Zimbabwe’s government says the country is emerging from a recent economic meltdown that saw shops run out of goods and motorists spend long hours in lines at gas stations. Economists say Zimbabwe’s crisis is not over, as people have no confidence in the currency or in President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government.

For weeks now, there have been long and winding queues at most fuel stations in Zimbabwe, as the precious liquid has been in short supply. Lameck Mauriri is one of those now tired of the situation.

“We are really striving but things are tough to everyone,” said Mauriri. “I do not know how those in rural areas, how they are surviving, especially if in Harare it is like this. We are sleeping in fuel queues. There is not fuel, there is no bread, there is no drink. There is no everything. No cash, no jobs.”

For a decade, the country has been without an official currency and relied on U.S. dollars, the British pound and South African rand to conduct transactions. In the past three years, however, all three currencies have been hard to find, paralyzing the economy.

The introduction of bond notes — a currency Zimbabwe started printing two years ago to ease the situation — has not helped.

The bond notes were supposed to trade at par with the U.S. dollar; but, on the black market, a dollar now is now equal to close to three bond notes.

Prosper Chitambara, an economist of the Labor and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe says the bond notes are partly to blame for the price increases and shortages in the country.

“What is lacking in the economy, in the market is confidence. There is a distrust of the formal economic system,” said Chitambara. “The bond notes have definitely contributed a great deal to the current economic situation, a fallacy economic situation. What they have done is for example to increase money supply in the economy. And that money supply is not actually backed by significant productivity in the economy. That actually gives rise to general of inflationary pressures.”

He said the government’s recent introduction of a 2 percent tax on all electronic transactions pushed prices even higher and caused some shops to close.

Ndabaningi Nick Mangwana, Zimbabwe’s secretary in the Ministry of Information and Publicity, says the situation in the country is normal and there is no need for alarm.

“There is no shortage to oil itself, there is no challenge in terms of production of all these essential services,” said Mangwana. “That is why they are there if you go. There were a few people who panicked, closed a couple of shops, but those opened within hours. There was fake news and people panicked, but it is all under control.”

That is not exactly what seems to be the case on the ground. Some shops remain closed and prices continue rising. Long fuel lines remain the order of the day. 
…

The United States still aims to cut Iran’s oil sales to zero and does not expect restored oil sanctions against Tehran to have a negative impact on a market that is well-supplied and balanced, a senior U.S. official said on Monday.

U.S. special envoy for Iran, Brian Hook, was talking to reporters after a visit to India, a major importer of Iranian oil, and talks with officials from France, Britain and Germany before the start of a new round of U.S. sanctions on Nov. 4.

The three European countries have been trying to save the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and multiple global powers since U.S. President Trump announced in May that the United States would withdraw from the pact.

In a conference call from Luxembourg, where Hook was meeting European officials, he said that Iran uses oil revenue to support and fund terrorist proxies throughout the Middle East and that the U.S. goal is for countries to cut Iranian oil imports to zero as quickly as possible.

“We are working with countries that are reducing their imports to ensure that this happens,” he said.

Hook declined to answer questions on possible waivers on sanctions for countries that are reducing their imports but said the U.S. is confident that energy markets will remain stable.

“We are seeing a well-supplied and balanced oil market right now. We should focus on these fundamentals and not be distracted by the emotional and unbalanced claims coming from Tehran.”

Iran, OPEC’s third-largest producer, has repeatedly said that its oil exports cannot be reduced to zero because of high demand in the market.

Washington, meanwhile, plans to continue coordinating with oil producers and maintain U.S. supply.

“Our crude oil production increased by 1.65 million barrels in August compared to one year ago and that is expected to continue rising by as much as 1 million barrels a day within the next year,” he said.

Hook also said that European efforts to create a special purpose vehicle for trade with Tehran would find no demand because more than 100 foreign firms have indicated that they would be leaving the country.
…

More Americans are moving to smaller cities in search of a better quality of life.

They’re leaving places like Los Angeles, Chicago and New York for mid-sized cities such as Phoenix and Las Vegas, according to an analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

A huge draw for these second-tier cities is that the cost of housing consumes a much smaller chunk of people’s salaries. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than half of the people who move do so for housing-related reasons. They’re looking for a new or better home, cheaper housing, or to buy a home rather than rent.

It costs about $4,100 a month to rent a place in Manhattan. That’s almost two-thirds of New York City’s median household income of $83,500. Buying a home is even more out of reach. The average cost of a home in the area is $1.1 million.

More than half a million people left the New York boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens over a five-year period between 2012 and 2017.

In Los Angeles, the metropolitan county with the largest outbound net domestic migration, rent costs about $2,100 a month — about 38 percent of average income. Houses cost around $630,000, almost 10 times the average annual salary of $66,000.

LA County lost about 381,000 people over a five-year period.

According to the report, the cost of living can be a lot less expensive in the Phoenix area, which welcomed more net domestic newcomers over the past five years — 221,000 people — than any other part of the country.

The average household income in Phoenix is about $63,000, rent is about $1,100 a month, and the median price of a house is $280,000 — that’s $350,000 less than in the LA metropolitan area.

In the Las Vegas area, the rent ($1,000) will only consume 21 percent of the average salary ($57,000) and purchasing a house would set a buyer back about $273,000.

The analysis found that housing is about two times cheaper in the top markets that attracted people than in the areas that are losing the most in terms of population.

Chicago appears to be an exception. People are leaving the Windy City to get away from high taxes. Property taxes are higher there than almost anywhere else in the United States.

It is not as though the places that are losing people are suffering due to the exodus. Eight of the 10 counties with the biggest net population losses are still growing overall because of births and immigration.
…

Sears has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, buckling under its massive debt load and staggering losses. 

Sears once dominated the American retail landscape. But the big question is whether the shrunken version of itself can be viable or will it be forced to go out of business, closing the final chapter for an iconic name that originated more than a century ago.

Holdings will also close 142 unprofitable stores near the end of the year. Liquidation sales at these stores are expected to begin shortly. This is in addition to the previously announced closure of 46 unprofitable stores that is expected to be completed by November 2018.

The company, which started out as a mail order catalog in the 1880s, has been on a slow march toward extinction as it lagged far behind its peers and has incurred massive losses over the years. The operator of Sears and Kmart stores joins a growing list of retailers that have filed for bankruptcy or liquidated in the last few years amid a fiercely competitive climate. Some like Payless ShoeSource have had success emerging from reorganization in bankruptcy court but plenty of others haven’t, like Toys R Us and Bon-Ton Stores Inc. Both retailers were forced to shutter their operations this year soon after a Chapter 11 filing. 

“This is a company that in the 1950s stood like a colossus over the American retail landscape,” said Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners, a retail consultancy. “Hopefully, a smaller new Sears will be healthier.”

Given its sheer size, Sears’ bankruptcy filing will have wide ripple effects on everything from already ailing landlords to its tens of thousands of workers. 

Edward S. Lampert has stepped down from his role as CEO of the company, effective immediately. He will remain chairman of the board. The company’s board has created an Office of the CEO, which will be responsible for managing day-to-day operations during this process.

The filing, which is happening ahead of the crucial holiday shopping season, comes after rescue efforts engineered by Lampert have kept it outside of bankruptcy court – until now. 

Lampert, the largest shareholder, has been loaning out his own money for years and has put together deals to prop up the company, which in turn has benefited his own ESL hedge fund.

Last year, Sears sold its famous Craftsman brand to Stanley Black & Decker Inc., following its earlier moves to spin off pieces of its Sears Hometown and Outlet division and Lands’ End.

In recent weeks, Lampert has been pushing for a debt restructuring and offering to buy some of Sears’ key assets like Kenmore through his hedge fund as a $134 million debt repayment comes due on Monday. Lampert personally owns 31 percent of the company’s shares. His hedge fund has an 18.5 percent stake, according to FactSet.

“It is all well and good to undertake financial engineering, but the company is in the business of retailing and without a clear retail plan, the firm simply has no reason to exist,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, in a recent analyst note.

Sears’ stock has fallen from about $6 over the past year to below the minimum $1 level that Nasdaq stocks are required to trade in order to remain on the stock index. In April 2007, shares were trading at around $141. The company, which once had 350,000 workers, has seen its workforce shrink to fewer than 90,000 people as of earlier this year.

The company has racked up $6.26 billion in losses, excluding one-time events, since its last annual profit in 2010, according to Ken Perkins, who heads the research firm Retail Metrics LLC. It’s had 11 years of straight annual drops in revenue. In its last fiscal year, it generated $16.7 billion in sales, down from more than $50 billion in 2008.

As of May, it had fewer than 900 stores, down from about 1,000 at the end of last year. The number of stores peaked in 2012 at 4,000, including its Sears Canada division that was later spun off.

In a March 2017 government filing, Sears said there was “substantial doubt” it would be able to keep its doors open – but insisted its turnaround efforts would mitigate that risk. 

But its losses continued into this year. In the fiscal second quarter ended Aug. 4, net losses in the quarter swelled to $508 million, or $4.68 per share, compared with a loss of $250 million, or $2.33 cents per share in the same quarter a year ago. 

Such financial woes contrast with the promise that Lampert made when he combined Sears and Kmart in 2005, two years after he helped bring Kmart out of bankruptcy. Back then, it operated 2,200 stores in total.

Lampert pledged to return Sears to greatness by leveraging its best-known brands and its vast holdings of land, and more recently planned to entice customers with a loyalty program. But it struggled to get more people through the doors or to shop online. 

Jennifer Roberts, 36 of Dayton, Ohio, had been a long-time fan of Sears and has fond memories of shopping there for clothes as a child. But in recent years, she’s been disappointed by the lack of customer service and outdated stores. 

“My mom had always bought her appliances from Sears. That’s where my dad got his tools,” she said. “But they don’t care about their customers anymore.” 

She said a refrigerator her mother bought at Sears broke after two years and it still hasn’t been fixed for almost a month with no help from the retailer. 

“If they don’t value a customer, then they don’t need my money,” said Roberts, who voiced her complaints on Sears’ Facebook page. 

Sales at the company’s established locations tumbled nearly 4 percent during its fiscal second quarter. Still, that was an improvement from the same period a year ago when it fell 11.5 percent. Total revenue dropped 30 percent in the most recent quarter, hurt by continued store closings. 

The bleak figures are an outlier to chains like Walmart, Target, Best Buy and Macy’s, which have been enjoying stronger sales as they benefit from a robust economy and efforts to make the shopping experience more inviting by investing heavily on remodeling and de-cluttering their stores.

For decades, Sears was king of the American shopping landscape. Sears, Roebuck and Co.’s iconic catalog featured items from bicycles to sewing machines to houses, and could generate excitement throughout a household when it arrived. The company began opening retail locations in 1925 and expanded swiftly in suburban malls from the 1950s to 1970s. But the onset of discounters like Walmart created challenges for Sears that have only grown. Sears faced even more competition from online sellers and appliance retailers like Lowe’s and Home Depot. Its stores became an albatross.

Store shelves have been left bare as many vendors have demanded more stringent payment terms, says Mark Cohen, a professor of retailing at Columbia University and a former Sears executive.

Meanwhile, Sears workers are nervous about what kind of severance they’ll receive if their store closes.

John Germann, 46, works full-time and makes $14 per hour as the lead worker unloading merchandise from trucks at the Chicago Ridge, Illinois store, which has been drastically reducing its staff since he started nine years ago. Germann now has only 11 people on his team, compared with about 30 a few years ago. 

“We’re doing the job of two to three people. It’s not safe,” he said. “We’re lifting treadmills and refrigerators.”

Real estate experts believe that Sears’ move to further shutter stores as part of its restructuring would be a mixed blessing for landlords. For the healthy malls, landlords would welcome a Sears departure, allowing them to cut up the space and fill it with several smaller successful stores that combined would bring in higher revenue. 

But for the struggling malls, Cohen says it will be a “death knell” since it will be harder for them to bring in new tenants. Many of these malls already have had difficulty filling in the void from J.C. Penney and Macy’s closures. 

Saunders of GlobalData Retail spared no criticism of Sears in his analyst note, listing failing after failing of the company.

“The problem in Sears case is that it is a poor retailer,” he wrote. “Put bluntly, it has failed on every facet of retailing from assortment to service to merchandise to basic shop keeping standards. Under benign conditions, this would be problematic enough but in today’s hyper-competitive retail environment it is a recipe for failure on a grand scale.” 
…

An increase in world oil prices is helping Vietnam earn money that will quicken its already fast economic growth and may help the country build new infrastructure. The only red light: higher fuel prices among Vietnam’s consumers.

Vietnam, though not a major oil-producing nation like much of the Middle East, has counted energy-related commodities as its fifth highest source of exports. The industry is largely state-owned, including energy supplier PetroVietnam, with $3.1 billion in annual sales. Much of Vietnam’s energy comes from under the seas off its east and south coasts.

If crude oil prices hold at an average $65 per barrel this year, above last year’s average of US$60, economic growth will exceed the 6.7 percent target set by the legislature, the Communist Party of Vietnam’s website said last week. 

“Vietnam has a huge level of natural gas reserves and a level of oil, so if the prices go up that would definitely be a boon for Vietnam,” said Ralf Matthaes, founder of the Infocus Mekong Research consultancy in Ho Chi Minh City.

“It would be another benefit for Vietnam, that look, Vietnam has more exports. It’s not just about coffee and rice,” he said.

World oil price hikes

The Vietnamese Ministry of Finance forecasts that total state revenue from crude oil exports will reach $3.13 billion in the first nine months of 2018, up 42.5% over the same period last year. The total for January through September would beat a full-year target.

The revenue increases for Vietnam reflect higher income from oil sales worldwide. World prices should reach $73 per barrel within the year and $74 next year, per estimates by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Prices have gone up, the administration says, because of supply issues, including reports that U.S. sanctions on Iran will cut purchases.

“For the government and their state-owned enterprise PetroVietnam, it’s definitely good news,” said Frederick Burke, partner with the law firm Baker McKenzie in Ho Chi Minh City. “They’ve been really strained by that sort of weakness in their budget portfolio.”

Vietnam exports oil largely to Australia, China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. Those sales contribute to a $224 billion economy that has grown by around 6 percent every year since 2012. Much of the growth comes from foreign-invested factories that make items such as auto parts and consumer electronics.

Vietnam will export around 11.23 million tons of crude oil this year, the Communist Party says. 

What to do with the money

Oil revenue would give the government more funding for public infrastructure, Matthaes said. Vietnamese officials are building transport infrastructure so manufacturers can better move exports from factory floors to overseas markets. Ease of cargo shipping will help keep producers in Vietnam, which competes with China and much of Southeast Asia to win factory investment.

The government is spending now on expressways and urban mass transit to handle what the domestic news website VnExpress International calls “the country’s logistics shortcomings.” 

State-owned enterprises might eventually build more oil refineries, as well, Burke suggested. Despite export revenues, Vietnam is a net importer of refined oil products because onshore refineries cannot meet the demands of a 95 million population along with industry.

Vietnam imports about 70 percent of its fuel for actual usage, mostly from China, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand. 

Officials want to build more refineries to ensure Vietnam always has a steady fuel supply, Burke said. But he said a global “overcapacity” of refineries has cast doubt on ideas about opening more refineries in the country.

Inflation threat

Reliance on imports will raise the price of what common Vietnamese people pay for fuel, a threat to inflation, analysts and domestic media predict. Gasoline prices will rise 5 to 15 percent and may increase inflation by up to 0.64 percent over the year, the Communist Party says.

Officials in Hanoi set an inflation target of 4 percent for this year, but as of June it had already gone higher. Low prices help foreign investors as well as the millions of common motor scooter riders who still live in poverty.

Common consumers “feel the heat,” said Trung Nguyen, director of the Center for International Studies at Ho Chi Minh University of Social Sciences and Humanities. “They are used to the oil price rise, so I think that they can still withstand it, but I don’t know how far they can.”
…

World stocks are climbing Friday after two days of sharp losses. Major U.S. stock indexes are up more than 1 percent, but they’re still on track for their biggest one-week loss since late March.

Technology and internet companies were some of the hardest hit over the last two days and they led the market higher Friday. Apple climbed 2.7 percent to $220.18. Consumer-focused companies also rallied, as Amazon jumped 3.8 percent to $1,783.96 and Netflix surged 4.7 percent to $336.30.

The S&P 500 index climbed 37 points, or 1.4 percent, to 2,766 at 9:45 a.m. Eastern time. The benchmark index tumbled 5.3 percent over the past two days and as of Thursday it had fallen for six consecutive days. The S&P is down 5.6 percent from its latest record high, set Sept. 20.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 305 points, or 1.2 percent, to 25,358. The Nasdaq composite surged 138 points, or 1.9 percent, to 7,467. The Russell 2000 index gained 17 points, or 1.2 percent, to 1,563. That index, which is made up of smaller and more U.S.-focused companies, has fallen into a 10 percent “correction” since reaching a record high at the end of August.

On the New York Stock Exchange, winners outnumbered losers eight to one.

Stocks in Europe and Asia also recovered some of their recent losses. The French CAC 40 and the DAX in Germany both rose 0.8 percent while Britain’s FTSE 100 was 0.7 percent higher. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index gained 0.5 percent after sinking early in the day and following a nearly 4 percent loss on Thursday. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng surged 2.1 percent and the Kospi in South Korea rose 1.5 percent.

The market’s recent losing streak started when strong economic data and positive comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell helped set off a wave of selling in the bond market. Investors were betting that the U.S. economy would keep growing at a healthy pace. The sales pushed bond prices lower and yields higher. That drove interest rates sharply higher, which worried investors who felt that a big increase in interest rates could eventually stifle economic growth. Higher yields also make bonds more appealing to investors versus stocks.

The worst losses went to stocks that have led the market in recent years, including technology companies, as well as companies that do better when economic growth speeds up, like industrial firms.

Banks rose as they began to report their third-quarter results. Citigroup jumped 2.4 percent to $70.04. Last year’s corporate tax cut and rising interest rates have helped banks make more money.

Bond prices turned lower as the stock market stabilized. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 3.16 percent from 3.13 percent.

High-dividend stocks lagged the rest of the market, and utilities and household goods makers were little changed. Those stocks held up a bit better than the rest of the market over the last six days. Investors view them as relatively safe, steady assets that look better when growth is uncertain and the rest of the market is in turmoil.

U.S. crude oil added 0.6 percent to $71.43 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, the international standard, was up 0.6 percent to $80.77 a barrel in London.

The dollar rose to 112.17 yen from 111.94 yen. The euro fell to $1.1548 from $1.1594.
…

Just in case any of the global central bankers and finance ministers gathered in Indonesia missed the message delivered repeatedly this week, the host nation said it again Friday: Everyone stands to lose if trade wars are allowed to escalate.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo didn’t mention the United States or China, the world’s two largest economies, but it was clear who he was talking about in an address to the plenary session of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings on the island of Bali.

“Lately it feels like the relations among the major economies are becoming more and more like Game of Thrones,” Widodo said in a speech peppered with references to the HBO series about dynasties and kingdoms battling for power.

“Are we so busy fighting with each other and competing against each other that we fail to notice the things which are increasingly threatening, all of us alike, rich and poor, large and small,” he said.

Poorer and populous emerging market countries like his are among the most vulnerable to the fallout from the ongoing U.S.-Sino tariff war, and rising U.S. interest rates that are drawing investors away and driving down currencies.

“All these troubles in the world economy, are enough to make us feel like saying: ‘Winter is coming,'” Widodo said, using a phrase that characters in the popular fantasy series constantly repeat to refer to spectral dangers that could destroy them all.

With rivalry growing in the world economy, Widodo said “the situation could be more critical compared to the global financial crisis 10 years ago.”

The market ructions have now cascaded through to developed markets with Wall Street extending a slide into a sixth session on Thursday amid the trade war fears.

The United States and China have slapped tit-for-tat tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of each other’s goods over the past few months.

The tariffs stem from the Trump administration’s demands that China make sweeping changes to its intellectual property practices, rein in high-technology industrial subsidies, open its markets to more foreign competition and take steps to cut a politically sensitive U.S. goods trade surplus.

Rubbing salt in U.S. wounds, China reported on Friday an unexpected acceleration in export growth in September and a record $34.13 billion trade surplus with the United States.

Mnuchin: China trade talks must include yuan

In an interview with Reuters, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that he told China’s central bank chief that currency issues need to be part of any further U.S.-China trade talks and expressed his concerns about the yuan’s recent weakness.

Mnuchin also said that China needs to identify concrete “action items” to rebalance the two countries’ trade relationship before talks to resolve their disputes can resume.

The U.S. Treasury chief and People’s Bank of China Governor Yi Gang extensively discussed currency issues on the sidelines of the meetings in Bali.

Mnuchin’s comments on China’s currency come ahead of next week’s scheduled release of a hotly anticipated Treasury report on currency manipulation, the first since a significant weakening of yuan began this spring.

Mnuchin said re-launching trade talks would require China to commit to taking action on structural reforms to its economy.

If the relationship could be rebalanced, he said the U.S.-China total annual trade relationship could grow to $1 trillion from $650 billion currently, with $500 billion of exports from each country.

G-20 members and trade issues

Meanwhile, the chairman of a meeting of finance leaders from the Group of 20 leading industrialized and emerging economies admitted that the trade tensions within the group could only be solved by the countries directly involved.

“The G-20 can play a role in providing the platform for discussions. But the differences that still persist should be resolved by the members that are directly involved in the tensions,” Nicolas Dujovne, Argentina’s Treasury Minister, told a news conference after chairing the G-20 meeting in Bali.

More than 19,000 delegates and other guests, including ministers, central bank heads and some leaders, were attending the IMF-World Bank meetings, and Widodo asked them to “cushion the blows from trade wars, technical disruption and market turmoil.”

“I hope you will each do your part to nudge our various leaders in the right direction,” Widodo said, adding that “confrontation and collision impose a tragic price.”

The IMF’s twice-yearly report on the Asia Pacific region, released Thursday, warned that the market rout seen in emerging economies could worsen if the Federal Reserve and other major central banks tightened monetary policy more quickly than expected.

At Friday’s plenary, IMF managing director Christine Lagarde estimated that the escalation of current trade tensions could reduce global GDP by almost one percent over the next two years.

IMF forecasts of global economic growth for both 2018 and 2019 were cut to 3.7 percent, from 3.9 percent in its July forecast.

“Clearly, we need to de-escalate these disputes,” Lagarde told the plenary session.
…

Elon Musk replied with a tweet saying “This is incorrect” after the Financial

Times reported that outgoing Twenty-First Century Fox Inc. Chief Executive James Murdoch was the lead candidate to replace him as Tesla Inc. chairman.

Tesla has until Nov. 13 to appoint an independent chairman of the board, part of settlements reached last month between Tesla, Musk and U.S. regulators after Musk tweeted in August that he had secured funding to take the electric car maker private.

The SEC settlement capped months of debate and some investor calls for stronger oversight of Musk, whose recent erratic public behavior raised concerns about his ability to steer the money-losing company through a rocky phase of growth.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which said Musk’s tweeted statements about going private were fraudulent, allowed the billionaire to retain his role as CEO while requiring he give up his chairmanship.

Musk had said he was considering taking Tesla private at a price of $420 a share, a number that is slang for marijuana. He tweeted the three-word denial of the Financial Times story on Wednesday at 4:20 pm PDT (2320 GMT), about six hours after the newspaper’s post.

In a vote of confidence for Musk, shareholder T. Rowe Price Group Inc. said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday that it had raised its stake to 10.2 percent at the end of September from just under 7 percent in June.

The Financial Times cited two people briefed on discussions saying Murdoch was the lead candidate for the job. Murdoch, already an independent director of Tesla, has signaled he wants the job, the report said.

The son of Fox mogul Rupert Murdoch, he joined Tesla’s board last year after years of work with media companies. He has no experience in manufacturing and has never led a company that makes cars or electric vehicles.

Murdoch could not immediately be reached for comment. Tesla did not respond to a request for comment. Twenty-First Century Fox declined to comment.

​Board roles

Musk is the public face of Tesla, and any chairman would have to contend with his powerful personality. Thanks to his vision and audacious showmanship, Tesla’s valuation has at times eclipsed that of established U.S. automakers with billions in revenues, and the company has garnered legions of fans, despite repeated production issues.

“The question when it comes to James Murdoch is, ‘Is he the guy who’ll be able to establish that level of authority with Elon Musk?’ ” asked Abby Adlerman, CEO of Boardspan, a corporate governance consulting company.

Murdoch, who at 45 is a near contemporary of 47-year-old Musk, recently navigated a takeover battle between Fox and Comcast Corp. to buy European pay-TV company Sky, which he also chaired.

His record in ensuring Sky’s independent shareholders were represented throughout was exemplary, media analyst Alice Enders said.

“His experience is very recent and very relevant,” she said.

Investor concerns that Tesla’s board was too closely tied to Musk led to the company’s addition of two independent directors, including Murdoch, in July 2017.

Earlier this year, leading U.S. proxy advisers Glass Lewis & Co. and Institutional Shareholder Services and union-affiliated investment adviser CtW Investment Group had recommended investors cast votes “against” the re-election of Murdoch as a Tesla director at the company’s annual meeting held on June 5.

While CtW cited a lack of relevant experience and a “troubled history as an executive and director,” both proxy firms warned that Murdoch already served on too many boards.

Murdoch currently serves on the boards of Twenty-First Century Fox and News Corp. He stepped down from Sky Plc on Tuesday following the completion of Comcast’s takeover of the broadcaster.

He was appointed chief executive of Sky, founded by his father, in 2003, becoming the youngest CEO of a FTSE 100 company.

“Under his leadership, Sky went down the technology route,” Enders said. “It’s no accident he oversaw that strategy, which was really distinct from the strategy other pay-TV companies followed, and in my view was his most valuable contribution.”

Murdoch replaced his father as chairman of Sky in 2007, but was forced out in 2012 after being embroiled in Britain’s phone-hacking scandal. He returned to Sky’s board in 2016 after rebuilding his career at Fox.
…

Parties to a new global treaty to combat the illicit sale of tobacco products have taken the first steps toward cracking down on this multi-billion dollar trade.  At a three-day meeting at the headquarters of the World Health Organization in Geneva they have outlined a plan to shut down the lucrative black market trade in tobacco.

A global tobacco treaty (Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products) entered into force on September 25, with 48 countries joining the new protocol, which is part of the WHO Framework Convention for Tobacco Control (FCTC).  Two-thirds of the parties have enacted or strengthened national legislation aimed at tackling illicit trade in tobacco products.

Parties attending the meeting have set up a working group to create a monitoring system to track and trace the movement of tobacco products. They hope this global information sharing system will be up and running by 2023.  

Head of the FCTC Secretariat, Vera da Costa e Silva, says illicit trade accounts for one in 10 cigarettes consumed.  She says these cigarettes are low-priced and more affordable for young people and vulnerable populations.  She says this results in increased consumption of the toxic product by these groups.

She told VOA the black market in tobacco thrives in both rich and poor countries, but it is a much bigger problem in developing countries.

“In the streets of developing countries, you can see all over the world sales of illicit trade of tobacco products.  They are openly in their markets…. When it comes to the distribution, this is linked to street sales, to bootlegging as well through borders and even to sales to and by minors.  That is a real problem of illicit trade in tobacco products,” she said.

Da Costa e Silva said this flourishing illegal trade undermines tobacco control policies and public health.  She said it also fuels organized crime and increases tobacco profits through tax evasion, resulting in substantial losses in governments’ revenues.   

She said studies show governments lose $31 billion in taxes annually from the illegal trafficking in tobacco products.  

The World Health Organization reports seven million people die prematurely every year from tobacco-related causes.

 
…

One of Donald Trump’s top economic advisers says the president is not trying to improperly influence the U.S. central bank.

The director of the National Economic Council, Larry Kudlow, spoke to the television network CNBC a day after Trump said the U.S. Federal Reserve is “loco” (crazy) for raising interest rates. On Thursday, Trump continued his attacks on the central bank, calling the Fed “out of control,” but denied he has plans to fire Fed Chair Jay Powell. 

Kudlow said, “We all know the Fed is independent. The president is not dictating policy to the Fed.”  

The Federal Reserve slashed the benchmark interest rate nearly to zero in an emergency, temporary effort to boost economic growth hurt by a severe recession 10 years ago. Since then, the economy has stopped shrinking and resumed growth, unemployment has fallen to historic lows, and wages and inflation have begun to rise modestly.  

Low interest rates boost growth by making it cheaper for businesses and families to borrow money to build factories or buy homes.  Economists warn that keeping interest rates too low for too long could spark strong inflation that pushes up prices and wages so sharply that they damage the economy.  

To fend off inflation, the Fed has been slowly raising rates a quarter of a percentage point at a time. They are expected to continue this effort to gradually return rates to their historic averages.

A common conflict grows out of the fact that incumbent elected politicians get the blame if the economy is not growing strongly. That gives presidents and others a political incentive to keep interest rates low, regardless of the consequences.  

That is why central banks in the United States and elsewhere are often set up to be insulated from political pressure — so they can make decisions based on economic merit rather than potential popularity.

When the independence of a central bank is seriously questioned, markets and currencies can fall, because investors lose confidence in the economic management of a nation.

U.S. stock markets fell sharply again Wednesday with the benchmark Dow Jones industrial average off nearly 550 points, a drop of more than 2 percent.

This was the second sharp loss for U.S. stocks in as many days, with a total loss for the Dow at more than 1,300 points. Many key European and Asian stock indexes also declined. 
…

More than half of the world’s population lives in cities, according to United Nations figures.  By the middle of this century, 68 percent of the world will be urbanized, adding 2½ billion people to global cities.  The growth will bring problems, including lack of housing, and,  as Mike O’Sullivan reports, some ballooning urban regions already face a housing crisis.
…

The trade war between the United States and China has made for a nerve-wracking summer of uncertainty in Wisconsin, where manufacturing has long been in decline yet remains a vital part of the state’s economy.

At Johnson Level and Tool in suburban Milwaukee, the Trump administration’s thrust-and-parry trade moves with China and other countries have left the company bracing for up to $3.7 million in extra costs annually because of higher tariffs on imports, including some of its levels that are made in China.

The company has a range of options to try to blunt its higher costs — from raising prices on the levels it sells to big box stores to potentially moving some of its manufacturing now done in China to another country to avoid tariffs.

But as companies across America struggle to adapt to the higher prices from import taxes, the options that officials at Johnson Level and Tool face underscore there are no easy answers — and no surefire way to avoid paying more for indispensable imports. As Trump’s tariffs on countless U.S. imports take root, some of the largest U.S. corporations have warned that higher prices are coming.   

For many such companies, a key internal question is whether to absorb the higher costs themselves, at least temporarily, to avoid losing customers — or raise prices immediately. Johnson Level has chosen to raise its prices for the stores that buy its products by 8 percent to 10 percent to match its higher costs imposed by the tariffs.

Levels are a basic tool essential for things like getting doorways square and hanging pictures straight. Though Johnson manufactures some of its levels in Mequon, it imports others that are cheaper to make in China because their tooling machines cost just one-tenth what they do in the U.S., said Paul Buzzell, the company’s chief financial officer. About half of the levels the company sells are imported from China.

The uncertainty over how long the tariffs will remain in place has made it harder to find a solution, Buzzell said. He said he always assumed that if the U.S. increased tariffs, it would give businesses a year or two to prepare by making adjustments with their suppliers.

That was the assumption, he said, when the company “started investing in our suppliers and relationships in China.”

“We have this uncertainty, and almost overnight our business really has changed and so the competitive landscape is different,” Buzzell said.

The first tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum in June didn’t affect Johnson Level; the company doesn’t import those raw materials. But in July, a second round of tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese imports covering hundreds of items, including all the levels and laser levels the company imports, meaning they were now paying 25 percent more for those.

Despite its decline over the years, manufacturing still plays a central role in Wisconsin’s economy, making the survival of companies like Johnson Level essential to the state.

About 16 percent of Wisconsin’s workforce is in manufacturing — second only to Indiana, according to the National Association of Manufacturers . And global trade — whether involving manufacturing, farming or other industries — supports about 800,000 jobs in the state, according to the advocacy group U.S. Chamber of Commerce . That’s roughly a quarter of the state’s total workforce.

In business since 1947, Johnson Level and Tool sells levels and measuring tools to stores nationwide, including Home Depot, Menards, Lowe’s and Ace Hardware.  

Buzzell said some of his customers, whom he declined to name, have already balked at suggested price increases. One business customer that he said accounted for about $2 million in Johnson’s annual sales found another supplier shortly after Johnson raised its prices, Buzzell said.

Margaret Smith, a spokeswoman for Home Depot, said the company works “with suppliers to mitigate impact on customers.” She said she couldn’t elaborate.

Buzzell said the company, which employs about 100 people, has no plans to reduce staff. He wouldn’t disclose Johnson Level’s annual revenue, saying only that it’s under $50 million. Buzzell said one option likeliest to succeed — but also the costliest — would be for the company to find another country not subject to tariffs that can manufacture what it needs. Johnson Level has discussed that possibility, including making in the U.S. what it now imports from China, but it would entail a complex and time-consuming process.

‘Uncertainty’ reigns

“This is a classic example of uncertainty,” Buzzell said. “We’re questioning, should we treat these tariffs as a long-term thing that’s never going away.”

On the other hand, he said, the company must make pivotal decisions even knowing that the Trump administration could rescind its tariff increases at any time.

“You don’t really know what to do,” Buzzell said.

The uncertainty over how long the tariffs will stay is making decisions difficult for other companies that import products from China as well.

“The big question is, nobody knows how long they’ll be in place, so it’s hard making changes,” Austin Ramirez, the CEO of Husco International, said in an interview.

The Wisconsin-based Husco makes hydraulic and electro-mechanical components for cars and uses machines and metal from China.

“This is costing us a fortune,” Ramirez told U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson at a meeting with business leaders in July. Ramirez said the company was incurring about a million dollars a month more in expenses because of the Trump tariffs. Husco International makes roughly a half-billion in total revenue, Ramirez said.   

Husco International does about half its business overseas, with plants in Asia and Europe. The company also has about 100 manufacturing jobs in the U.S. for exports to other countries, but retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports means those jobs could move elsewhere, Ramirez said.

“Those jobs are at risk because I can move them to overseas plants that aren’t subject to these tariffs,” Ramirez told Johnson.

At Regal Ware, a company that makes pots, frying pans and cast aluminum cookware, $2 million in profits could vanish if tariffs remain in place this year, said Doug Reigl, a vice president at the Wisconsin-based company.

Reigl said the company will consider moving production overseas “or look for ways to take costs out of operations here in the U.S.” if the tariffs stay.  

While layoffs may not be imminent at manufacturing companies, hiring could face a slowdown, said Dr. Joseph Daniels, chairman of the economics department at Marquette University.

“I would say what’s at risk is actually job creation,” Daniels said.

That’s a concern Buzzell shares.

“It’s not going to shut us down,” he said of the tariffs. “But what it does, it theoretically takes away money to invest in long-term projects.”

 
…

The heads of the World Bank and IMF appealed Thursday to the U.S. and China to cool their dispute over technology policy and play by world trade rules, as tumbling share prices drove home potential perils from a clash between the world’s two biggest economies.

Global economic growth is slowing but remains strong, Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said on the sidelines of the IMF-World Bank annual meeting, being held this week on the Indonesian island of Bali.

Countries are mostly in a “strong position,” she said, “which is why we believe we are not seeing what is referred to as ‘contagion.”‘

But the gyrations that rocked Wall Street the day before and Asia and Europe on Thursday, taking the Shanghai Composite index down 5.2 percent and Japan’s Nikkei 225 nearly 4 percent, do partly reflect rising interest rates in the U.S. and some other countries and growing uncertainty over trade, she said.

“It’s the combination of the two that is probably showing some of the tensions that we see in terms of indices, short-term indicators as well as possibly market volatility,” Lagarde said.

The U.S. and Chinese exchanges of penalty tariffs in their dispute isn’t helping, she said.

Her advice was threefold: “De-escalate. Fix the system. Don’t break it.”

She acknowledged that the World Trade Organization, based in Geneva, has made scant headway in recent years toward a global agreement on trade rules that can address issues like complaints over Chinese policies that U.S. President Donald Trump says unfairly extract advanced technologies and put foreign companies at a disadvantage in a quest to dominate certain industries.

“Our strong recommendation is to escalate work for a world trade system that is stronger, that is fairer and is fit for the purpose,” she said in opening remarks. 

‘More trade not less’

Somewhat obliquely, she said policies aimed toward an excessively “dominant position” were not compatible with free and fair trade.

The IMF has downgraded its forecast for global economic growth to 3.7 percent this year from its earlier estimate of 3.9 percent. It also issued reports this week on government finance and financial stability that warn of the risks of disruptions to world trade.

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said the World Bank is working with developing countries to brace for a further deterioration.

“Trade is very critical because that is what has lifted people out of extreme poverty,” Kim said. “I am a globalist. That is my job. That is our only chance of ending extreme poverty. We need more trade not less trade,” he said.

Kim said the World Bank has launched a “human capital index” to help rank countries by the level of their investments in such areas as education and health care.

Policies to build such human capital are among the “smartest investments countries can make,” he said.

He praised host country Indonesia, a democratic, Muslim-majority country of 260 million, for fostering strong growth but noted there was much room for improvement. The country is ranked 87th of 150 countries in the list.

Indonesia has endured a slew of disasters in recent months. Before dawn on Thursday, an earthquake collapsed homes on Indonesia’s Java island, killing at least three people just two weeks after a major quake and tsunami disaster in a central region of the archipelago killed more than 2,000 people and left perhaps thousands more buried deeply in mud.

Thursday’s magnitude 6.0 quake offshore north of Bali shook the area where the IMF-World Bank delegates are meeting, but there were no signs of significant damage.

The annual financial meetings take place at a time of growing concern over trends other than trade, such as moves to raise borrowing costs in the U.S. and some other regions to help cool growth and keep inflation in check. Rising interest rates are drawing investment flows out of emerging markets in Asia and Latin America at a time when growth in their exports is likely to slow.

Rising debts

Argentina and Pakistan, Venezuela and Zimbabwe are among countries grappling with crises. Concerns are growing, also, over slowing growth in China and rising debts among some developing countries resulting from projects associated with Beijing’s “Belt and Road Initiative” to develop ports, roads and other infrastructure. 

Lagarde said the IMF will send a team to Pakistan in the coming weeks after a meeting with its finance minister, Asad Umar, in which he requested emergency bailout loans.

The IMF chief did not say how much Umar had requested. Analysts say Pakistan is seeking $8 billion in loans to deal with a balance of payments crisis. Pakistan’s currency plunged by around 7 percent earlier this week after word of the loan request was made public.

Asked whether IMF help might amount to a “bailout” for Chinese loans, Lagarde said any such help would have to be completely transparent.

“In whatever work we do we need a complete understanding and complete transparency about the nature of a debt that is bearing on a country,” she said.

The annual summit for global finance brings together central bankers and finance ministers, development experts and civil society groups from across the globe.

Bali has suffered terrorist bombings in the past, and the event was being held amid tight security. A convoy of armed personnel carriers was lined up alongside a beach path and access to the area was tightly controlled. 

Still, about a dozen activists concerned with land grabs and other issues sometimes associated with World Bank-sponsored projects staged a brief, peaceful protest over the cancellation by local authorities of a conference they were to hold in the nearby city of Denpasar.

“If they don’t want to ever hear our voices, what kinds of projects are we expecting?” said Joan Salvador, a member of a Philippine women’s group.

Those involved had badges allowing them to enter the tightly guarded venue, and an IMF official said she would convey their concerns “to the highest levels.”
…

U.S. stocks posted their worst loss since February on Wednesday, the Dow Jones industrial average finishing the day down more than 800 points.

The losses were widespread as bond yields remained high after steep increases last week. Companies that have been the biggest winners on the market the last few years, including technology companies and retailers, suffered steep declines.

The Dow gave up nearly 828 points, or 3.15 percent, to 25,600. The Nasdaq composite, which has a high concentration of technology stocks, tumbled 316 points, or 4.1 percent, to 7,422.

The S&P 500 index sank 95 points, or 3.3 percent, to 2,786, its fifth straight drop. That hasn’t happened since right before the 2016 presidential election. Every one of the 11 S&P 500 sectors finished down for the day.

Microsoft dropped 5.4 percent to $106.16. Amazon skidded 6.2 percent to $1,755.25. Industrial and internet companies also fell hard. Boeing lost 4.7 percent to $367.47 and Alphabet, Google’s parent company, gave up 5 percent to $1,081.22.

After a long stretch of relative calm, the stock market has suffered sharp losses over the last week as bond yields surged.

Squeezed margins

Gina Martin Adams, the chief equity strategist for Bloomberg Intelligence, said investors are concerned about the big increase in yields, which makes it more expensive to borrow money. She said they also fear that company profit margins will be squeezed by rising costs, including the price of oil.

Paint and coatings maker PPG gave a weak third-quarter forecast Monday, while earlier, Pepsi and Conagra’s quarterly reports reflected increased expenses.

“Both companies highlighted rising costs, not only input costs but increasing operating expenses [and] marketing expenses,” she said.

Insurance companies dropped as Hurricane Michael continued to gather strength and came ashore in Florida bringing winds of up to 155 mph. Berkshire Hathaway dipped 4.8 percent to $213.10 and reinsurer Everest Re slid 5.1 percent to $217.73.

Luxury retailers tumbled. Tiffany plunged 10.2 percent to $110.38 and Ralph Lauren fell 8.4 percent to $116.96.

The biggest driver for the market over the last week has been interest rates, which began spurting higher following several encouraging reports on the economy. Higher rates can slow economic growth, erode corporate profits and make investors less willing to pay high prices for stocks. 

The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 3.22 percent from 3.20 percent late Tuesday after earlier touching 3.24 percent. It was at just 3.05 percent early last week.

Technology and internet-based companies are known for their high profit margins, and many have reported explosive growth in recent years, with corresponding gains in their stock prices. Adams, of Bloomberg Intelligence, said investors have concerns about their future profitability, too.

That’s helped make technology stocks more volatile in the last few months.

“As stocks go up, tech goes up more than the stock market. As stocks go down, tech goes down more than the stock market,” she said.
…

The Trump administration is moving to allow year-round sales of gasoline with higher blends of ethanol, a boon for Iowa and other farm states that have pushed for greater sales of the corn-based fuel.

President Donald Trump was expected to announce he will lift a federal ban on summer sales of high-ethanol blends during a trip to Iowa on Tuesday.

“It’s an amazing substance. You look at the Indy cars. They run 100 percent on ethanol,” Trump said at the White House before he left for Iowa.

He said he wanted more industry and more energy and he wanted to help farmers and refiners.

‘I want low prices’

“I want more because I don’t like $74,” Trump said referring to the current price of a barrel of crude oil. “It’s up to $74. And if I have to do more — whether it’s through ethanol or another means — that’s what I want. I want low prices.”

The long-expected announcement is something of a reward to Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman led a contentious but successful fight to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. The veteran Republican lawmaker is the Senate’s leading ethanol proponent and sharply criticized the Trump administration’s proposed rollback in ethanol volumes earlier this year.

At that time Grassley threatened to call for the resignation of the Environmental Protection Agency’s chief, Scott Pruitt, if Pruitt did not work to fulfill the federal ethanol mandate. Pruitt later stepped down amid a host of ethics investigations.

A senior administration official said Monday that the EPA would publish a rule in coming days to allow high-ethanol blends as part of a package of proposed changes to the ethanol mandate. The official spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of Trump’s announcement.

The change would allow year-round sales of gasoline blends with up to 15 percent ethanol. Gasoline typically contains 10 percent ethanol.

The EPA currently bans the high-ethanol blend, called E15, during the summer because of concerns that it contributes to smog on hot days, a claim ethanol industry advocates say is unfounded.

In May, Republican senators, including Grassley, announced a tentative agreement with the White House to allow year-round E15 sales, but the EPA did not propose a formal rule change.

The senior administration official said the proposed rule intends to allow E15 sales next summer. Current regulations prevent retailers in much of the country from offering E15 from June 1 to Sept. 15.

Lifting the summer ban is expected to be coupled with new restrictions on trading biofuel credits that underpin the federal Renewable Fuel Standard, commonly known as the ethanol mandate. The law sets out how much corn-based ethanol and other renewable fuels refiners must blend into gasoline each year.

Production misses mark

The Renewable Fuel Standard was intended to address global warming, reduce dependence on foreign oil and bolster the rural economy by requiring a steady increase in renewable fuels over time. The mandate has not worked as intended, and production levels of renewable fuels, mostly ethanol, routinely fail to reach minimum thresholds set in law.

The oil industry opposes year-round sales of E15, warning that high-ethanol gasoline can damage car engines and fuel systems. Some carmakers have warned against high-ethanol blends, though EPA has approved use of E15 in all light-duty vehicles built since 2001.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers, many from oil-producing states, sent Trump a letter last week opposing expanded sales of high-ethanol gas. The lawmakers called the approach “misguided” and said it would do nothing to protect refinery jobs and “could hurt millions of consumers whose vehicles and equipment are not compatible with higher-ethanol blended gasoline.”

The letter was signed by 16 Republicans and four Democrats, including Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, and Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, a key Trump ally. New Jersey Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez, whose state includes several refineries, also signed the letter.

A spokeswoman for the Renewable Fuels Association, an ethanol industry trade group, said allowing E15 to be sold year-round would give consumers greater access to clean, low-cost, higher-octane fuel while expanding market access for ethanol producers.

“The ability to sell E15 all year would also bring a significant boost to farmers across our country” and provide a significant economic boost to rural America, said spokeswoman Rachel Gantz.
…

Sales of U.S. military equipment to foreign governments rose 33 percent to $55.6 billion in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, a U.S. administration official told Reuters on Tuesday.

The increase in foreign military sales came in part because the Trump administration rolled out a new “Buy American” plan in April that loosened restrictions on sales while encouraging U.S. officials to take a bigger role in increasing business overseas for the U.S. weapons industry.

There are two major ways foreign governments purchase arms from U.S. companies: Direct commercial sales, negotiated between a government and a company; and foreign military sales, where a foreign government typically contacts a Department of Defense official at the U.S. embassy in their capital. Both require approval by the U.S. government.

About $70 billion worth of foreign military sales notifications went to Congress this year, slightly less than the year before, the administration official said.

The $55.6 billion figure represents signed letters of agreement for foreign military sales between the United States and allies.

The largest U.S. arms contractors include Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday again criticized the Federal Reserve, telling reporters the central bank was going too fast in raising rates when inflation is minimal and government data point to a strong economy.

“Well, I like to see low interest rates. The Fed is doing what it thinks is necessary, but I don’t like what they’re doing because we have inflation really checked, and we have a lot of good things happening,” Trump said to reporters on the White House lawn before departing for an Iowa event. “I just don’t think it’s necessary to go as fast.”

The U.S. Federal Reserve last raised interest rates in September and left intact its plans to steadily tighten monetary policy, as it forecast that the U.S. economy would enjoy at least three more years of economic growth.

The Federal Reserve is mandated by Congress to aim for low inflation and low unemployment. Currently, U.S. consumer price inflation is above 2 percent annually and the unemployment rate is the lowest in about 40 years.

“Also, very importantly I think, the numbers we’re producing are record-setting,” Trump added. “I don’t want to slow it down, even a little bit, especially when you don’t have the problem of inflation. And you don’t see that inflation coming back. Now, at some point it will and you go up.”

Trump has publicly stated his concerns before, but on Tuesday said he had not discussed them personally with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, explaining that “I like to stay uninvolved.”
…

Facebook on Tuesday hosted its first global summit spotlighting a growing Workplace platform launched two years ago as a private social network for businesses.

While Facebook would not disclose exact figures, it said Workplace – a rival to collaboration services like Slack, Salesforce, and Microsoft – has been a hit and that ranks of users have doubled in the past eight to 10 months.

The list of companies using Workplace included Walmart, Starbucks, Spotify, Delta, and Virgin Atlantic.

“It is growing very fast,” Workplace by Facebook vice president Julien Codorniou told AFP.

“We started with big companies, because that is where we found traction. It is a very good niche.”

Workplace is a separate operation from Facebook’s main social network and is intended as a platform to connect everyone in a company, from counter or warehouse workers to chief executives, according to Codorniou.

Workplace claimed that a differentiator from its competitors is that it connects all employees in businesses no matter their roles, even if their only computing device is a smartphone.

“That really resonates with a new generation,” Codorniou said of Workplace’s “democratic” nature.

“Millennials want to know who they work for and understand the culture of the company.”

He cited cases of top company executives using Workplace to get feedback from workers at all levels, bringing a small company feel to big operations.

Workplace is rolled out to everyone in companies, which then pay $3 monthly for each active user.

No ‘Candy Crush’

The software-as-a-service business began as an internal collaboration platform used at Facebook and was launched as its own business in 2016.

Workplace is used by 30,000 companies and has its main office in London, according to Codorniou.

Interaction with the platform plays off how people use Facebook, and Workplace adopts innovations from the leading social network. But, it is billed as a completely separate product.

“This is coming from Facebook Inc., but has nothing to do with Facebook,” he said.

“You cannot play ‘Candy Crush’ on Workplace, but people ask. We just take what makes sense.”

The conference was used to announce new Workplace features including a version of Facebook safety check designed as a way for companies to quickly determine the status and well-being of workers in event of disaster or tragedy.

Workplace also introduced the ability to have group voice or video chats with people routinely worked with outside a company.
…

Drink companies Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Nestle were found to be the world’s biggest producers of plastic trash, a report by environmental group Greenpeace said on Tuesday.

Working with the Break Free From Plastic movement, Greenpeace said it orchestrated 239 plastic clean-ups in 42 countries around the world, which resulted in the audit of 187,000 pieces of plastic trash. The aim was to get a picture of how large corporations contribute to the problem of pollution.

Coca-Cola, the world’s largest soft drink maker, was the top waste producer, Greenpeace said, with Coke-branded plastic trash found in 40 of the 42 countries.

“These brand audits offer undeniable proof of the role that corporations play in perpetuating the global plastic pollution crisis,” said Von Hernandez, global coordinator for Break Free From Plastic.

Overall, the most common type of plastic found was polystyrene, which goes into packaging and foam coffee cups, followed closely by PET, used in bottles and containers.

“We share Greenpeace’s goal of eliminating waste from the ocean and are prepared to do our part to help address this important challenge,” a Coke spokesman said in a statement. The company has pledged to collect and recycle a bottle or can for every one it sells by 2030.

All three companies have made pledges about their packaging for 2025. Coke says all its packaging will be recyclable, Nestle says it will be recyclable or reusable and PepsiCo says it will be recyclable, compostable or biodegradable.

They are all also working to use recycled content in their packaging.

Nestle, the world’s largest food and drink maker, said it recognized the issue and is working hard to eliminate non-recyclable plastics. It said it was also exploring different packaging solutions and ways to facilitate recycling and eliminate plastic waste.

PepsiCo was not immediately available to comment outside regular U.S. business hours. 
…

Nigeria, Singapore and India are among countries fueling the gap between the super-rich and poor, aid agency Oxfam said Tuesday as it launched an index spotlighting those nations doing the least to bridge the divide.

South Korea, Georgia and Indonesia were among countries praised for trying to reduce inequality, through policies on social spending, tax and labor rights.

Oxfam said inequality had reached crisis levels, with the richest 1 percent of the global population nabbing four-fifths of wealth created between mid-2016 and mid-2017, while the poorest half saw no increase in wealth.

The index of 157 countries is being released as finance ministers and central bank chiefs gather in Bali for the World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meetings.

Nigeria, where 10 percent of children die before their fifth birthday, came in last due to “shamefully low” social spending, poor tax collection and rising labor rights violations, Oxfam said.

It said tackling inequality did not depend on a country’s wealth, but on political will.

Singapore, one of the world’s richest countries, came in the bottom 10, partly because of practices which facilitate tax dodging, Oxfam said. The city state, which has no universal minimum wage, also did poorly on labor rights.

South Korea, 56 on the list, was praised for bumping its minimum wage up by 16.4 percent last year, and Georgia (49) for boosting education spending by nearly 6 percent — more than any other country.

Denmark’s track record on progressive taxation, social spending and worker protections earned it the top spot, but Oxfam warned that recent administrations had eroded good policies and inequality had risen.

China (81) ranked way ahead of India (147), devoting more than twice as much of its budget to health and almost four times as much to welfare spending, the agency said.

Oxfam warned that world leaders risked failing on their pledge to reduce inequality by 2030 and urged them to develop plans to close the gap which should be funded by progressive taxation and clamping down on tax dodging.

“We see children dying from preventable diseases because of a lack of health-care funding while rich corporations and individuals dodge billions of dollars in tax,” Oxfam boss Winnie Byanyima said. “Governments often tell us they are committed to fighting poverty and inequality — this index shows whether their actions live up to their promises.”

The index, which included an indicator on violence against women, said less than half of countries had adequate laws on sexual harassment and rape.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump’s golf courses in Scotland lost more than $6 million in 2017.

A report released Monday said the Trump International Golf Links near Aberdeen lost $1.7 million, slightly lower than the $1.8 million lost in 2016.

His flagship Trump Turnberry resort along the Irish Sea posted a loss of nearly $4.5 million last year, substantially less than the $23.3 million loss posted in 2016. The resort has lost more than $43 million since Trump bought it in 2014.

Trump’s son Eric said in a letter that the 2017 losses at Aberdeen could be attributed to a “crash in the oil price and economic downturn experienced in the northeast of Scotland.”

He pointed to Turnberry as a success story following a major redevelopment there after the 2016 losses. He praised the 2017 number as “one of the most robust financial results in years.”

Trump visited the Turnberry resort in July, costing the U.S. government some $68,800, The Scotsman newspaper reported at the time. It said the State Department paid the resort for the rooms used by Trump and his staff, who stayed there from Friday night to Sunday afternoon.

The Trump organization at the time did not dispute the charges but clarified that the U.S. government was charged at cost and that the resort did not profit from the visit.
…

Pakistan’s new government will open talks with the International Monetary Fund for emergency financial assistance to ease a mounting balance of payments crisis, the finance ministry said Monday.

New Prime Minister Imran Khan spent nearly two months since taking office looking for alternatives to a second IMF bailout in five years, which would likely impose tough conditions on government policy that would limit his vision of an Islamic welfare state.

But on Monday, he decided his finance minister should meet with officials at this week’s annual conference of the IMF and the World Bank in Bali, Indonesia, to discuss a potential package, the finance ministry said in a statement.

“Today, it was decided that we should start talks with IMF,” Finance Minister Asad Umar told GEO TV in an interview Monday night.

The finance ministry did not specify how much in emergency financing the government would seek, but Umar earlier said the government would need at least $8 billion to cover its external debt payments through the end of the year.

Pakistan’s foreign currency reserves dropped in late September to $8.4 billion, barely enough for those debt payments.

The new government blames the previous administration for the country’s economic woes.

‘About time’

Khan’s decision came after the Pakistani stock markets tumbled by 3.4 percent Monday after Khan said the day before that he was still exploring options outside the IMF.

Khan’s government had been seeking economic lifelines from its allies, including new bridge loans from China and a deferred payments scheme for oil with Saudi Arabia, but there were no large-scale deals.

Pakistan’s current account deficit widened 43 percent to $18 billion in the fiscal year that ended June 30, while the fiscal deficit has ballooned to 6.6 percent of gross domestic product.

The rupee has fallen by more than 20 percent in four devaluations since December. On Monday, the currency was trading at 128 per U.S. dollar on the open market and 124.20 in the official interbank rate.

Monday’s news was welcomed by brokers as a clear signal that could help steady markets tired of nearly two months’ of uncertainty since Khan’s government took office.

“It was much needed and about time,” said Saad Hashemy, research director for Pakistani brokerage Topline Securities. “Now what remains to be seen is the amount of funds and the associated to-do list,” he added. “That is, how much more currency devaluation, extent of further interest rate hikes, energy tariff hike, taxation measures etc.”

As the world’s lender of last resort for governments, the IMF typically sets such conditions on its assistance.

If a package is agreed on, it would be Pakistan’s 13th IMF bailout since the late 1980s.

“The challenge for the current government is to ensure that fundamental economic structural reforms are carried out to ensure that this spiral of being in an IMF program every few years is broken once and for all,” the finance ministry said.
…

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded this year’s Nobel Prize for economics to Yale University’s William Nordhaus and New York University’s Paul Romer.

The Academy said Nordhaus and Romer “have designed methods for addressing some of our time’s most basic and pressing questions about how we create long-term sustained and sustainable economic growth.”

Nordhaus was awarded the prize “for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis”.  In the 1990s, he created a model describing how the economy and the climate affect each other on the global stage, according to the Academy.

Romer was recognized “for integrating technological innovations into long-run macroeconomic analysis.”  The Academy said Romer’s research is the first to model how market conditions and economic decisions affect creation of new technologies.

Nordhaus, who earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1967, and Romer, who earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1983 will split the the $1.01 million prize.

The economics prize is the last of the Nobel prizes to be awarded this year.  

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to  Nadia Murad, a Yazidi human rights activist and survivor of sexual slavery by Islamic State in Iraq, and Denis Mukwege, a gynecologist treating victims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Last year’s Nobel Prize for economics was awarded to American Richarld Thaler for his research on how human irrationality affects economic theory.

 
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For the first time, researchers have been able to track the amount of Chinese investment in Australia.  From the purchase of large cattle properties to residential real estate, the scope of Chinese money has led to fraught discussions about the scale of foreign influence in Australia. The results of the research may have some surprises for some Australians who have been wary of China’s influence and the size of Chinese investments in their country.

The comprehensive new database shows how much Chinese investors are pouring into Australia. Between 2013 and 2017 the figure was more than $28 billion (U.S. dollars).Most of the money was spent on mining projects and real estate, although increasingly larger amounts are being invested by the Chinese in tourism in Australia.

Academics from the Australian National University say this is proof that Chinese investment is maturing and becoming more sophisticated.

Working with business representatives and the Australian government, researchers are for the first time charting the real value of Chinese investment.The flow of money from China has been politically sensitive, with concerns that valuable Australian farmland and real estate have become foreign-owned.

Professor Peter Drysdale, researcher at the Australian National University, says his work will help to foster a more accurate debate about China’s role.

“Getting an accurate picture of what is going on is half the battle in having a sensible public discussion,” said Drysdale. “Making it possible to have a better informed discussion about what Chinese investment actually does in Australia and what its effect is on the Australian economy.”

The database was compiled by painstaking analysis of thousands of transactions from sources such as the Foreign Investment Review Board and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The research highlighted that Chinese investment in Australia was at its highest in 2016, at $10.5 billion, but dropped to $6.2 billion in 2017.

While the report does not offer explanations for the sharp fall, bilateral business relations between Beijing and Canberra have been under increasing pressure because of diplomatic friction over alleged Chinese meddling in Australia’s domestic politics and the media.

Despite the tensions, China remains Australia’s most valuable trading partner.

 
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