractor,” he said. “What’s unique about us is that we’re not only helping you get the money from lending faster, but helping you pay that loan back quickly.”
Iink’s three core products include the cash flow component, for funding in as little as two business days; remote deposit capture and payments, to easily get multiparty claim check processing completed; and the ability to let iink work with the mortgage company on the contractor’s behalf.
The remote check processing solution starts as a free tier with a one-time $299 set-up fee, while the other components can be added for a payment of up to 1.95% of claim check per month with some additional fees. The company also charges a monthly subscription fee for unlimited use.
In the past 12 months, iink has doubled the number of customers it is working with and is averaging about $25 million in terms of insurance claim dollar volume it is processing. That amounts to a tripling in size of revenue, McGrath said.
Meanwhile, including the new investment, the company has raised around $23 million in total funding. Though McGrath declined to disclose iink’s valuation, he did say that it was an up round that tripled its valuation from the seed round.
“It was very unique, actually, we got about four term sheets for lead,” he said. “The first one that we got was actually for less valuation, and all my investors, for the most part, said that we should take it as it is a very difficult fundraising environment. We decided to take a risk and counter that we think that we’re worth more. Then we found Headline, who saw that potential, saw that growth and allowed us to get the right amount of capital that we needed to get the job done.”
The company intends to deploy the new funds into three buckets: scalability and automation, building the customer base and integrations and channel partnerships. It is also hiring both in the engineering and business areas.
“One of the reasons we named ourselves iink was because we just wanted to get rid of the paper check and the ink,” McGrath said. “By having those partnerships and more close relationships with the banks and carriers, my hope is to make it completely digital, and in a future state, something that’s instant so that no one has to deal with the lapse in time that they deal with today.”
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Fatima Hussein, Associated Press
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WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. government officials on Wednesday started cracking down on the co-founders of the virtual currency mixer Tornado Cash, just days after a federal judge decided that the government had the authority to sanction them.
Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Roman Semenov, one of the three co-founders of Tornado Cash, for allegedly supporting the North Korean hacking organization, Lazarus Group, among other things.
Also Wednesday, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment charging Semenov and Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm with conspiracy to commit money laundering, operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and other crimes. Storm was arrested Wednesday by federal officials.
Tornado Cash and other mixing services combine various digital assets, including potentially illegally obtained funds with legitimately obtained funds, so that illegal actors can obscure the origin of the stolen funds.
READ MORE: Amid value drops and increased regulation, what’s the future of cryptocurrency?
Tornado Cash was sanctioned in August 2022, accused of helping to launder more than $7 billion worth of virtual currency since its creation in 2019. Treasury says Tornado Cash’s systems were used, among other things, to launder more than $96 million drawn from the June Harmony blockchain bridge theft and August Nomad crypto firm heist. Federal prosecutors also charged Semenov and Storm with violating the sanctions against Tornado Cash.
The penalties and arrest come after U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman decided Aug. 17 that Treasury did not overstep its authority in sanctioning Tornado Cash. A group of crypto investors brought a lawsuit against Treasury in September 2022, alleging that Treasury overstepped its authority in sanctioning Tornado Cash.
The sanctions faced strong pushback from the crypto industry, which argued that the sanctions open the door to limiting Americans’ usage of privacy software.
A third co-founder of Tornado Cash, Alexey Pertsev, was arrested in August 2022 on money laundering charges in the Netherlands.
Last May, the U.S. sanctioned North Korean digital currency mixing firm Blender.io, which the country allegedly uses to launder stolen virtual currency and support cyber crimes.
Blender is accused of helping Lazarus Group to carry out a $620 million digital currency heist in March, the biggest of its kind to date.
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Crypto Trading & Speculation
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By Scott Murdoch and Lewis Jackson
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Origin Energy's investors have rejected a $10.6 billion Brookfield-led consortium's bid for Australia's largest power retailer at a shareholder meeting on Monday.
The proxy votes were 31.07% against the bid with 66.97% in favour, a slide shown to investors at meeting in Sydney showed, failing to reach the 75% threshold required for a takeover to proceed.
A final result will be known later on Monday.
The deal was expected to fail after Origin's largest shareholder A$300 billion ($198 billion) pension fund AustralianSuper said it would reject the A$9.39 per share offer.
AustralianSuper owns about 17% of Origin, which was enough to block the bid that required at least 75% support from the votes cast.
Origin's board on Thursday rejected an alternative proposal lodged last week from the consortium to be considered if the current offer failed.
Brookfield flagged on Friday if the deal was voted down the consortium would need to consider whether a new government plan to reshape energy markets negatively impacted its view of Origin's value.
Origin shares were down 3.9% after the investor vote, extending losses to a fresh nine month low.
(Reporting by Scott Murdoch and Lewis Jackson in Sydney; Editing by Alasdair Pal)
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Australia Business & Economics
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Three weeks ago, I put up the r/UKPolitics autumn ’23 survey, and got a healthy 1776 responses, which is a good political number of course.
First, we have our demographic questions. The first two questions asked who people would vote for in a general election tomorrow, firstly under real life conditions ie considering where you live and any tactical voting considerations, and then next under a hypothetical where all parties stood an equal chance of winning.
If there were a GE tomorrow, which party would you vote for, considering where you live and any tactical voting considerations
____________________________
If there were a GE tomorrow, which party would you vote for, if all parties stood an equal chance of winning?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Then some other demographic queries
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Section two: the test
For the next section, people were invited to estimate various demographics of the UK, without looking up the answer.
This one was surprisingly hard to get an actual UK-wide answer for, so I’ve done my own calculation from the various census data as below
At 83.5%, the closest answer was the plurality answer of 85%, so well done to the 37% who got that.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Per wikipedia, 22.6% of British people aged 25 to 64 attained a bachelor’s degree or higher (as at 2017), so well done to the 4.3% of correct answerers!
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Per KCL, the answer is 49%, so well the 22.9% who went for 50% got this one.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Per the govt, the answer is 7%, so the 5% or lower crowd get this one.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Section 3 – agree?
Finally, we ended with the classic set of statements, to which respondents gave a 1 to 7 answer, which generally meant 1 – strongly disagree, 4 – neither agree nor disagree, 7 strongly disagree. The exception was the bin question, in which it actually meant 1 to 7 bins.
Please note, in dividing up the answers by party here, I used the party vote if all parties could win, rather than how people voted considering tactical voting etc.
Firstly, the answers to the questions that showed little difference between how various parties’ voters answered:
- If I came across an injured elephant at the zoo, and it turned out it needed £200 for medicine to live, and only I could pay it, I would pay the bill, rather than letting the elephant die.
- It’s reasonable to protest against housing developments where there is an apparent lack of school or health provision
- In order to prevent rising crime, we should hire many more police officers
- HS2 should be built according to the full original plan, and I’m not too worried about how much it will cost
- What is the maximum number of bins you would be willing to sort your rubbish into?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Building luxury housing makes housing cheaper for everyone
Now here I’m going to be a little bit naughty; I rarely do this, but this is a question that actually has quite a lot of economic data behind it.
In studies such as this one, or this one (London specific) or even this one, it is shown again and again that building luxury housing does make housing cheaper for everyone, and there’s pretty much no data to suggest otherwise.
Therefore, almost all of you are wrong 🙂
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
In order to meet climate targets people should have a limit on how many flights they can take per year
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
In order to meet climate targets, a tax on meat will be necessary
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
I would have no objection about my teenage daughter competing against a trans girl in a sport
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
The people who say ‘multiculturalism has failed’ are generally racist
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Private schools should be abolished
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
16 year olds are too young to have the vote
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Real Estate & Housing
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Britain’s biggest mortgage lender is facing questions about how it allowed a £42,500 loan taken out by an older couple to turn into a debt estimated at £477,000.
Gary Cooper discovered that in 1997 his parents took out a type of mortgage that entitled the lender to 75% of any house price rises over the life of the loan.
However, the couple were not preyed on by loan sharks – the lender is an offshoot of Bank of Scotland, part of Lloyds Banking Group. Earlier this month the Lloyds group reported that its profits had leapt by 46% to hit £2.3bn for the first three months of the year.
Cooper’s parents died in 2021, and their house was last year valued at £750,000, so – as things stand – he and his sister will have to hand over most of that to the bank. He says he feels certain his late parents did not realise that that £42,500 loan could spiral to close to £500,000 and “cost their kids their inheritance”.
However, the bank says it recommended at the time that customers took independent financial advice to ensure they understood the product and that it was right for them, and adds that in this case, solicitors were instructed by the borrowers.
The Coopers are among hundreds – probably thousands – of families whose lives have been blighted by shared appreciation mortgages (Sams). This was a type of home loan that was only on sale for a brief period, between 1996 and 1998, and only available from two banks, Bank of Scotland and Barclays.
These loans were ostensibly aimed at helping “asset-rich, cash-poor” older people release some of the value locked up in their homes. They typically allowed people to borrow up to 25% of the property’s value, and usually there were no repayments to make during the lifetime of the loan.
In return, people were required to pay back the original amount when the mortgage was repaid, or when they died and the house was sold, plus a share of any increase in the value of their home.
This share was usually worked out on a three-to-one basis – so if you borrowed 25% of the value, you would be in line to hand over 75% of the future growth in value.
Of course, in the years since those mortgages were sold, house prices have rocketed, leaving people facing massive repayments if they want to move – or, as in the case of Cooper, leaving the offspring of those who signed up with a huge and costly headache.
Cooper’s parents took out the £42,500 loan on their home in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, in late 1997. That amount represented 25% of their home’s value at the time (according to the bank) of £170,000.
Cooper, who also lives in Surrey, says: “What we thought we knew was that there was a fortysomething-thousand-pound loan on the property.” He says his father said something at the time about the loan eventually having to be repaid “plus 4%” but adds: “We have no idea where that came from. It subsequently turned out that that was not the case.”
Cooper says that after his father’s death in September 2021, he was going through his papers and discovered a mortgage statement from Bank of Scotland. “In the small print it referred to ‘75%’. This rang alarm bells, so I began the search for more information.”
He later complained to the bank, claiming the mortgage was mis-sold, but the bank rejected the family’s complaint.
The bank confirmed that the “share of appreciation percentage” applying to the loan was 75%. That gives a figure of £435,000, based on 75% of the £580,000 growth in the property’s value between 1997 and last year. Plus, of course, the original loan of £42,500 has to be repaid, taking the estimated total to £477,500.
To make matters worse, the family’s future options are limited. Sams date back to before the introduction of mortgage regulation and the creation of the UK’s Financial Ombudsman Service, so they are not regulated. Also, the lender isn’t Bank of Scotland itself but a subsidiary firm – called BOS (Shared Appreciation Mortgages) No 6 plc – although the bank administers the loans. Because the subsidiary isn’t carrying out any “regulated activities”, the ombudsman has no jurisdiction over it, and no power to investigate a complaint about the amount owed ballooning tenfold.
Cooper says: “This is not what you expect from a bank.”
However, a court case is brewing that could help decide how things pan out for the estimated 2,000-plus people who still have a Bank of Scotland-administered Sam loan.
The law firm Teacher Stern is bringing a case against Bank of Scotland, with a trial due to take place in January next year. The firm says it represents 160 Bank of Scotland Sam borrowers and that some owe in excess of £1m.
Guardian Money put Cooper’s claims – including his allegation that the loan was mis-sold – to the bank. We also sent it our calculations for what we believe is owed based on the latest figures.
A spokesperson for Bank of Scotland told us that Sams were “a specialist type of mortgage available in 1997-98, in this instance interest-free in return for a share of increased property value. We recommended borrowers took independent financial advice to ensure they understood the product and that it was suitable for their needs, and all borrowers were advised by their own solicitor. In this case, a solicitor was instructed by the borrowers, and the offer was witnessed by an IFA [independent financial adviser].”
The bank also confirmed there is litigation with what it says is a small number of customers but says it is unable to comment on this further.
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Real Estate & Housing
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By Lewis Jackson
SYDNEY (Reuters) - The long-term value of hotly contested $10.6 billion takeover target Origin Energy has been muddied by a government plan to accelerate the rollout of renewable energy, announced just hours before a key shareholder vote.
The Australian government announced plans on Thursday to underwrite 32 gigawatts (GW) of new wind, solar and battery projects. Two energy experts told Reuters it could spur investment worth at least A$30 billion ($20 billion). The announcement contained no figures.
The plan to reshape the electricity market, where Origin is the second largest power producer, has scrambled the outlook for electricity prices, future investments, and existing plants.
It was released just before Origin announced a last-minute revised offer from Brookfield and EIG as it became clear investors would reject the consortium's earlier bid. Origin's board delayed the vote to Dec. 4 to consider the bid and the impact of the 32 GW scheme.
The uncertain outlook for Origin under the government's new policy has made some investors say it makes more sense than ever to sell to the suitors, but top shareholder AustralianSuper is adamant it wants to hold on.
More renewables will ultimately lower electricity prices, squeeze margins and shorten the life of Origin's existing coal and gas assets, said Max Vickerson, an equity analyst at Morgans.
"This move accelerates the destruction of value at the legacy assets owned by Origin and AGL," he said, referring to Origin's rival AGL Energy. "Cheaper wholesale prices are not a good thing on balance for Origin."
However, the potential for new investment via the government's scheme undercuts Brookfield's argument that Origin and Australia needed its deep pockets to decarbonise quickly, Vickerson said.
Brookfield has not commented publicly on the scheme, but a person close to the asset manager said the revenue guarantee for eligible projects would diminish the benefits of having a large customer base for a big power producer, like Origin.
Should others take up the government's underwriting offer, Origin could potentially save billions by letting others build new wind and solar farms and simply contracting power for its 4.2 million customers, said Tom Leske a director at Churchill Capital, which advises event-driven hedge funds.
"But ultimately there's so much variability about what the economic outcome is going to be," he said.
Pension giant AustralianSuper has argued Origin's stake in fast-growing British renewable energy company Octopus Energy, gas assets and millions of customers position the company well for the energy transition.
The government's new scheme only strengthens the fund's conviction about Origin, according to a person familiar with AustralianSuper's thinking.
However, Simon Mawhinney, chief investment officer at fund manager Allan Gray, which owns a roughly 3% stake in Origin, said the government's plan appears likely to push down returns.
More uncertainty only strengthens the case for taking the A$9.43 on offer today, he said.
"The price was fair given our perception of the risk and rewards before the announcement. This adds a lot of uncertainty."
"It's probably good for consumers and the environment and bad for everyone else," he said.
($1 = 1.5366 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Lewis Jackson; Editing by Sonali Paul)
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Renewable Energy
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Angel One Looking At More Acquisitions To Tap Gen Z After Dstreet Finance Deal
Angel One has acquired the team of Bengaluru-based Dstreet Finance, which will lead content, engagement and learning offerings.
Angel One Ltd. is keen on acquiring more startups and boosting inorganic growth, after acquiring Dstreet Finance.
The broking platform has acquired the team of Bengaluru-based fintech startup, Dstreet Finance, which will lead content, user engagement and learning related offerings, it announced on Thursday. The deal size was undisclosed.
The integration of the Dstreet team is a "strategic move towards enhancing our offerings for the next-generation clients and aligns with our vision of evolving into a comprehensive fintech company," said Dinesh Thakkar, chairman and managing director at Angel One, in a press statement.
In a conversation with BQ Prime, Chief Business Officer Prateek Mehta said typically, in financial services, when a customer has made a choice of trust on a particular platform, they want more from that platform.
In that context, Angel One can partner with different players in the industry, he said. "In our case, we know our customers are looking for more solutions ... the wealth (management) space is of a lot of interest for us. Today, our customer's average age is 28-29, but over the next 4-5 years, they will get older and what they want to do with their money, savings, wealth accumulation and wealth creation—all of that is going to change," he said.
Mehta added that Angel One has a lot of interest in two other areas for acquisitions. "One is adjacencies to our core broking business, wherein people are trying to figure out how to get to better outcomes. Then, there are content engagement and learning platforms," he said.
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Stocks Trading & Speculation
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Singapore Releases New AI Toolkit to Encourage Fair and Ethical Use in Finance
A consortium led by Singapore’s central bank released Veritas Toolkit 2.0 – a new version of the solution developed to improve the responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in the financial sector. Among other improvements, the toolkit brings new assessment methodologies focused on the four key principles of fairness, ethics, accountability, and transparency.
MAS Launches New Version of Veritas Toolkit
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the city-state’s central bank and financial regulator, launched a new version of its open-source toolkit developed to guide financial industry players regarding the responsible use of AI in their products and offerings. The solution, known as the ‘Veritas Toolkit version 2.01,’ helps financial institutions to implement “assessment methodologies for the Fairness, Ethics, Accountability, and Transparency (FEAT) principles.”
“The FEAT principles provide guidance to firms offering financial products and services on the responsible use of AI and data analytics.”– the MAS said in the press release.
According to MAS, Veritas Toolkit represents the first-of-its-kind tool developed for the financial sector. The launch of the new version comes more than a year after the central bank released the initial edition, which primarily focused on the Fairness assessment approach.
Veritas was developed by a 31-member consortium spearheaded by the MAS. Specifically, the key developers of the toolkit were Accenture and Bank of China. At the same time, BNY Mellon, DBS Bank (DBS), OCBC Bank (OCBC), and United Overseas Bank Limited (UOB) were mainly responsible for the pilot testing.
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AI Demonstrates Bias Risks, Especially in Finance
The launch of the Veritas toolkit comes amid a frenzy in the broader AI sector. However, while this sophisticated technology has displayed drastic advancements and novel use cases in the previous months, there are also areas to improve.
For instance, AI is currently grappling with a significant issue of racial bias. Various instances reveal the presence of discrimination, such as biometric identification systems that exhibit higher rates of misidentification for individuals from minority backgrounds.
Furthermore, these repercussions of bias in AI become particularly pronounced within the banking and financial services sector. Rumman Chowdhury, Twitter’s ex-chief of machine learning ethics, transparency and accountability, said, “algorithmic discrimination is actually very tangible in lending.”
One of the possible reasons behind this is that banks are usually slow in adopting new tech tools, and the same goes for AI. Given that lenders and other financial institutions are heavily regulated, it will likely take some time for them to embrace the latest AI solutions that could address the aforementioned risks.
Do you think AI will play a key role in the finance industry in the future? Let us know in the comments below.
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Banking & Finance
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Stock Market Today: All You Need To Know Going Into Trade On Nov. 16
Stocks in the news, big brokerage calls of the day, complete trade setup and much more!
U.S. stocks extended their November gains on speculation that the Federal Reserve will be able to achieve a soft landing as the U.S. economy remains fairly resilient and inflation shows signs of cooling, reported Bloomberg.
The S&P 500 Index and Nasdaq 100 rose by 0.33% and 0.17%, respectively, as of 12:54 p.m. New York time. Dow Jones Industrial Average rose by 0.32%.
Brent crude was trading 0.95% lower at $81.69 a barrel. Gold was lower by 0.12% at $1,961.93 an ounce.
India's benchmark stock indices staged a sharp recovery through late trade to close at a four-week high on Wednesday, led by gains in realty and IT stocks.
The S&P BSE Sensex closed 742 points, or 1.14%, higher at 65,675.93, while the NSE Nifty 50 gained 232 points, or 1.19%, to end at 19,675.45.
Overseas investors turned net buyers of Indian equities on Wednesday after 14 consecutive sessions of selling. Foreign portfolio investors mopped up stocks worth Rs 550.2 crore; domestic institutional investors also remained net buyers and bought equities worth Rs 609.8 crore, the NSE data showed.
The Indian rupee strengthened 18 paise to close at 83.15 against the U.S. dollar on Wednesday.
Stocks To Watch
Bajaj Finance: The Reserve Bank of India barred the company from lending under its “eCOM” and “Insta EMI Card” products. The regulator said that it would review the supervisory restrictions after the company rectifies the deficiencies to the RBI’s satisfaction.
TCS: The IT major has set Nov. 25 as the record date for its Rs 17,000 crore buyback. The company will buy back up to 4.09 crore shares for Rs 4,150 apiece.
Dabur: The company's two foreign subsidiaries, Dabur International and Dermoviva Skin Essentials, have been removed as defendants in multiple lawsuits filed in a U.S. court over allegations that their hair-relaxer products caused ovarian cancer, uterine cancer and other related health issues.
Satin Creditcare Network: A meeting of the board of directors of the company is scheduled to be held on Nov. 20 to consider the fund-raising proposal by way of the issuance of listed/unlisted, secured/unsecured, and non-convertible debentures on a private placement basis.
IIFL Finance: The NBFC will invest up to Rs 200 crore in arm IIFL Samasta Finance by way of subscription to 7,47,94,315 fully paid-up equity shares of face value of Rs 10 each, at a premium of Rs. 16.74 per share, through rights issue.
Suzlon Energy: Suzlon Group announced the RLMM listing of its S144-3 MW series of wind turbines, which are extendable to 3.15 MW, making them a formidable force in the market. This listing marks an important milestone for the successful commercialization of the product.
One 97 Communications: The company announced a partnership with global travel technology company Amadeus for the next three years. It will integrate Amadeus's expansive travel platform, enhancing travellers' experiences from search to booking and payments.
Vedanta: Unit Malco Energy incorporated a new wholly-owned subsidiary in the name of ‘Vedanta Copper International VCI' in Saudi Arabia for its copper business.
Brightcom Group: The company approved the appointment of Brand & Associates as new statutory auditors effective Nov. 15. It sought a 40-day extension from exchanges for filing half-yearly results due to the resignation of the existing auditor and the subsequent appointment of a new auditor.
RateGain Travel Technologies: The company opened its qualified institution placement issue on Nov. 15. The floor price has been fixed at Rs 676.66 per share.
Bulk Deals
ASK Automotive: Goldman Sachs India Equity Portfolio bought 23.20 lakh shares (1.17%) at Rs 310.05.
Insider Trades
Sasken Technologies: Promoter Arti Mody bought 8,952 shares on Nov. 12.
Som Distilleries & Breweries: Promoter Jagdish Kumar Arora bought 11 thousand shares on Nov.13.
Usha Martin: Promoter Nidhi Rajgarhia sold 3000 shares from Nov. 12. to Nov. 13.
Who's Meeting Whom
Balrampur Chini Mills: To meet analysts and investors on Nov. 22.
Cochin Shipyard: To meet analysts and investors on Nov.20.
Redington: To meet analysts and institutional investors on Nov. 20 and 21.
Antony Waste Handling Cell: To meet analysts and institutional investors on Nov. 20.
Nazara Technologies: To meet analysts and institutional investors on Nov. 21.
Thyrocare: To meet analysts and investors on Nov. 21.
Indiamart: To meet analysts and institutional investors on Nov. 22.
Trading Tweaks
Price band revised from 10% to 5%: EMS
Price band revised from 20% to 10%: Bliss GVS Pharma
Ex/record date Interim dividend: Bayer Cropscience, Cigniti Technologies, Container Corp. of India, MSTC, Power Grid, Saksoft, and Sundram Fasteners.
Move into a short-term ASM framework: Centrum Capital.
F&O Cues
Nifty November futures rose 1.16% to 19,723.60, at a premium of 48.15 points.
Nifty November futures open interest rose by 3.51% to 7,920 shares.
Nifty Bank November futures rose 0.91% to 44,412.85, at a premium of 211.15 points.
Nifty Bank November futures open interest fell by 5.71% to 9,437 shares.
Nifty Options Nov. 16 Expiry: Maximum call open interest at 19,800 and maximum put open interest at 19,600.
Nifty Bank Options Nov. 22 Expiry: Maximum call open interest at 44,500 and maximum put open interest at 44,000.
Securities in the ban period: Delta Corp., Hindustan Copper, Indiabulls Housing Finance, MCX, Sail, Zee Entertainment.
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Stocks Trading & Speculation
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IDFC First Bank, M&M, TVS Motor, Syrma SGS And More - Top Stock Picks For Diwali, Samvat 2080 By Anand Rathi
Here are the top stock picks for Samvat 2080 handpicked by us
BQ Prime’s special research section collates quality and in-depth equity and economy research reports from across India’s top brokerages, asset managers and research agencies. These reports offer BQ Prime’s subscribers an opportunity to expand their understanding of companies, sectors and the economy.
Anand Rathi Report
Here are the top stocks to 'Buy' for Samvat 2080 handpicked by us-
IDFC First Bank Ltd. (The upside potential is 37% from current market price.)
IDFC First Bank has undergone the first phase of its transformation from an infra financier to a granular retail lending bank. Investment in technology and building a scalable liability franchisee would keep costs high in the near term, despite strong granular loan growth.
The bank expects the credit card business to breakeven by FY25. 24-25% of the credit card mix are revolvers. IDFC First Bank expects to reach 13-15% return on equity by FY25 and 1.4-1.6% return on asset by FY25.
We assign a 'Buy' rating on the stock with a target price of Rs 114 per share.
Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd. (The upside potential is 18% from current market price.)
M&M has been the dominant market leader in the domestic tractor market, commanding a market share of 42.9% in Q1 FY24 (41.2% in FY23). With its offerings across different brands of Mahindra, Swaraj, Trakstar and soon to be launched Oja and its well-entrenched sales and service network, it is expected to maintain its leadership position going forward as well.
The introduction of new range of OJA tractors is expected to boost its topline in the future.
We assign a 'Buy' rating on the stock with a target price of Rs 1,770 per share.
Syrma SGS Technology Ltd. (The upside potential is 20% from current market price.)
The company has a total order book of ~Rs 35,000 million, with Rs 22,000-23,000 million expected to be delivered in the next 12 months. The company has done a capex of Rs 500 million in the Q1 FY24 and plans to spend Rs 2,000-2,500 million in total for the year.
Syrma can be a key player in the growing ESDM industry (especially in the original design manufacturing segment) if it grabs the opportunities available across end-user industries and executes well on the burgeoning order inflows.
We assign a 'Buy' rating on the stock with a target price of Rs 735 per share.
TVS Motor Company Ltd. (The upside potential is 15% from current market price.)
TVS Motor has been able to expand its presence beyond the South and currently has a significant presence in all the regions, in terms of sales. The efforts taken over the years to improve its pan-India dealer network have resulted in having a domestic presence.
Company is poised to outperform the industry on the back of new product launches in ICE and electric vehicle segments, higher focus on exports and premiumization, operating leverage, benign input prices and price hikes.
We assign 'Buy' rating on the stock with a target price of Rs 1,850 per share.
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DISCLAIMER
This report is authored by an external party. BQ Prime does not vouch for the accuracy of its contents nor is responsible for them in any way. The contents of this section do not constitute investment advice. For that you must always consult an expert based on your individual needs. The views expressed in the report are that of the author entity and do not represent the views of BQ Prime.
Users have no license to copy, modify, or distribute the content without permission of the Original Owner.
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Stocks Trading & Speculation
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Jeremy Hunt is to unveil plans for tougher benefit restrictions on those who “won’t even look for work”, which could include measures to stop those who are persistently sanctioned from claiming.
The chancellor will pledge new changes to the benefit sanction system in his speech to Conservative party conference on Monday, as the government looks to make savings on its welfare bill. He will also announce a move to an £11 an hour living wage, an increase from £10.42.
Hunt is already looking at holding down benefits below inflation, as pressure mounts on Rishi Sunak to make pre-election tax cuts and find areas where the Tories take a different approach from Labour.
The Guardian understands he is also considering measures, to be unveiled in the autumn statement, to withhold benefits from those who are considered to be “disengaged”.
One option under consideration involves closing the claims of those who have six months or more of a “nil award” – which can happen if someone is persistently sanctioned or no longer qualifies.
Under this plan, the claimant would then be barred from making a new claim for a certain period, as a means of trying to get people to stick to their “claimant commitment” that sets out how they should engage with looking for work.
The Conservatives appear to be using tougher rhetoric on benefit claimants ahead of the election, as they believe it could be a dividing line with the opposition of appearing tougher on welfare spending.
In his speech, Hunt will say: “I am incredibly proud to live in a country where, as Churchill said, there’s a ladder everyone can climb but also a safety net below which no one falls.
“But paying for that safety net is a social contract that depends on fairness to those in work alongside compassion to those who are not … since the pandemic, things have being going in the wrong direction. While companies struggle to find workers, around 100,000 people are leaving the labour force every year for a life on benefits.
“As part of that we will look at the way the sanctions regime works. It is a fundamental matter of fairness. Those who won’t even look for work do not deserve the same benefits as people trying hard to do the right thing.”
Hunt will also wrongly claim that Labour has “pledged to end sanctions, removing the incentive to look for a job”.
Labour has said it would stop benefit sanctions from being punitive in a way that strips away people’s dignity and traps them in a cycle of low pay, insecurity and poverty, but former shadow work and pensions secretary Jonathan Ashworth said earlier this year that there would still be a conditionality regime under a Labour government.
The chancellor will present the changes to benefit sanctions as a matter of fairness, but one Whitehall source said the changes under consideration were due to a drive to hold down spending, that more cuts were being mulled, and they were being presented as reforms to improve engagement in the employment market by those claiming benefits.
They said there was a concern within government about overall spending by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), and that without further benefit cuts the welfare cap for 2024-25 of £135.4bn would be substantially breached.
Analysis earlier this year by the Office for Budget Responsibility suggested it was on course to be exceeded by about £4bn, although it is only formally assessed in the first year of a new parliament.
Conservative MPs have been clamouring for tax cuts. But Andrew Mitchell, the development minister, warned on Sunday that this should not be done on the backs of the poorest.
He said: “We need to be very clear that we have very properly protected throughout the last 13 years of Conservative government the most vulnerable by maintaining and in some cases increasing the value of their benefits. That’s the right thing for any government to do in any civilised society.”
The DWP has been asked for comment.
Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, will also give a speech on Monday that focuses on forcing “deadbeat dads” to pay up for child maintenance claims more quickly.
He will outline a package of new measures to ensure parents who are “shirking their responsibilities” are not allowed to do so.
At a fringe event on Sunday, he said his other main focus was driving down the number of people who are economically inactive, including those who are claiming long-term sickness benefits.
He said there was a growing number of younger long-term sick people, especially those suffering mental health problems.
“I think the issues around that are probably to do with social media to some degree,” he said, saying there were problems with being “constantly connected” that can affect wellbeing.
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Workforce / Labor
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FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of defrauding customers by a federal jury today. He was convicted on all seven counts, Reuters and other news outlets reported. The 12-member jury returned the verdict after several hours of deliberation.
The seven charges are wire fraud on customers of FTX, conspiracy to commit wire fraud on customers of FTX, wire fraud on lenders to Alameda Research, conspiracy to commit wire fraud on lenders to Alameda Research, conspiracy to commit securities fraud on investors in FTX, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud on customers of FTX in connection with purchases and sales of cryptocurrency and swaps, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The five charges related to wire fraud and money laundering carry maximum sentences of 20 years each, while the two securities and commodities fraud charges have maximum sentences of five years each. US District Judge Lewis Kaplan will determine the actual sentence.
"Your client in the event of conviction could be looking at a very long sentence," Kaplan told Bankman-Fried's lawyers days before the trial began. Kaplan rejected the defense's request for a temporary release from jail at that time, saying that Bankman-Fried was a flight risk because of the possibility of a long sentence.
The trial was held in US District Court for the Southern District of New York, located in Manhattan. An indictment said that Bankman-Fried "misappropriated and embezzled FTX customer deposits and used billions of dollars in stolen funds... to enrich himself; to support the operations of FTX; to fund speculative venture investments; to help fund over a hundred million dollars in campaign contributions to Democrats and Republicans to seek to influence cryptocurrency regulation; and to pay for Alameda's operating costs." He was also accused of making "false and fraudulent statements and representations to FTX's investors and Alameda's lenders."
“Pyramid of deceit”
Bankman-Fried chose to testify and tried to shift the blame to others. He repeatedly answered "I'm not sure" or "I can't recall" in response to a prosecutor's questions. Three former executives from FTX and its affiliate Alameda Research pleaded guilty and testified against Bankman-Fried.
Closing arguments were presented Wednesday as the monthlong trial came to an end. US prosecutor Nicolas Roos reportedly said there was "no serious dispute" that $10 billion in FTX customer money went missing and that the jury needed to decide whether Bankman-Fried knew his actions were wrong.
"This was a pyramid of deceit built by the defendant on a foundation of lies and false promises, all to get money," Roos said. "Eventually it collapsed, leaving thousands of victims in its wake."
Defense attorney Mark Cohen argued that Bankman-Fried made mistakes, but didn't commit crimes. "Business decisions made in good faith are not grounds to convict," Cohen said yesterday, according to Reuters. "Poor risk management is not a crime... bad business judgments are not a crime."
In a rebuttal today, prosecutor Danielle Sassoon reportedly "likened that argument to someone robbing a jewelry store and justifying their actions by saying there was no security guard."
"That's not a defense. That was a strategy," Sassoon said. "The defendant knew what he was doing was wrong, and that's why he never hired a risk officer."
Though the just-finished trial covered seven criminal charges, Bankman-Fried faces 12 counts in total. A separate trial planned for March 2024 would cover the other five counts, which are fraud on customers of FTX in connection with the purchase and sales of derivatives, securities fraud on investors in FTX, conspiracy to commit bank fraud, conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business, and conspiracy to violate the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
One charge for conspiracy to make unlawful campaign contributions and defraud the US Federal Election Commission was dropped in July due to treaty obligations with the Bahamas, which notified the US that it would not extradite Bankman-Fried on the campaign contributions count.
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Crypto Trading & Speculation
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Virginia's top lawyer is opening an investigation into a Muslim charity, saying his office has "reason to believe" the group could be operating illegally and unlawfully benefiting terrorist organizations.
GOP Attorney General Jason Miyares announced he is opening a probe into AJP Educational Foundation, Inc., which does business under the name American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a group that purports to educate the public on "how the people of Palestine have been living under occupation for decades."
"We believe once Americans know the truth that their tax dollars support the longest-lasting and the last military occupation in modern history they won’t stand for it and will demand that Congress change our foreign policy in the Middle East to one that is more balanced and just for everyone living in the Holy Land," the group's website states.
Miyares says his office's Consumer Protection Section has reason to believe the organization, headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia, may be soliciting contributions in the commonwealth without first having registered with the commissioner of the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
The AG will also investigate allegations the group may have used funds raised for illegal purposes under state law, including benefiting or providing support to terrorist organizations.
Those allegations stem from a decades-old legal battle against the group waged by Stanley and Joyce Boim, whose 17-year-old son David was killed by Hamas in 1996.
The Boims have been seeking retribution for their son's death from U.S.-based groups that fund terrorist activity. They allege AMP and AJP Educational Foundation, Inc. are "alter egos" of three Islamic fundraising groups held liable several years for their son's death. After those groups paid only a fraction of what the court ordered them to pay, they claimed they had no money and shut down.
Some time later, the Boims say, AMP and AJP both came into operation while having an "overlap in leadership, same organizational purpose, similarity of operations, and unlawful motive or intent to escape liability," they allege in the lawsuit.
AMP issued a statement Tuesday calling the attorney general's announcement a "smear."
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"As an organization of American Muslims dedicated to speaking up for the human rights of the Palestinian people, we refuse to allow empty threats and baseless smears to stop us from advocating for a just and humane American foreign policy in Palestine and elsewhere," the group said.
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Nonprofit, Charities, & Fundraising
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Target will limit shoppers to 10 items at self-checkout counters amid the ongoing scourge of retail theft faced by big-box stores.
The pilot program was rolled out at select locations weeks after the discount chain shuttered nine stores in several cities — including its first ever location in Manhattan.
“In select stores we are testing self-checkout lanes of 10 items or fewer in order to reduce wait times and better understand guest preferences,” the Minnesota-based retailer told Business Insider.
The company did not say how many stores would be implementing the pilot program.
The Post has sought comment from Target.
The company didn’t say whether the pilot program was launched because of the ongoing issue with retail theft, which has threatened the safety of its workers and customers.
A Target location in East Harlem that was shuttered in late September was frequently hit by shoplifters.
The company has said it expects shoplifting to be a “significant financial headwind.”
“We think progress there probably doesn’t happen quickly,” chief financial officer Michael Fiddelke said on an earnings call with Wall Street analysts last week.
Top management admitted that Target’s theft problem — known as “shrink” — continues to dog its 1,956 stores nationwide with no end in sight.
“We’re focused on progress over time,” Fiddelke added. “It’s not one that we’d expect overnight.”
“Growth in shrink remains a significant financial headwind and we’re determined to continue making progress in the years head,” Fiddelke added.
On the positive side, the company said shrink in the most recent quarter was “smaller than expected” and “better than we faced earlier in the year.”
Target reported a hefty third-quarter profit increase that handily beat Wall Street expectations as the retailer held down costs and cut inventory.
Revenue slipped more than 4%, however, as customers saddled with broadly higher costs pulled back on spending as the holiday season nears.
Target reported a 36% increase in third-quarter profit of $971 million, or $2.10 per share, easily beating Wall Street expectations for per-share earnings of $1.47, according to FactSet.
Revenue fell 4.2% to $25.4 billion, but that too was better than than the $25.29 billion that industry analysts were expecting.
Its third-quarter comparable sales — those from stores or digital channels operating for the past 12 months — fell 4.9% in the most recent quarter.
Those sales fell 5.4% in the second quarter.
For the fourth quarter, Target expects comparable sales in a wide range around a mid-single digit decline, and earnings per share of $1.90 to $2.60 per share.
Analysts are expecting $2.23 per share.
Additional Reporting by Lisa Fickenscher
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Consumer & Retail
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Men’s Underwear Sales Can Help Forecast Recession: From stock prices to home starts, there are many different types of economic indicators. Did you realise, though, that sales of men’s pants can also be used to forecast recessions? Men’s pants sales may seem like a joke, but former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan discovered that they can provide important insights regarding the state of the economy as a whole. Along with several other rather fascinating non-conventional economic indicators, here’s how.
Leading versus lagging signs
Economic indicators come in two varieties: leading and lagging. Lagging indicators, such as interest rates, the unemployment rate, and inflation, reveal economic changes that have already taken place. These indicators are comparable to utilising the rearview mirror on an automobile. It reveals your past movements.
Leading indicators, on the other hand, are trends and patterns that appear before a change in the economy. They are used, together with stock market trends and consumer confidence, to predict how the economy will perform in the future. Imagine them like signs you see along the way.
For investors and politicians, leading indicators are more important than trailing indicators because they provide useful insight into upcoming occurrences. The yield curve inversion, consumer confidence, and factory production are three of the most popular leading indicators for predicting an impending recession.
There is currently a recession, as indicated by all three signs. But what about other distinct leading indicators?
Index of Men’s Underwear: Men’s Underwear Sales Can Help Forecast Recessions
Men’s pants sales, contrary to popular belief, are a leading economic predictor. Men’s pants may be the most private item of clothing in the home because no one really sees them. Men frequently use them until they are fully worn out, therefore it is frequently the final item you need to buy.
Male pants generally has consistent sales rates, but when they do, it means that men are prioritising other expenses over buying new pants. This hesitation to make a relatively cheap purchase has consistently signalled a possible recession.
What does the current underwear index indicate?
Sales of men’s pants fell after the financial crisis of 2008–2009, and the recession brought on by the pandemic in 2020 significantly decreased those sales. David Swartz, a senior equities analyst at Morningstar Research Services, corroborated this in Euromonitor data that was shared and covered by Barron’s.
Men’s pants sales in terms of dollars decreased somewhat in 2022 compared to 2021, but there was a noticeable 12% drop in the number of pairs sold. Additionally, compared to 2020, households with incomes under $50,000 spent significantly less on men’s pants in 2021. This is how men’s underwear sales can help forecast recessions.
Sales of men’s pants are currently increasing despite the drop. It’s important to remember that sales typically stagnate during economic downturns. The good news is that this treind has not yet materialised.
How Men’s Underwear Sales Can Help Forecast Recessions
These are only a few of the distinctive indications that some economists research in order to comprehend consumer behaviour and how it affects our economy. The “lipstick index,” “the champagne index,” and “the library index” are a few additional oddball indicators. These signs suggest that we shouldn’t worry about a recession just yet, but it’s still important to keep an eye on them.
Men’s pants sales are a useful economic indicator, despite the initial absurdity of this statistic. The relationship between this seemingly unimportant item and economic activity has been proven earlier, and specialists continue to constantly monitor it now. So, keep in mind that the next time you see an advertisement for men’s pants that this seemingly insignificant purchase can actually reveal a lot about if a recession is on the horizon. Get your own finances in order at this point!
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Inflation
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Donald Trump Jr. might have tripped up his legal team’s entire defense on Monday, slipping into his testimony that the family’s Florida property, Mar-a-Lago, is an “estate” rather than a club.
“My father purchased what was one of the finest estates anywhere in the world,” Don Jr. said Monday morning in reference to the building, which he called “amazing” and likened to an “American castle.”
But no amount of embellishment will hide Trump Jr.’s admission: The family’s beloved Florida home at Mar-a-Lago—which, incidentally, Trump has used as his primary residence since leaving the White House in 2021—is perceived by the family as an estate, or residential property.
The contested valuation of Mar-a-Lago is at the heart of the fraud trial against the Trump Organization. Last week, attorneys for the New York state attorney general’s office highlighted incongruous deeds and assessments for the former president’s various international properties, including a development deed for Mar-a-Lago, which restricts the status of Trump’s primary residence to a club.
Despite the deed restrictions, the New York Attorney General’s office argues, Trump overinflated the value of Mar-a-Lago on the basis that it was used as a private home and could be sold as such.
The $250 million bank fraud case hopes to prove that Trump deceived banks and insurers by massively overvaluing his net worth—with properties like Mar-a-Lago. So far, New York State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron has already ruled that Trump and his two sons, Don Jr and Eric, committed fraud.
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Real Estate & Housing
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Help with childcare costs for working parents, announced in the Budget, is "unfairly targeted" towards higher-income families, a report by Coram and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation says.
The charities say the plans, in England, risk widening the gap between disadvantaged children and their peers.
From 2025, working parents will be entitled to 30 hours of childcare for children from the age of nine months.
The government says this will remove barriers for parents who want to work.
But the report says children whose parents do not work will be left behind, "storing up problems for later in the education system".
Currently, children aged three or four of eligible working parents are entitled to 30 government-funded hours per week, during term time, but this is due to be extended to cover younger children.
The changes will be phased in for households in England where the parent or parents each earn at least £152 a week, on average, but less than £100,000 a year.
But this would give the higher-income families "more and more childcare - and children from lower income families are even more likely to miss out", Coram family and childcare head Megan Jarvie said.
Student nurse Isabelle Roters, from Manchester, spends weeks at a time on placement at her local hospital but can only afford to send her two-year-old to nursery one day a week.
Her husband is a paramedic and she sometimes works evening shifts in the accident-and-emergency department for extra money - but they are not entitled to any government-funded hours as she earns below the £152-a-week threshold.
They end up using leave or asking family to help but are mostly "winging it from one to day to the next", Isabelle says.
All children should be able to benefit from attending nursery, which not only helps parents work but also "brings children on socially", she adds.
Attainment gap
Coram and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) are calling for 15 government-funded hours per week during term time for all two-year-olds and 30 hours for all three- and four-year-olds - regardless of parental income - as well as investment over time to drive up the quality of provision across the sector.
"We need to balance the importance of working parents and educational outcomes for children," Ms Jarvie told BBC News, "and at the moment, we're leaning a bit too far towards employment for parents.
"Unless we focus relentlessly on raising the quality of early education and making sure that all children - and particularly disadvantaged children - are able to access it, we're going to see the attainment gap widen."
The attainment gap - the difference in educational performance between disadvantaged pupils and their peers - increased in 2022 to the highest level in a decade.
This suggests disruption to learning caused by the pandemic had a greater impact on disadvantaged pupils, according to a Department for Education report.
Government-funded hours in childcare were originally introduced to narrow the attainment gap, as well as help parents manage childcare costs.
But Christine Farquharson, from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), says the childcare system is now "increasingly focused on helping parents to work, rather than prioritising early education to support children's development ahead of starting school".
IFS analysis shows the extension of the government-funded hours will directly benefit just over half of parents with a child aged nine months to two years, including 80% of those with household incomes above £45,000 but just 20% of families earning less than £20,000 a year.
When will the changes take effect?
- April 2024: Eligible two-year-olds will be entitled to 15 hours of government-funded childcare per week, during term time
- September 2024: Eligible children between nine months and two years will be entitled to 15 hours
- September 2025: Eligible children between nine months and three years will be entitled to 30 hours
A Department for Education official said the expansion of government-funded childcare in England would be worth an average of £6,500 a year for a working family.
"Low-income families already qualify for 15 hours' free childcare for two-year-olds, a year before all children become eligible," the official added.
But as the funding does not cover providers' costs, additional charges for meals, extended hours and registration fees can act as a barrier.
Jonathan Broadbery, of the National Association of Day Nurseries, said: "It's really challenging for those families to meet the additional costs, because everybody wants to be delivering high-quality places that children really benefit from but that can't be done cheaply and easily." And many nurseries, especially in poorer areas, had a waiting list for government-funded places, because of a lack of staff.
In the spring Budget, the chancellor also announced families on universal credit would have childcare costs paid upfront, rather than having to claim them back, and the £646 monthly limit on childcare claims would rise to £951.
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Consumer & Retail
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Sept. 28, 2023 â Technical issues that resulted in denied insurance coverage for the updated COVID-19 vaccines have been âlargely, if not completely, resolved,â the nationâs largest health insurers told federal officials on Wednesday.
âYou have our commitment that health insurers are fully covering the new COVID-19 shots, as required, with no cost sharing when consumers access them from a network provider or receive them through an out-of-network provider when in-network options are unavailable,â an industry group said in a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
On Sept. 12, the CDC recommended the new vaccine for all people ages 6 months and older, and manufacturers said supplies of the vaccines were ready. But there have been widespread reports of the shots not reaching pharmacies, and insurers have sometimes denied coverage despite a federal requirement that they pay the entire cost. Prior to this round of vaccines, all shots were paid for by the government, although people without insurance can still get a free vaccine through a federal program.
Federal officials met virtually Wednesday with insurance company executives to discuss what HHS called ârecent technical issuesâ regarding access to the vaccines. Insurers represented on the call included Blue Cross Blue Shield, CVS Health, Humana, Cigna, Anthem, Kaiser, and United Healthcare.
So far, 2 million people in the U.S. have received the new booster shot this fall, according to HHS.Â
After a summer-long increase in COVID cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, most indicators are trending downward. For the week ending Sept. 16, 12.5% of all reported tests were positive, COVID-19 accounted for 1.9% of emergency department visits, and there were 19,674 hospital admissions due to severe cases of the illness, according to the CDC. Deaths due to COVID have been on the rise and accounted for 2.7% of all U.S. deaths for the week ending Sept. 16, with large increases reported in Kentucky, West Virginia, Mississippi, and Georgia.
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Consumer & Retail
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To do retirement right you need a disciplined savings plan, a good understanding of Social Security, a sound investment strategy and a vision of retirement that provides for adequate self-fulfillment without overspending your fixed-income budget. Behind those simple principles lies a complex set of ways it can all go wrong, ranging from borrowing against your 401(k) to taking up smoking late in life. There are certain things, though, that you’ll want to make sure to avoid at all costs.
A financial advisor can help you keep your retirement on track.
Doing Retirement Right and Wrong
It is certainly not impossible or even rare to achieve a financially secure and rewarding retirement. People over age 65, in fact, are much less likely to live in actual poverty than those still working, according to the Census Bureau. And retirees surveyed by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) in 2022 rated their satisfaction with life in retirement at an average 7 on a scale of 1 to 10.
That does not, however, mean there’s no way to go wrong. After all, more than 1 in 10 retirees do live in poverty, per Census. And 27% of EBRI’s respondents said their spending was much higher or a little higher than they could afford.
Five Retirement Mistakes to Avoid
Every retiree’s case is a little different, and it’s likely that the people who aren’t having a great retirement have a multitude of stories about how things didn’t turn out well. Still, we can make some useful generalizations about most important retirement mistakes to avoid. Here are five of the worst:
If you’re ready to be matched with local advisors that can help you achieve your financial goals, get started now.
Failing to Plan
The biggest single error mistake may be pretending retirement won’t ever arrive when, for a large majority of people, it does. About 67.8% of men born in 1980 will live to age 65, according to the Social Security Administration. For women, the figure is 80.9%. Not planning to retire encourages more mistakes, like failing to budget, save and invest to fund living expenses later in life when working becomes difficult or impossible. It’s worth noting that EBRI’s survey found lower senses of well-being and satisfaction for those who, among other traits, did not use a financial advisor.
Mismanaging Tax-Advantaged Retirement Plans
Neglecting to contribute enough to your workplace IRA or 401(k) to get the maximum employer match is one of the worst retirement savings moves you could make. Close behind could be borrowing from a plan and failing to pay it back. Another worst-move rival is taking early withdrawals that subject you to costly penalties. Investing retirement plan funds exclusively in shares of your employer instead of diversifying also ranks high as a seriously risky and potentially catastrophic error.
Messing up Social Security
When it comes to nearly universally available, almost perfectly reliable ways to fund retirement, nothing compares to Social Security. To qualify for monthly benefits for as long as you live after reaching the age of eligibility, all you have to do is work the required number of years while contributing through mandatory payroll taxes.
This apparent simplicity masks some complexities, though, and failing to navigate them can take the shine off your retirement. For example, if one member of a retired married couple dies, the survivor must carry on with just one monthly check, the larger of the two. For this reason, the higher-earning partner should wait to claim benefits as long as possible, since delaying filing increases the monthly payment. SmartAsset’s Social Security Calculator will help you avoid mistakes and make the most of this benefit.
Emotional Investing
The investment field almost seems designed to punish people who make investment decisions based on feelings of fear and greed. For instance, if you get rattled and sell securities during a bear market to convert to safe-seeming cash, you are effectively locking in losses and making it harder to participate in any future upturn.
Studies have shown that the best approach is to stay fully invested through good times and bad. Trying to time the market, especially on the basis of your emotions, is one of the least promising investment strategies you could have.
Focusing Only on the Financial Side of Retirement
Retiring is only partly about money. You’ll also need to find ways to fill the time you spent working, preferably in ways that maintain or improve your health and enrich your life. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. A 2018 National Bureau of Economic Research study found male mortality increases by about 2% at age 62, a common age for retirement. The increase is smaller for women and doesn’t appear at all for either sex at other ages.
Why retirement seems to cause more deaths isn’t clear. However, most of the increased deaths are due to traffic accidents and lung cancer and other respiratory conditions tied to smoking, which other studies tends to go up with job loss at any age. No amount of being smart about employer matches can help much if you’re not around to enjoy your non-working years at all.
The Bottom Line
The worst retirement mistakes are probably not planning to retire at all, failing to take full advantage of retirement savings plans, mismanaging Social Security, making poor investment decisions and neglecting the non-financial side of retirement. It’s possible to avoid all of these, however, by being aware of the potential for costly errors and taking some relatively simple and well-proven steps to counteract them.
Retirement Planning Tips
You have a better chance of avoiding errors in planning for your retirement when you work with financial advisor. Finding a financial advisor doesn’t have to be hard. SmartAsset’s free tool matches you with up to three vetted financial advisors who serve your area, and you can interview your advisor matches at no cost to decide which one is right for you. If you’re ready to find an advisor who can help you achieve your financial goals, get started now.
You can get insight into how well your retirement saving plan is going by using SmartAsset’s retirement calculator. It provides a quick, easy and yet sophisticated – and cost-free — way to take the mystery out of how much money you’ll have when the time comes to retire.
Photo credit: ©iStock.com/shapecharge, ©iStock.com/FG Trade, ©iStock.com/PeopleImages
The post The Five Worst Retirement Mistakes to Avoid at All Costs appeared first on SmartAsset Blog.
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Personal Finance & Financial Education
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Sir Keir Starmer will try to persuade trade unions to back his green energy plans after bosses publicly criticised his policy of banning new oil and gas developments in the North Sea.
The Labour leader will seek to reassure trade unions by emphasising that workers and "quality jobs" will be "front and centre" of the shift to renewable energy.
Sir Keir's appearance at the GMB congress in Brighton comes days after the union's general secretary, Gary Smith, called his policy on oil and gas production "naïve" and lacking in "intellectual rigour".
He was joined in his criticism by Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham, who said Labour must be "very clear that they will not let workers pay the price" for the transition to renewable energy.
The Conservatives said Labour had "surrendered their energy policy to their Just Stop Oil funders" - a reference to the £1.5m the party had received from donor Dale Vince.
It was reported at the end of last month that new oil and gas developments in the North Sea would be blocked under a Labour government.
The newspaper reported that Sir Keir is expected to announce the block in Scotland next month when he sets out his net-zero energy policy.
At the GMB conference Sir Keir will say: "Jobs, good, union jobs, will be fundamental to cleaner, safer work, new and better infrastructure for Britain.
"I won't pretend that just because a technology is greener that automatically makes working conditions fairer.
"So, as new nuclear, battery factories and offshore wind repower Britain, Labour will build strong supply chains that create jobs, new skills and decent wages here in Britain.
"We will work with you and with industry to seize the opportunities of hydrogen, carbon capture and storage."
The Labour leader will also respond to calls from unions that Amazon recognise the GMB after the union said it had signed up 700 workers in Coventry.
Sir Keir will also criticise the Conservatives' approach to growth, saying he is "not even sure they see the problem".
"If the City of London races ahead while the rest of Britain stagnates, as long as there was a hint of growth on his spreadsheet, Rishi Sunak would think that's fine. But it's not.
"If you leave this many people behind, a nation cannot grow fairly. We can't do it with low wages. We can't do it with insecure jobs and bad work, with a stand-aside state that doesn't fight for the future, without a proper industrial strategy."
Speaking on Sky News' Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme, Mr Smith said Labour's policies "are going to create a cliff edge with oil and gas extraction from the North Sea".
"There is a lot of oil and gas in the North Sea and the alternatives facing the country are that we either produce our own oil and gas - take responsibility for our carbon emissions - or we are going to import more oil and gas," he said.
Read more:
Labour defends taking £1.5m given by Just Stop Oil donor Dale Vince
Rishi Sunak says two more barges will be used to house about 1,000 asylum seekers
"I think workers in the petrochemical industry… are going to be very worried about what Labour are saying and I think it is time for Labour to focus on the right thing rather than what they think is the popular thing."
He said that the sector had been promised "tens of thousands of jobs" in renewable energy "time and time again" but that they "simply have not emerged", adding: "That has been the sorry state of the renewables industry around the country."
Asked about Mr Smith's comments while on a visit to nuclear power station Hinkley Point C on Monday, Sir Keir told broadcasters that oil and gas would be part of the "future" because of existing licences that would be in use until the 2050s.
"But we need to seize the opportunities for the next generation of jobs", he said. "And that is in renewables, it is in nuclear, Hinkley Point C here today, staring at the future."
A Conservative spokesman said: "Tomorrow we'll just hear more soundbites and wishful thinking, but no plan for the tens of thousands of jobs he would destroy. Even his union paymasters have slammed his policy."
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Renewable Energy
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Ahluwalia Contracts Q2 Results Review - Retain Estimate: IDBI Capital
Ahluwalia Contracts has delivered 45% YoY revenue increase in Q2 FY24.
BQ Prime’s special research section collates quality and in-depth equity and economy research reports from across India’s top brokerages, asset managers and research agencies. These reports offer BQ Prime’s subscribers an opportunity to expand their understanding of companies, sectors and the economy.
IDBI Capital Report
Ahluwalia Contracts India Ltd. Q2 FY24 profit after tax came higher than our estimate by 15% and H1 FY24 earnings per share forms 40% of our FY24E estimate.
Beat in the result is led by better execution, as revenue increased by 45% YoY in Q2. Despite beat in the result, we retain our estimate. As pollution led construction ban, impact could impact revenue growth in H2 FY24. We have modeled H2 FY24E revenue growth of 17%.
Ahluwalia Contracts' consistency in order win has continued in FY24E. Company till date has won orders of Rs 52 billion (in FY23 order inflow was Rs 50 billion) and is level one in a orders.
Company was declared level one in gems and jewellery park in Navi Mumbai but the quote is more than the budget of the project so the redesigning of park project is in process.
We have valued Ahluwalia Contracts at 15 times FY25E EPS (+1STD mean) to arrive at target price of Rs 772. Retain 'Hold' rating due to rich valuation.
Click on the attachment to read the full report:
DISCLAIMER
This report is authored by an external party. BQ Prime does not vouch for the accuracy of its contents nor is responsible for them in any way. The contents of this section do not constitute investment advice. For that you must always consult an expert based on your individual needs. The views expressed in the report are that of the author entity and do not represent the views of BQ Prime.
Users have no license to copy, modify, or distribute the content without permission of the Original Owner.
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Stocks Trading & Speculation
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Bitcoin Hits Highest in a Year as Crypto Rebounds From Scandals
Bitcoin hit its highest level in a year amid renewed fervor for digital assets despite a slew of challenges for the industry.
(Bloomberg) -- Bitcoin hit its highest level in a year amid renewed fervor for digital assets despite a slew of challenges for the industry.
The original digital currency crossed above $31,013, its 2023 peak, to reach its highest level since June 2022, Bloomberg data show. The surge brought Bitcoin to as high as $31,410 before the gain was pared. The token is up by almost 90% since the start of the year, though still more than 50% below an all-time high of almost $69,000. Other cryptocurrencies followed suit, with Ether also rallying.
It’s a remarkable development — and show of resiliency — for a market that many had written off as being on the verge of extinction following a number of high-profile and high-impact scams and company fallouts that left the industry besmirched among investors.
“From the ardent Bitcoiner’s perspective, the token’s most fundamental investment thesis is playing out: inflation, monetary mismanagement, banking crises, sovereign debt anxiety, US-dollar-reserve-status questions are all playing a role in giving Bitcoiners an ‘I told you so’ moment,” said Strahinja Savic, head of data and analytics at FRNT Financial. “I would not describe rallying to new all time highs despite the challenging environment, but rather because of it.”
Earlier: Bitcoin’s Surge to $30,000 Is Only the Start of a Crypto Renewal
Most recently, it’s been news about BlackRock Inc.’s shock filing for a US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund that’s reignited fervor for crypto, with some in the market hoping that such a product — which currently doesn’t exist — gets approval from regulators. An approval — whatever its odds — would mark a win for fans who have for years longed for such an investment product.
“BlackRock’s filing is big news for Bitcoin due to its close ties with regulators and a very strong ETF-approval track record,” wrote K33’s Bendik Schei and Vetle Lunde. “It’s also worth noting that BlackRock would not dedicate time and resources to this filing if they did not view the probability of long-term strength from BTC, and thus strong inflows, as substantially high.”
They added: “An approval would profoundly impact the market structure of Bitcoin, as it would reduce the barriers for financial advisors to offer exposure to BTC through an accessible investment vehicle with daily creations and redemptions delivered by a trusted issuer.”
Other recent news also reinforced crypto believers’ faith in the rally. A new crypto exchange backed by firms including Citadel Securities, Fidelity Digital Assets and Charles Schwab Corp. — called EDX Markets — said it’s gone live. And, among other pieces of news, JPMorgan Chase & Co. expanded one of the most high-profile projects to bring blockchain technology to traditional banking, introducing euro-denominated payments for corporate clients using its JPM Coin.
“The effects of the so-called ‘crypto winter’ seem less persistent today than a year ago, as various jurisdictions and institutional players continue to embrace crypto-related initiatives,” David Duong, head of research at Coinbase, said in a recent note.
On Twitter, where a lot of crypto discourse takes place, a number of users cited FOMO — or the fear of missing out — as part of the recent price surge, whereby some investors jump into the market because they are watching others reap the benefits of the rally and want to take part in it.
But the fact that the industry is facing harsh regulatory oversight has not dissipated, despite all the renewed hype over prices surging.
The SEC has set its sights on the crypto space following last year’s numerous instances of scams and fallouts of once-vaunted companies, including FTX and a number of lenders. It’s led to a mass exodus by retail investors in particular, who have collectively lost billions of dollars in the wake of the revelations and implosions.
Trading volumes have dried up as a result. In May, the combined spot and derivatives trading volumes on centralized exchanges fell more than 15% to $2.4 trillion, according to CCData. Spot trading volumes alone dropped nearly 22% to $495 billion, notching the lowest monthly reading since March 2019, the researcher said in a report.
“Given the thin liquidity and the relatively scant amount of BTC available to new entrants (no eager sellers at these levels), even a tiny uptick in large investor interest would be enough to move the price,” said Noelle Acheson, author of the “Crypto Is Macro Now” newsletter.
Others point out that hype around a potential spot-Bitcoin ETF has come and gone in the past, without regulators ever approving such a product.
“People are speculating BlackRock’s heft in the financial markets will help them get approval. I am not quite there yet,” said Michael O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading. “The SEC has been aggressively cracking down on the crypto space, it seems a bit early for such an about-face.”
(Updates with addition of chart; adds Twitter post; adds Acheson quote.)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.
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Crypto Trading & Speculation
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Diesel prices fell by a record 12p per litre on average in the UK last month, according to the RAC.
Pump prices dropped from about £1.59 to £1.47, the group said, cutting the cost of filling up a family car by £6.50.
The RAC said the reduction was the largest monthly drop it had seen since it began monitoring prices in 2000.
But the motoring group argued the drop in price was "both long overdue and smaller than it should be" due to wholesale prices being lower.
The British Retail Consortium, which represents supermarkets, said "big cuts" had been made to diesel prices in response to falling wholesale costs.
Diesel prices are now down more than 25% from 2022 highs, after falling for seven months in a row.
The fuel hit a £1.99 per litre high last summer after oil prices soared following Russian's invasion of Ukraine.
Petrol prices have also been falling steadily since then and dropped from £1.46 to £1.43 on average last month, figures from the RAC said.
The motoring group has suggested that prices have not come down as fast or by as much as they should have, noting that prices were significantly lower in Northern Ireland.
The RAC said the cut should have been more significant to fully reflect changes in the wholesale market because diesel wholesale costs had been lower than petrol for 10 weeks.
In May, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced it was investigating fuel prices and whether a "failure in competition" had meant drivers overpaid.
The watchdog said it was "concerned about the sustained higher margins on diesel compared to petrol" so far this year.
It said evidence it had gathered so far suggested at least one supermarket had set a higher target for its profit margin on fuel prices in 2022, which could have led rivals to follow suit and raise prices too.
The RAC said after calling for prices to fall in recent months, it seemed "ironic that the latest price cuts have finally come in the two weeks following the Competition and Markets Authority's announcement".
"What's happened to the price of diesel in May will no doubt give the CMA something to think about," Mr Williams said. "We strongly hope the pump price reductions continue as they should."
Gordon Balmer, executive director of the Petrol Retailers Association, which represents thousands of independent forecourts, said its advice to drivers was to "shop around".
"As noted by the CMA, petrol and diesel prices are still volatile due to the ongoing war in Ukraine. The market is very dynamic and independent forecourts are in many cases undercutting supermarkets on price," he added.
A separate review of the fuel market has been ongoing for several months, over initial concerns that retailers and forecourts were failing to pass on a 5p fuel duty cut to motorists.
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Consumer & Retail
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Subsets and Splits
List Unique Topics
Simple retrieval of unique topics from the dataset, useful for basic exploration but lacks deeper insights.