Putin fears an EU fracking bonanza – but environmentalists don’t have to May 29, 2014 RUSSIA and China agreed on a $400bn, 30-year deal last week, wherein Gazprom will deliver 38bn cubic metres of natural gas a year to China. This will exacerbate the EU energy crisis, but the bloc still seems intent on ignoring the only obvious solution – fracking – and fidgets at the margins with renewables. Large [...]
Bill Gates sells down stake in outsourcer G4S May 28, 2014 MICROSOFT co-founder Bill Gates has sold off part of his stake in G4S, the scandal-struck outsourcing firm said yesterday. Multi-billionaire Gates owned the shares through his companies Cascade Investment and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. It is thought that he sold a small part of his stake, bringing his holding down to just [...]
Rogoff distances himself from not-so-pernickety Piketty May 27, 2014 Thomas Piketty is isn’t having a great week. At the end of last week, the FT launched a damning attack on his best-selling tome Capital in the Twenty-First Century, as data fisking hack Chris Giles accused Piketty of having made a number of errors with his figures. Not great news for the new darling of [...]
Pressure builds on Nick Clegg while Nigel Farage targets Westminster seats for 2015 May 27, 2014 SENIOR Liberal Democrats were forced to defend battered leader Nick Clegg against calls for his resignation yesterday, after a drubbing in the local and European elections that saw all but one of the party’s Members of European Parliament (MEPs) lose their seats. An exhausted-looking Clegg said his party’s massive losses were “heartbreaking” but insisted that [...]
CNBC Comment: Putin’s bravado masks financial stress May 26, 2014 VLADIMIR Putin’s pivot to the East can no longer be in any doubt. Attending the St Petersburg Economic Forum (the annual meeting he set up to rival Davos) last week, high profile US attendees, like Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, were notably absent. The most high-profile foreign delegates were from China, like vice premier Li [...]
How simple rules can help avoid Piketty-style spreadsheet mistakes May 23, 2014 Economist Thomas Piketty has come under attack today. And this time it's not for his ideas, but the quality of his spreadsheets. The Financial Times' Chris Giles has gone through the data published by the French economist, and found a range of errors. When corrected for, the picture of wealth inequality painted by Piketty changes, [...]
Boris Johnson makes his final case for a new Estuary airport May 22, 2014 MAYOR of London Boris Johnson has made his final case for a new four-runway airport in the Thames Estuary, arguing that such a scheme could be built by 2029 and support 400,000 jobs across the country. In his latest submission to the government’s airports commission, Johnson insisted the airport “faces no insuperable obstacles to its [...]
China is the real victor as Putin looks East May 22, 2014 WHEN President Vladimir Putin voyaged to Beijing this week, it was with one thing in mind: strengthening Sino-Russian relations. The signing of a $400bn (£237bn) gas pipeline deal with Beijing formed the centrepiece of this effort. Russia’s aggression in Ukraine is pushing the US and Europe away, and Putin is looking to reorient towards an [...]
Janet Yellen won’t be pleased with this month’s US home sales May 22, 2014 Data from the National Association of Realtors shows existing home sales up from 4.59m to 4.65m in April, with the change in existing home sales up by 1.3 per cent. Analysts at Investec said in a preview that these figures "are likely to take on additional significance this week following Janet Yellen’s comments regarding housing [...]
Nigel Farage looks forward to a European holiday in new spoof video May 21, 2014 Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party, is the subject of a new controversial ad campaign from the travel web-site Lastminute.com, in which he appears to be espousing the virtues of going on holiday to countries like Romania and Bulgaria. The advertisement, which involves selected editing of various pronouncements from Farage, shows [...]