We need to find a fairer way of providing Goods and Services to the rest of the people on Earth.Cryptocurrencies and/or Gold Standard of money....maybe the answer to fight hyperinflation caused by too much printing of paper/fiat currencies by Governments and Central Banks all over the World. (https://nomorefiatmoneyplease.blogspot.com)
The Tianjin explosions are set to be the costliest man-made disaster in Asia's history, with the US$3.25 billion losses amounting to almost half the year's total losses globally, said a report by Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty on Wednesday.
PHOTO: AFP
THE Tianjin explosions are set to be the costliest man-made disaster in Asia's history, with the US$3.25 billion losses amounting to almost half the year's total losses globally, said a report by Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty on Wednesday.
"The Tianjin explosions are also set to be the costliest man-made disaster in Asia's history and 2015 marks the third consecutive year that the world's largest man-made losses have come from Asia," the report said.
In 2013, a fire and explosion at a semi-conductor plant in China was estimated to cost insurers US$1 billion, while a major fire and explosion at an oil refinery in Siberia last year was reported to have cost insurers more than US$800 million.
The insurer noted that the rise of large losses in Asia is of particular concern, as manufacturing and outsourced services have moved to China, India and other markets in South-east Asia. Given the global supply chain, and "lean production processes", such interruptions in Asia can threaten global operations, Allianz said.
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"There is an increasing concentration of production sites and logistics hubs in exposed areas. If such clusters are hit by natural catastrophes, or by fire or explosions - as happened at the Tianjin port in China - disruptive effects can quickly multiply resulting in contingent business interruption losses around the globe," the report noted.
Australia, South-east Asia need to 're-double' efforts to avoid Paris-style attacks
A pedestrian with an umbrella pauses in front of the memorial of candles and flowers for the victims of the Nov 13 Paris attacks, on Place de la Republique in Paris, France, on Nov 24, 2015.
PHOTO: EPA
[SINGAPORE] Australia and South-east Asia must re-double efforts to share intelligence and make sure Paris-style terror attacks can't be replicated in the region, Australian Justice Minister Michael Keenan said on Wednesday.
Hundreds of Indonesian Islamic State sympathisers and some Malaysians and Singaporeans are believed to have gone to fight in Syria and Iraq.
South-east Asia faces the risk of attack when they return, Malaysia has said. "The fact that the national security situation has significantly deteriorated for all of the countries in the region, including Australia, means we need to re-double those efforts," Mr Keenan, who is also Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on Counter Terrorism, told Reuters in an interview in Singapore.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the deaths of 130 people in attacks in Paris last month, the deadliest in France since World War II.
Mr Keenan also denounced comments by US Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump who has called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States following last week's massacre in San Bernardino, California, by a Muslim couple.
"That is entirely the wrong response," Mr Keenan said. "When we look at South-east Asia, we get a good example that we are not somehow at war with a particular religion. And neither do we need to target Muslim Australians or anywhere else in the world."
Australia next week marks the anniversary of a siege in central Sydney in which a gunman with radical Islamist sympathies took over a central city cafe. Two hostages and the gunman were killed when police stormed the building.
As Fed prepares liftoff, emerging markets face record bond debt
File photo shows the US Federal Reserve Building in Washington, DC.
PHOTO: AFP
[NEW YORK] Developing nations are facing their biggest debt bills yet from international bond markets that funded them in boom times. It's happening just as the cost to refinance overseas creeps higher, with money manager Pioneer Investments seeing no relief in sight.
Companies and governments in developing nations must repay an unprecedented US$262 billion of notes in all currencies outside domestic markets in 2016, more than half the US$444 billion they sold this year, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The bond tab will rise further in 2017 to US$352 billion. The borrowers missed payment on US$5.6 billion of the debt this year, the most since 2002.
"We expect emerging-market spreads to drift wider in 2016" and volatility to increase, said Yerlan Syzdykov, the head of emerging markets, bond and high yield, at London-based Pioneer, which had US$244.1 billion under management as of Dec. 31, 2014. "This is due to higher financial leverage and the deterioration in credit quality, such as negative rating actions, weaker local currencies and higher default rates." While Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Schroder Investment Management have called a bottom in emerging markets, Citigroup Inc. and others have said such calls may be premature as the Federal Reserve moves closer to hiking interest rates, China's economy cools to the weakest in a quarter century and oil plunges. Foreign debt servicing costs spiked after the yuan devaluation in August sparked slides in other developing currencies, adding to strains from Asia to Latin America.
The average yield on securities from developing economies has increased 46 basis points this half to 5.77 per cent after marking a high for the year at 5.97 per cent in September, according to a Bank of America Merrill Lynch index.
In the three months ended Sept. 30, investors pulled more money out of emerging-market investments than in any quarter since 2008, the Institute of International Finance said in a report on Dec. 1. They reduced their exposure to developing countries by US$3.5 billion in November, the think tank said. "We are in a phase of deleveraging that began in some countries with the 'taper tantrum' and widened this summer with the heightened worries about China's current and future growth," said Don Hanna, the Singapore-based managing director for Asia at Roubini Global Economics. "It still has a ways to run." Emerging-market notes have returned only 2.6 per cent this year, down from 4.8 per cent in 2014, leaving the securities set for the second-worst performance in seven years, according to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch index.
Lenders have increasingly more at stake. Total credit to private non-financial institutions from emerging markets rose to US$31.1 trillion at the end of March, three times the amount five years before, according to data from the Bank for International Settlements. Flows into emerging market bonds have been "above trend" ever since the Fed began easing policy back in late 2008, putting that debt at risk once the central bank begins to normalize, Citigroup's chief economist Willem Buiter said in a year-ahead note.
The risks this time aren't as broad as before, according to Brigitte Posch, the London-based head of emerging-market corporate debt at Babson Capital Management LLC, which managed $223 billion as of Sept. 30.
"The main difference between the current situation and past episodes of emerging market weakness, in our view, is that this is not a systemic crisis," Posch said by e-mail on Dec. 1. "From a macroeconomic perspective, emerging market economies are entering this adjustment process to lower growth in a much stronger position." Floating exchange rates have helped curb sovereign troubles, Posch said, albeit at the expense of deep losses. On average, developing-country currencies have depreciated 11.8 per cent against the US dollar this year, Bloomberg data show.
"What is taking place is an adjustment to a new global reality," Posch said. "The asset class is still undergoing some adjustment to the new environment of lower growth, lower commodity prices and potentially higher rates."
Life: Destiny or Chance? attempts to answer the fundamental question of whether life is the result of articulate cosmic design, or simply a lucky (for us, anyhow) occurrence predicated solely on chance. Basically, are we a mistake?
Looking at it from a very scientific and objective perspective, the film starts by looking at the processes that create and sustain life, and whether they are actually integral to the universe on a grand scale - or just a little blip on the radar for a relatively unrelated flowchart.
The narrator goes on to explain that stellar explosions (supernovas and the like) that spew forth dust are the catalysts for all forms of matter. A computer-simulated rendering of the evolution of the cosmos is used to demonstrate exactly how the universe took shape from time zero up until present day, and enables the commentary to break down a number of phenomena native to astrophysics - dark matter, black holes, solar winds, etc.
A star cluster called the Trapezium pumps out a wind of ultraviolet radiation that clears out an area where young stars can be born to generate solar nebulae where the early building blocks of life can get a foothold. Dust particles begin to "stick together" by way of gravity, and slowly form masses that eventually become substantial enough to constitute what we know as planets.
Interplanetary dust particles that contain carbon and hydrogen particles, when exposed to oxygen in our atmosphere, create H2O (water) particles that are the building blocks of life. Earth's abundance of water, and the ensuing life that emerged from its presence, is due in large part to this process. Each of the planets in our solar system are then chronicled, with explanations of how water prevails on its surface and the moons that orbit them.
The figure thrown out in the film's closing is that our universe has had over forty billion individual favorable opportunities to spawn life in its history, and Earth is the only data point we have where those efforts resulted in the life that we enjoy - doesn't seem all that favorable that we are the universe's primary objective.
EU antitrust regulators accuse Qualcomm of hindering rivals
[BRUSSELS] European Union antitrust regulators charged Qualcomm on Tuesday of using its market power to thwart rivals, putting the world's top maker of chipsets used in mobile devices at risk of a hefty fine.
The accusations by the European Commission set out in two charge sheets known as statements of objections followed a formal investigation begun in July.
The EU competition enforcer said Qualcomm may have illegally paid a major customer for exclusively using its chipsets and it also sold chipsets below cost with the aim of forcing a competitor out of the market in a practice known as predatory pricing. "I am concerned that Qualcomm's actions may have pushed out competitors or prevented them from competing," European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.
Qualcomm said it has been given several months to respond to the charges. "We look forward to demonstrating that competition in the sale of wireless chips has been and remains strong and dynamic, and that Qualcomm's sales practices have always complied with European competition law," Qualcomm general counsel Don Rosenberg said in a statement.
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The predatory pricing case against the company followed a complaint from British phone software maker Icera, which later was acquired by Nvidia Corp in a bid to enter the market for smartphone chips and compete with Qualcomm.
