EU Moves to Stop Multinationals Reducing Taxes

Date: 22-02-2017

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Finance ministers agree to plan to prevent companies from using legal loopholes to avoid taxation

BRUSSELS—European Union finance ministers on Tuesday agreed to more measures to stop international corporations from cutting their tax bills.

The proposed rules would deal with several legal loopholes that allow multinationals to avoid taxation—such as devices to shift profits and move debt to countries outside the EU where there are more generous interest deductions.

EU officials said the rules would ensure that companies didn’t take advantage of so-called double non-taxation agreements—which were originally intended to ensure a company didn’t pay tax in two different countries, but are currently being aggressively exploited.

How Trumpocracy Corrupts Democracy

Sandra Navidi

Sandra Navidi is CEO of BeyondGlobal, a consulting firm advising on macroeconomic and strategic positioning, and the author of $uperHubs: How the Financial Elite and their Networks Rule Our World.

FEB 21, 2017 Project Syndicate

MUNICH – American democracy is a complex, self-organizing system. In terms of network science, President Donald Trump is a “superhub”: the most well-connected human “node,” located in the center of the network. While Trump does not have control over the entire system – he himself is subject to its systemic forces – he has enough influence that he could cause it to fail.

Complex systems don’t fail easily. They are generally adaptive and self-correcting. When they become too skewed, circuit breakers kick in to restore balance. But if circuit breakers are disabled, the system will ultimately self-destruct.

The likelihood of such an outcome is hard to predict. But in situations of absolute uncertainty, it is advisable to assume the worst, and many indicators seem to point to a potential “hostile takeover” of liberal democracy by Trump and his cohorts.

In search of a European solution for banks’ non-performing loans

It is no surprise to me that this guy is Italian! (hfk)

Marco Onado

Professor at Bocconi University, Milan and former Commissioner of the Italian public authority responsible for regulating the Italian securities market (CONSOB).

21 February 2017, voxeu

European banks have not recovered from the Global Crisis, in part due to heavy provisions for non-performing loans. This column argues that a comprehensive approach to the issue in Europe could address market inefficiencies and reduce bad loans to bearable levels. The establishment of a European scheme to securitise non-performing loans should form one of the next steps towards recovery.

After ten years of crisis, European banks are far from seeing the end of the tunnel. While US banks have recovered fairly quickly and have reached in 2012-15 a return on equity of 9.3%, European banks are still stuck at a meagre 3.7%, well below their cost of capital (IMF 2016). This gap is explained by two factors: heavy provisions for non-performing loans (NPLs), and high operating costs reflecting overcapacity and inefficiencies in most big countries, including Germany.

No, Robots Aren’t Killing the American Dream

Date: 21-02-2017
Source: The New York Times

Defenders of globalization are on solid ground when they criticize President Trump’s threats of punitive tariffs and border walls. The economy can’t flourish without trade and immigrants.

But many of those defenders have their own dubious explanation for the economic disruption that helped to fuel the rise of Mr. Trump.

At a recent global forum in Dubai, Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, said some of the economic pain ascribed to globalization was instead due to the rise of robots taking jobs. In his farewell address in January, President Barack Obama warned that “the next wave of economic dislocations won’t come from overseas. It will come from the relentless pace of automation that makes a lot of good middle-class jobs obsolete.”

Blaming robots, though, while not as dangerous as protectionism and xenophobia, is also a distraction from real problems and real solutions.

Europe Combats a New Foe of Political Stability: Fake News

Date: 21-02-2017
Source: The New York Times

Emmanuel Macron,  a French presidential candidate. The head of his party said Mr. Macron had been targeted by Russian news channels.

BRUSSELS — They scan websites and pore over social media, combing through hundreds of reports a day. But the bogus claims just keep coming.

Germans are fleeing their country, fearful of Muslim refugees. The Swedish government supports the Islamic State. The European Union has drafted rules to regulate the ethnicity of snowmen.

In their open-plan office overlooking a major thoroughfare in Brussels, an 11-person team known as East Stratcom, serves as Europe’s front line against this onslaught of fake news.

Created by the European Union to address “Russia’s ongoing disinformation campaigns,” the team — composed of diplomats, bureaucrats and former journalists — tracks down reports to determine whether they are fake. Then, it debunks the stories for hapless readers. In the 16 months since the team has been on the job, it has discredited 2,500 stories, many with links to Russia.

In a year when the French, Germans and Dutch will elect leaders, the European authorities are scrambling to counter a rising tide of fake news and anti-European Union propaganda aimed at destabilizing people’s trust in institutions.

Who Are the Richest of the Rich?

Date: 21-02-2017
Source: The New York Times

There are 2,473 billionaires in the world by a new count, and how they got their money and what they plan to do with it are matters of global importance.

Sitting at a table, grinding his pinkie into the corner of his mouth and staring at the screen, Dr. Evil announces he is holding the world ransom for $1 million. Having been cryogenically frozen for 30 years, the comic villain created by the actor Mike Myers is shocked when he is told that $1 million isn’t a lot of money in 1997.

Trying to regain his composure, he turns to the screen, voice cracking with uncertainty, and says, “O.K. then, we hold the world ransom for $100 billion.”

Twenty years after the movie “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” was released, billions of dollars aren’t what they used to be, either.

Bill Gates alone is just $10 billion shy of Dr. Evil’s ransom demand, according to a soon-to-be-released list of the world’s top 10 billionaires by Wealth-X, a financial research firm. Mr. Gates, the Microsoft founder, tops the list at $89.3 billion, followed by his friend Warren Buffett at $73.5 billion.

Europe’s Periphery Debt Market Welcomes New Member: France

Date: 21-02-2017
Source: The Wall Street Journal

Some investors are selling French government debt over concerns the country could leave the eurozone

A poll on Monday showing French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen in the lead for April’s first round of the presidential election drove yields on French 10-year bonds to jump to 1.064%.

Investors are once again selling the bonds of Europe’s peripheral economies amid political concerns. This time around, France has joined the club.

Some investors are selling French government debt, worried that the country will elect Marine Le Pen as its president, a candidate that has promised to take the country out of the eurozone. That has left French bonds behaving increasingly like their peers in the parts of Europe hit hardest by the 2011-12 sovereign-debt crisis.

It is quite a flip for Europe’s second-largest economy. After that crisis, French bonds traded with Germany’s. On Monday, a poll showing Ms. Le Pen comfortably in the lead for April’s first round of the presidential election drove yields on French 10-year bonds to jump to 1.064%. Yields rise as bond prices fall.

Making Crises Great Again

Jeffrey Frankel

Jeffrey Frankel, a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, previously served as a member of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers. He directs the Program in International Finance and Macroeconomics at the US National Bureau of Economic Research, where he is a member of the Business Cycle Dating Committee, the official US arbiter of recession and recovery.

FEB 21, 2017 Project Syndicate

CAMBRIDGE – Debates about financial regulation tend to focus on quantity, not quality. But “more versus less” isn’t so much the issue; the details are. And when it comes to financial reform in the United States, President Donald Trump is unlikely to get the details right.

Earlier this month, Trump issued an executive order directing a comprehensive review of the Dodd-Frank financial-reform legislation of 2010. The administration’s goal is to scale back significantly the regulatory system put in place in response to the 2008 financial crisis. This is a risky move.

Dodd-Frank’s key features – such as higher capital requirements for banks, the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the designation of Systemically Important Financial Institutions, tough stress tests on banks, and enhanced transparency for derivatives – have strengthened the financial system considerably. Undermining or rescinding them would substantially increase the risk of an eventual recurrence of the 2007-2008 financial crisis.