Monks to Lip-Jobs to Help S. Korea Lift Revenue for Welfare

Monks to Lip-Jobs to Help S. Korea Lift Revenue for Welfare

South Korea plans to tax monks and cosmetic surgery on lips, jaws and ears, as it digs for fresh revenue to cover rising social welfare costs.

The proposed changes would add a 4 percent levy on religious honorariums from 2015 and a 10 percent value-added tax on cosmetic surgeries from next year, the finance ministry said in a statement today in Sejong. The plans would also change tax-deduction rates on spending on medical and education expenses from next year, shifting the burden toward higher-income groups. Read more of this post

Fed Belongs to Everybody as Public Says It’s Our Money in Crisis

Fed Belongs to Everybody as Public Says It’s Our Money in Crisis

The unprecedented frenzy surrounding Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s potential successor shows that Americans won’t let the central bank go back to its opaque and secretive ways.

The backlash that resulted from Bernanke’s bailouts during the financial crisis and his record expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet has pushed the central bank toward openness at the fastest pace in its 100-year history. His introduction of regular press conferences in 2011 is just one of his recent initiatives. Read more of this post

Rupee over 60: Why Indian currency weakness may be here to stay

Rupee over 60: Why Indian currency weakness may be here to stay

2:49am EDT

By Rafael Nam

MUMBAI (Reuters) – Welcome to the swinging 60s. As India’s rupee hits record lows, some investors see it headed towards the mid-60s against the dollar, a reflection of weak economic fundamentals and expectations the government will struggle to implement meaningful measures to reverse capital outflows. Domestic forwards markets, which reflect market expectations, see the rupee trading at around 65 to the dollar in a year, while offshore forward markets see it at 66. Pessimism remains even as the government is widely expected to announce steps soon to encourage more foreign inflows, including potentially raising debt abroad, after the Reserve Bank of India’s steps to drain cash from the financial system failed to prop up the currency.

Read more of this post

We Are All Going to Pension Hell

We Are All Going to Pension Hell

One of the most startling moments of the Detroit bankruptcy was when a judge stepped in to stay the bankruptcy at the behest of the city’s public sector unions…and then said that she was going to tell the president about this.

“It’s cheating, sir, and it’s cheating good people who work,” the judge told assistant Attorney General Brian Devlin. “It’s also not honoring the (United States) president, who took (Detroit’s auto companies) out of bankruptcy.”

Aquilina said she would make sure President Obama got a copy of her order.

“I know he’s watching this,” she said, predicting the president ultimately will have to take action to make sure existing pension commitments are honored.

Aside from turning President Obama into a quasi-mystical entity who is apparently sacred party to all transactions involving any government, anywhere, this was a veiled confession that she did not have the power to order what she was ordering. She could issue a piece of paper telling Detroit to protect its pensions, but that piece of paper would not give the city any more resources to pay them. It was a quixotic attempt to stop the unstoppable, to fix the unfixable. The only way her order made sense was if some outside force stepped in to provide the cash. Read more of this post

Malaysia Violent Crime Wave Escalates With Shootings, Car Blast

Malaysia Violent Crime Wave Escalates With Shootings, Car Blast

One man was executed at a traffic light, another shot four times by motorcycle assassins and a third had explosives detonated in his Jaguar car in separate incidents around Malaysia, the Star newspaper reported today. While gun ownership is restricted, public shootings have surged to almost one a day since July 26, according to data compiled by police. Prime Minister Najib Razak pledged to boost resources for fighting violent crime and introduce additional legislation in parliament after AMMB Holdings Bhd. founder Hussain Ahmad Najadi was shot dead in a car park last week. Read more of this post

Cities in China brace for financial drought

Cities in China brace for financial drought

Staff Reporter

2013-08-08

Many municipalities in China are feeling the squeeze on their finances, and it is not just because of the economic slowdown. A decrease in disposable funds, administrative approvals leading to lower fee income, transferred payments by the central government, as well as the maturity of municipal bonds has gotten their buttons close to popping. According to the country’s Ministry of Finance, in the first half this year the financial income of the central government inched up 1.5% year-on-year to 3.2 trillion yuan (US$523 billion). That of municipal governments reached 3.6 trillion yuan (US$588 billion), up 13.5%, but down by 0.9 percentage points from the growth rate during the same period last year. The central and western provinces fare worse than other municipalities. In the first half this year, the financial incomes of Guizhou, Hunan, and Jiangxi, for instance, advanced 18.5%, 16.2%, and 19% year-on-year, respectively, much lower than the growth rates of 36.36%, 29.1%, and 32.3% in the same period last year. Read more of this post

Asian Slowdown Hits Standard Chartered, HSBC; Weak Emerging-Market Growth Threatens to Bring Two of Europe’s Highest-Flying Banks Back Down to Earth

Updated August 6, 2013, 1:11 p.m. ET

Asian Slowdown Hits Standard Chartered, HSBC

Weak Emerging-Market Growth Threatens to Bring Two of Europe’s Highest-Flying Banks Back Down to Earth

MAX COLCHESTER

LONDON—Asia’s economic slowdown is threatening to bring two of Europe’s highest-flying banks back down to earth. Standard Chartered PLC said Tuesday that net profit fell 24% in the first half of the year, as weakening growth in Asian markets and a $1 billion write-down at its South Korean business put a brake on earnings. The announcement came one day after HSBC HoldingsHSBA.LN -2.23% PLC said underlying profit before tax stagnated at its Asian-Pacific unit, which excludes Hong Kong, and warned it was bracing for slower growth in China. The jittery results underscore a nascent problem for the two U.K.-based banks, which both lean heavily on Asian economic growth to bolster their results and tout their substantial emerging-market presence to differentiate themselves from Europe’s crisis-hit banks. Read more of this post

Buffett’s Wells Fargo is trying to grow its relatively small credit-card business with an unusual strategy: appealing to its customers’ distaste for debt

Wells Fargo to offer credit cards that help cut consumer debt

By Peter Rudegeair

Filed Aug 5th, 2013

Wells Fargo & Co, the fourth-largest U.S. bank, is trying to grow its relatively small credit-card business with an unusual strategy: appealing to its customers’ distaste for debt. In 2007, Wells Fargo debuted the Home Rebate Card, which offers a 1 percent rebate that automatically goes toward paying down principal on a Wells Fargo home loan. In the coming months, the bank has plans to roll out cards that provide similar benefits to customers who have taken out student loans, auto loans and other types of consumer debt from the bank. “The real thing customers wanted was to pay down their mortgage,” Tom Wolfe, Wells Fargo’s executive vice president for consumer credit solutions, said in a recent interview. “That created a thought process where we asked, ‘Why don’t we offer that service for all our products?'” Read more of this post

Marico learns to juggle old and new businesses after acquiring Paras’s personal care brands

Marico’s Unique Paras Strategy

by Samar Srivastava | Aug 7, 2013

Marico learns to juggle old and new businesses after acquiring Paras’s personal care brands

When Marico decided to try on a new hat, it also committed itself to a different, more vibrant, personality. Juggling personas was never going to be easy but here’s proof that the company known for its steadiness, manifested in brands like Saffola and Parachute, is ready to step away from its long-standing staid avatar.  Consider this advertisement. Its narrative goes like this: Two young television jockeys are shown complaining about the quality of participants at a talent hunt. “Pata nahi kahaan se aa jaate hain. Unko maloom nahi, yeh talent hunt hai, unki gaon ki nautanki nahi [Don’t know where they land up from. They don’t know, this is a talent hunt, not a village nautanki],” says one dismissively. On cue, the maligned participant pulls out a can of Zatak deodorant; the cap flies across the room and lodges itself in the jockey’s mouth rendering him unable to speak while the participant sprays himself. ‘Who’s the cool one now?’ the advertisement seems to ask. The jockeys are humbled and the underdog prevails. Read more of this post