Finanzas

Basic needs

NOVEMBER 8th was not just the day of Donald Trump’s election. It was also when Indians found out most banknotes would lose all value unless promptly exchanged. Ever since, many have expected their patience in enduring the ensuing chaos to be rewarded in some way. Might scrapped cash unredeemed by presumed tax-dodgers be recycled into a lump-sum payment to each and every citizen? Or would the annual budget, presented on February 1st, be full of giveaways ahead of a string of state elections? In the event, the budget was restrained to the point of dullness. But the government’s closely-watched “economic survey”, released the previous day, hinted at a much bigger giveaway in the works: a universal basic income (UBI) payable to every single Indian.

The idea of a cash payment made to citizens irrespective of their wealth is centuries old. It has become newly fashionable in some rich countries, among both left-wing thinkers (who like its redistributive aspects) and their right-wing foes (who think it results in a less meddlesome state). The idea has had its fans in India: a small UBI scheme was launched as a…Continue reading

La entidad crea una unidad de 130 personas para analizar las reclamaciones que le lleguen por las cláusulas suelo

Un comité impuso una interpretación blanda de forma extraoficial de circulares y normativas que retrasó el reconocimiento de morosidad y pérdidas

EARLY in 2016 Schumpeter went to a dinner with one of Silicon Valley’s luminaries, a man of towering intelligence and negligible humility. Asked about the upcoming election, he scoffed: it didn’t matter who America’s president was. Politics had become irrelevant, he said. Technology firms, and their leaders, would carry on fashioning brilliant products and generally carrying out God’s work on Earth, regardless of who occupied the White House. Cue smirks and more Hawaiian Kampachi all round.

Now Silicon Valley has thrust itself into a presidential stink. Technology groups were the first among big firms to slam Donald Trump’s executive order of January 27th, which temporarily bans people from seven mainly-Muslim countries in the Middle East from entering America. Tim Cook, Apple’s boss, criticised it to employees. Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook said he was “concerned”. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, told staff he was “upset” on the day of the order, and a day later the firm’s co-founder, Sergey Brin, was spotted among hundreds of protesters at San Francisco airport.

Just a month earlier all these technology firms and more…Continue reading

El banco central de Estados Unidos mantiene la estrategia de tres incrementos a lo largo de 2017

Carrefour ha dejado de venderlo en Bélgica, Francia y España por razones medioambientales

Las decisiones de compra y consumo que tome el usuario pueden influir en una tercera parte de la factura de la luz

FREQUENT travellers can become obsessed by loyalty schemes. Road warriors search out «points gurus», who pass on wisdom about how to wring out every last air mile and hotel upgrade from a programme, whether by signing up for a new credit card or booking a particular flight. The biggest airline scheme, American Airlines’ AAdvantage, has an estimated 100m elite members; the largest hotel programme, IHG’s Rewards Club, almost as many. But hotels and airlines have historically used such schemes in slightly different ways.

Air travel is often seen as a commodity. A flight is the miserable part of a trip that must be endured to reach somewhere exciting. True, there are degrees of torture. But carriers’ economy-class service is similar enough that it does not really matter whether a flyer boards a United or Delta plane. Hence the best way to ensure that a customer continues to patronise your airline, rather than an equally…Continue reading

IF THERE was a consensus view at the start of the year, it was that the dollar would rise. Fund managers surveyed by Bank of America Merrill Lynch were overweight the currency (even though they worried that it was a crowded trade).

The stars seemed aligned in the greenback’s favour. The Federal Reserve was set to raise rates, while other major central banks were keeping monetary policy loose; that should boost the dollar’s attractiveness in terms of yield. The new Trump administration was set to unveil a fiscal stimulus and boost growth; that should encourage those who wanted to buy American equities or invest in American factories. And tax proposals were designed to persuade American companies to repatriate overseas profits, giving the dollar a further lift.

So why has the dollar retreated to hit a 12-week low? The main reason is the rhetoric of the new administration. Mr Trump told the Wall Street Journal that

Our companies can’t compete with them (Chinese companies) now because our…Continue reading

Es el beneficio más elevado desde 2010, pese a provisionar 404 millones netos por las cláusulas suelo