Search Results for: IMF
Czech Lawmakers Approve Ten Percent VAT Rate
September 29th, 2014
The Czech Republic’s lower house of parliament has approved the introduction of a second reduced value-added tax (VAT) rate as part of the country’s 2015 draft budget. A new ten percent VAT rate will be levied on books, pharmaceuticals, ...
Economists can’t tell Scots how to vote
September 17th, 2014
Here is the bad news if you haven’t made up your mind whether to vote for Scotland to become independent – economic analysis cannot give you the answer. That is partly because this dismal science is not capable of ...
BRICS, banking on development
September 11th, 2014
The creation of the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) to finance infrastructure and sustainable development projects in emerging economies is a landmark achievement. Developing nations have lost faith in the current system with its strict conditions on development finance ...
Argentina’s stock market is up 100%
September 10th, 2014
If you read the headlines, Argentina is in default (again) and its economy is tanking. But here’s the funny thing: the country’s stock market is hotter than an underground tango show on a sultry Buenos Aires night. Argentina’s Merval ...
I.M.F. Chief, Lagarde, Under Investigation in France
August 27th, 2014
Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, said on Wednesday that French prosecutors had placed her under formal investigation over a murky business affair that dates to her time as finance minister under former President Nicolas Sarkozy. ...
The Fragmentation of Bretton Woods
August 18th, 2014
The world has changed considerably since political leaders from the 44 Allied countries met in 1944 in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to create the institutional framework for the post-World War II economic and monetary order. What has not changed ...
The Global Economy’s Groundhog Day
August 8th, 2014
In the movie “Groundhog Day,” a television weatherman, played by Bill Murray, awakes every morning at 6:00 to relive the same day. A similar sense of déjà vu has pervaded economic forecasting since the global economic crisis began a ...
Russian Carrier to Suspend Flights due to European sanctions
August 4th, 2014
Sanctions imposed on Russia by the European Union have led the Russian state carrier Aeroflot to suspend all flights according to its announcement on Sunday. The sanctions, announced on Tuesday, said the subsidiary, Dobrolet, “facilitates the integration of the ...
Portugal will finance $6.6 billion to rescue Banco Espirito Santo
August 4th, 2014
It was a few months ago that Lisbon has exited an international bailout and now Portugal is planning to spend 4.9 billion euros in order to rescue Banco Espirito Santo its largest listed bank. The situation is definitely putting ...
After the Dollar
July 28th, 2014
It is symbolic that the recent BRICS summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, took place exactly seven decades after the Bretton Woods Conference that created the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The upshot of the BRICS meeting was the ...