Ukraine’s president has ordered the suspension of the country’s chief justice, escalating a power struggle between the government and the constitutional court that has threatened anti-corruption reforms and derailed multibillion-dollar financing from the IMF and western backers. The presidential decree signed by Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday night suspends Oleksandr Tupytsky, head of the constitutional court,
Investing
What Is the FDIC? The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was created at the height of the Great Depression, following the closure of 4,000 banks in the first few months of 1933 and the loss of $1.3 billion in deposits. President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Banking Act of 1933 on June 16 of that year,
Coronavirus did much to shape the book world in 2020 — and will continue to do so in the new year, whether in the form of titles postponed by the pandemic or as the subject of new ones. January brings the first of a number of dispatches from the frontline of the crisis — Breathtaking
My father was bullied in his office job. He later developed schizophrenia and never went back to work. As part of his illness he suffered delusions, and he lived the later part of his working life in a confused reality. He was assigned an employee number beginning “007” and believed himself to be James Bond, working
Early gains turned into losses for U.S. equities, which were compounded when Senate Republicans, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, blocked the House-passed plan to increase the $600 stimulus checks to $2,000. The measure soundly passed the Democrat-controlled House on Monday, but despite President Trump’s urging and support from some Republicans, McConnell would not bring
A 6.2 magnitude earthquake hit central Croatia on Tuesday, killing seven people and seriously injuring at least 26. The tremors of the earthquake, whose epicentre was in Petrinja, 50 kilometres south of the capital Zagreb, could be felt as far away as Budapest and Vienna. “My town has been completely destroyed,” Petrinja mayor Darinko Dumbovic
Unions have blasted a $47m bonus secured by General Electric chief executive Larry Culp this month, after his pay package was rewritten earlier this year to reduce the risk that he would miss out on a windfall. As Covid-19 vaccine hopes fuelled a stock market rally in November, GE’s shares went above $10 for the
Happiness during retirement can be pretty elusive. That can come as a surprise to some, who might assume they’ll be much happier once they finally stop working. In the years leading up to retirement, they may have dreamed about not being beholden to an employer’s schedule, having plenty of free time to pursue hobbies and
UK stocks rallied on Tuesday as investors got their first chance to react to last week’s Brexit trade pact and the $900bn American stimulus bill signed into law by President Trump at the weekend. London’s FTSE 100 and the mid-cap FTSE 250 both advanced around 2 per cent on the first trading day of the
The oil sector was hit harder than almost any other by the pandemic. Crude prices fell from near $70 a barrel at the beginning of the year to below $20 in April as lockdowns slashed fuel demand. Prices even briefly turned negative in the US. After a short but highly damaging price war, Opec and
The State of Massachusetts is the latest authority to target Robinhood, contending that the trading platform has aggressively marketed itself to investors without regard for the best interests of its customers. In a recently filed 24-page administrative complaint, Massachusetts alleged that Robinhood used aggressive marketing and advertising tactics to attract new, often inexperienced customers, while
Boarded-up shops and cafés, food banks under pressure, unemployment rising sharply: the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic in Portugal has reawakened painful memories of the European debt crisis just as they were beginning to fade. Three months before the virus struck in March, the country recorded its 25th quarter of uninterrupted growth. As the scars left by a
The US Treasury department said on Monday that an executive order issued by Donald Trump banning investments in Chinese companies with suspected military ties would apply to subsidiaries, embracing a tougher interpretation of the president’s crackdown. The clarification followed a heated debate within the Trump administration about the application of the executive order signed last
As I travel the country and spend time with advisors, partners, and industry colleagues, there is a lot of dialogue about how fintech is disrupting wealth management and how the advisor industry is evolving. All the chatter about evolution got me thinking about lessons from Charles Darwin, the famous naturalist who taught us that it
A prominent Saudi women’s rights activist has been sentenced to nearly six years in prison by an anti-terrorism court in a high-profile case that has drawn widespread international criticism and intensified scrutiny on the kingdom’s human rights record. Loujain al-Hathloul, who campaigned for the right for women to drive, was charged with incitement to change
Eurosceptic Tory MPs in the influential European Research Group are poised to give their seal of approval to the EU-UK trade deal within hours, in a fresh boost for prime minister Boris Johnson. EU ambassadors in Brussels on Monday gave the green light for the trade agreement to come into provisional force from January 1
While borrowing from your life insurance policy can be a quick and easy way to get cash in hand when you need it, there are a few specifics to know before borrowing. Most important, you can only borrow against a permanent or whole life insurance policy. Term life insurance, a cheaper and suitable option for many people, does
Nothing, it seems, can get in the way of geopolitical rivalry. Not a pandemic, not the collapse of international travel or a worldwide recession. In different ways China, the US and the EU have all treated Covid-19 as a very public test of their rival approaches to governance — and as part of an international
Global equities markets rose on Monday, with German stocks reaching a new record peak, after US president Donald Trump belatedly agreed to sign a bill to inject $900bn of stimulus into the world’s largest economy. Germany’s Dax climbed 1.5 per cent, leaving it above the record high it recorded in February, before the pandemic triggered
It is crucial to build a basic understanding of tax laws prior to trading options. In this article, we will examine how calls and puts are taxed in the United States. Namely, we will look at calls and puts that are exercised, as well as options that are traded on their own. We will also
Shares in Alibaba, the ecommerce group founded by Jack Ma, fell sharply after Beijing publicly accused its payments arm of regulatory failings in its latest salvo against one of China’s richest men. The comments by Pan Gongsheng, vice governor of the People’s Bank of China, were published on the central bank’s website on Sunday and
As the deadline for the end of the Brexit transition period looms closer, news broadcasters in the UK keep turning to one particular song. The name of the band playing it is pertinent, its opening lyrics feel diplomatic (“We’re leaving together/but still it’s farewell”), but its stadium-sized intro also crackles with ominous dread. The song
Every day it seems like the world is more interconnected. If you watch any financial television channel or read the news online, you are most likely aware of how events in one country seem to have an ever-increasing effect on other countries around the world. Certain aspects of globalization can have positive benefits, but when threats of a financial
Tesla’s stock is stupidly expensive. It may go higher and shareholders may be rewarded, or it may languish or fall. There is no law prohibiting stupidly expensive from becoming moronically expensive. Moreover, speculative companies that actually achieve explosive sales and profit growth for a number of years can actually make outlandish valuations seem justified for
The UK and Turkey are set to sign a free trade deal on Tuesday, the first since Boris Johnson secured a new trade agreement with the EU. The two nations have finalised the text of a “continuity agreement” that replicates the existing trading terms between Ankara — which has a customs union agreement with Brussels
The new Wonder Woman sequel made $16.7m in North American cinemas this weekend, the biggest US opening weekend since the pandemic began, but a paltry sum compared to typical box office returns during the Christmas holiday. The film starring Gal Gadot had been the first of a grand experiment by Warner Bros to debut its
A contract for difference (CFD) is a contract between a buyer and a seller that stipulates that the buyer must pay the seller the difference between the current value of an asset and its value at contract time. CFDs allow traders and investors an opportunity to profit from price movement without owning the underlying assets. The value of
The writer is chairman of Fulcrum Asset Management When Lawrence Summers identified the central importance of secular stagnation for the global economy in his speech at the IMF in 2013, the Harvard professor put his finger on the most important motivating force for the financial markets in the 2010s. And it remains so. The direction
A 78-year-old French former cleaning lady, a 96-year-old Spaniard in a care home and a 29-year-old Italian nurse became some of the first people in the EU to receive the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine against coronavirus, as a new, more infectious strain of the virus spreads across the bloc. In co-ordinated actions on Sunday, countries including France,
Cryptocurrencies have gained popularity due to several factors, including privacy and anonymity. Some of them help users to conceal their identities and their transactions. Amid mounting concerns about the anonymity of early cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, users are searching for new options. Let’s take a look at the some popular privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies, which have several