Above Photo: Brandon Gregory. The governing body of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) met in Rome on April 8, 2022 in an Extraordinary Session to examine the “impact of the Ukraine-Russia conflict on global food security and related matters under its mandate” and advise on how it should proceed. Meanwhile, just two days earlier, the Civil Society and Indigenous People Mechanism (CSIPM) at U.N. Committee on World Food Security (CFS) called for an Extraordinary Plenary Session of the CFS. We must consider these developments along with a new initiative from the U.N. and against the background of the FAO’s global food prices index reaching its highest level ever. In […]
Finance
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Above Photo: Hundreds of thousands around the world marched on November 6 as COP26 was underway, including this march in Glasgow, Scotland, where the conference is taking place. Oliver Kornblihtt. Behind The Scenes At COP26. Glasgow, Scotland – Speaking at the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) on November 1, U.S. President Joe Biden said he wants the United States to commit $3 billion toward helping vulnerable countries adapt to climate change. But the administration’s climate negotiators in Glasgow are pushing to keep adaptation financing inadequate. Delegations from more than 190 countries are deliberating on issues that weren’t resolved in the first week […]
Above Photo: Indigenous activists speak during a protest at JPMorgan Chase offices in Glasgow. ‘Shame On You.’ The major American bank is helping fund the Coastal Gaslink pipeline, which threatens First Nation lands in Canada. Glasgow, Scotland — Indigenous activists on Wednesday staged a protest outside JPMorgan Chase headquarters in central Glasgow as pressure on banks to halt oil and gas extraction grows. A crowd of over a hundred chanted “enough is enough” and “shame on you” outside the American multinational bank’s office building, just over a mile from where crucial talks at the COP26 climate conference are currently taking place. […]
Above photo: Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Mr. Le Maire at a meeting of Group of 7 finance ministers in London in June. Hollie Adams. “Clear Differences Remain Between France and the U.S, French Minister Says,” is the headline to a remarkable piece appearing in the New York Times. The Minister, Bruno Le Maire, is brutally frank on the nature of the differences as the quotations below Illustrate. (Emphases in the quotations are jvw’s.) In fact, they amount to a Declaration of Independence of France and EU from the U.S. It is not surprising that the differences relate to China after the […]
Bitcoin traders hit the buy button Monday while a DeFi project gains $135 million in BTC locked since the start of September. Bitcoin (BTC) trading around $11,689 as of 20:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET). Gaining 2.2% over the previous 24 hours. Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $11,409-$11,839 BTC above its 10-day and 50-day moving averages, a bullish signal for market technicians. Bitcoin trading on Bitstamp since Oct. 17. Source: TradingView Bitcoin’s price is making major gains Monday, with a rally starting around 12:00 UTC (8 a.m. ET) and the price jumping from $11,477 to as high as $11,839 on spot exchanges such as […]
When will we ever learn? Not your keys? Not your coins. On Friday morning as the OKEx withdrawal-freeze story twisted and turned, CoinDesk’s editors had an off-the-cuff discussion about the fundamental realities and unique challenges of security for even the largest exchanges. Source link
Israel’s nationwide lockdown will be extended at least until Sunday as officials determine the next step toward reopening, despite warnings from the finance minister that the policy has pushed small firms to the brink of collapse. The country’s coronavirus cabinet met late into Tuesday night to discuss an exit plan from the lockdown, re-imposed in September amid a wave of new infections, but decided the measures would remain in force over the weekend. “The decision to ease restrictions and allow for a gradual exit from the lockdown will require a constant and certain decrease in morbidity rates, and reaching that will […]
Former Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin has revealed that his life was in danger in the mid-2000s, leading President Vladimir Putin to instruct the country’s secret services to keep him protected. Speaking to Moscow news agency TASS, the current chairman of Russia’s Accounts Chamber explained that someone was planning to murder him in 2005 or 2006. “I didn’t have [bodyguards] for most of the time when I was deputy prime minister, except for one year when, according to our secret services, someone was plotting to assassinate me,” Kudrin said. “On instructions from President Vladimir Putin, bodyguards remained by my side […]
Morris Pearl, a former managing director at the investment giant BlackRock, is a member of Patriotic Millionaires, a group that advocates for a more equitable tax system. Elias WIlliams hide caption toggle caption Elias WIlliams Morris Pearl, a former managing director at the investment giant BlackRock, is a member of Patriotic Millionaires, a group that advocates for a more equitable tax system. Elias WIlliams With an apartment on glitzy Park Avenue and a hefty portfolio of stocks, retired investment manager Morris Pearl seems comfortably ensconced in the 1%. And one thing helps him stay there: The taxes he pays are lower […]
India’s principal opposition party, Congress, has been attacking the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party on multiple fronts. From organising protests against the gruesome murder of a lower-caste girl in BJP-governed Uttar Pradesh, to opposing farm laws, the sale of state firms, and the economic slowdown, the party has severely upped the ante. Congress Party politician P Chidambaram, who was also India’s former finance minister, has hit out at the Indian Finance Ministry for donning the role of the Health Ministry in making predictions about the pandemic curve. Questioning why the Finance Ministry is making predictions on COVID-19, which should be the job […]
The mayor of Rochester, New York, was indicted for felony campaign finance fraud Friday. During her 2017 campaign, Lovely Warren allegedly used political action committee (PAC) funds for campaign purposes in excess of the allowed $8,557. She’s charged with first-degree scheme to defraud and illegally coordinating activities and expenditures. Warren called the allegations a “political witch hunt” in a press conference held before news of the indictment broke and denied any wrongdoing, according to the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle. Monroe County District Attorney Sandra Doorley did not specify how much money Warren used from her PAC, but said it was in […]
As the limitations and costs of running decentralized finance (DeFi) apps on Ethereum continue to ride high, a growing list of projects are lining up on competing blockchains. Adding to this trend, Polkadot-based Reef Finance has closed a $3.9 million seed funding round for its cross-chain suite of DeFi services, the company announced Wednesday. Included in the round were NGC Ventures, AU21 Capital, QCP Capital, Kenetic Capital and Woodstock Fund. Reef aims to solve the high technical barrier investors face when attempting to participate in DeFi, said Reef Finance CEO Denko Manceski, not to mention doing away with gas fees on […]
Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a $266 billion stimulus package on 12 May to help the economy and industries tide over the disruption caused by the COVID -19 pandemic. The country’s top bank, RBI, also pumped in liquidity worth $125 billion to maintain stability in the domestic financial markets. India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said the country’s economy will continue to face “challenges of different nature” with no clear-cut end date for the pandemic and no sure-shot vaccine against the coronavirus in sight. In an interview with The Indian Express, Sitharaman said uncertainty is laying in the mind of big […]
The failed revolution The internet in 2030? To answer, two assumptions: First, we are still alive. Second, things on Earth are improving for more than just a few as we shake off our 20th century monetary systems and our 18th century systems of governance. There has been a radical transformation in these infrastructures of sociality for two main reasons: First, survival. The old political, monetary and communication structures simply cannot process the informational complexity necessary to sustain planetary life with 8 billion people. There are social movements demanding new forms of cooperation that take their needs and aspirations into account. Second, […]
The EU Commission said earlier this week it would allow UK clearing houses to continue processing international payments from firms in the EU for another two years, stepping back from earlier threats to cut the City of London off from the EU finance market. Brussels cannot afford to lock out UK finance firms even after a no-deal Brexit – because the euro currency is a “massive Ponzi scheme.” The Express quoted a former Brexit minister and two City of London figures who said the European Union (EU) needed needed UK financiers to manage the risk on government debts in the eurozone […]
Governments have significant discretion over economics and finance today, but decentralized network-driven alternatives threaten that control. Our main discussion: The battle for the soul of finance. In this episode, NLW looks at the power competition between governments on the one hand and the decentralized network-driven finance alternatives that would reshape that power. Interestingly, in this competition corporations may play a role that benefits both sides at different times and in different ways. Source link
https://cdn1.img.sputniknews.com/i/logo-itemprop.png Sputnik International https://cdn2.img.sputniknews.com/i/logo.png Irina Acheeva. Sputnik International https://sputniknews.com/uk/202009141080454597-former-uk-finance-minister-sajid-javid-unable-to-support-internal-market-bill/ Last week, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson introduced the Internal Market Bill in the British Parliament, which has jeopardised the Brexit negotiating process, as it proposes rolling back some of the commitments on state aid and customs checks on goods entering Northern Ireland. Former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Sajid Javid has said in a statement that he is unable to support the Internal Market Bill introduced by the British prime minister. “Breaking international law is a step that should never be taken lightly. Having carefully studied the UK Internal Market Bill […]
NGC Ventures, Hashed, CMS Holdings, Genesis Block and Kenetic Capital also led the round. Source link
Yearn.Finance aspires to be the gateway to a bevy of yield-generating products in the Ethereum ecosystem. After a rapid ascent in August 2020, there is now $650 million worth of crypto assets staked in Yearn, seeking the best returns in the booming decentralized finance (DeFi) sector. The prospect of what one observer called an “intuitive interface to all of DeFi” is what makes Yearn and its YFI coin stand out from the recent crop of “Weird DeFi” projects. But given that Yearn has several different elements, the platform is one of the harder ones for novice investors to understand. Some $650 […]
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, shown last month during a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing, is now under investigation by that committee. Tom Williams/Pool via AP hide caption toggle caption Tom Williams/Pool via AP Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, shown last month during a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing, is now under investigation by that committee. Tom Williams/Pool via AP House Democrats say they are investigating Postmaster General Louis DeJoy over allegations reported by The Washington Post that he asked employees to donate to certain political candidates and then reimbursed them through bonuses. “If these allegations are true, Mr. DeJoy could […]
A group of VC heavyweights and crypto entrepreneurs, including Blockfolio founder Ed Moncada, are backing a new risk management tool for the exploding decentralized finance (DeFi) space. Announced Thursday, Cozy Finance has raised a $2 million seed round, led by Electric Capital and including Variant Fund, Dragonfly Capital, Robot Ventures, Slow Ventures, Volt Capital, Spencer Noon, Moncada and others. The team attempting to bring some order to the creative chaos that is DeFi consists of Cozy co-founders Tony Sheng, formerly of Multicoin Capital, and Payom Dousti, co-founder of Rare Bits, a peer-to-peer marketplace for crypto goods. The value of assets deposited […]
The passport would help businesses cut through redundant red tape and flourish across borders, Saudis said. Source link
More players from the traditional finance world are participating in the cryptocurrency industry. Two new buzzwords, DeFi and yield farming are driving a new surge of investment. Jeremy Cheah, an Associate Professor of Crypto-Finance at the Nottingham Business School spoke to Sputnik about some of the new developments in this industry. Jeremy Cheah, Associate Professor of Crypto-Finance and Digital Finance at the Nottingham Business School, has shared his views on the matter. Sputnik: Can you explain what decentralised finance is? Jeremy Cheah: Decentralised finance simply means financing without a centralised organisation, authority or system that governs it. It uses blockchain technology, […]
“Imagine a world without counterparty risk…” – Chainlink’s co-founder shares why the move from brand-based contracts to math-based contracts is inevitable. Today on the Brief: Big tech goes to Washington The debate on the next COVID-19 relief act heats up More on institutional investors’ move into gold Imagine a world without counterparty risk. That was Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov’s answer when asked to describe the true disruption of decentralized finance to a traditional finance audience. On this episode of The Breakdown, Sergey and NLW discuss: Brand-based contracts vs. math-based contracts The history of smart contracts What it means to build an […]
Projects like MakerDAO, Compound, dYdX and Dharma realized in 2018 they were a distinct group with shared interests within the cryptocurrency industry. Finance has been part of Ethereum from the beginning, but the first attempt to do finance on the “world computer” ended in disaster in 2016: The DAO. A unit of account was key to make decentralized finance (DeFi) startups usable, so when dai launched during the bitcoin runup of late-2017 and didn’t crash when ether fell, it was a positive signal for the space. Within a year of dai’s launch, a full stablecoin boom was underway. The third big […]
Besides having certain gaps, Joe Biden’s new “green” plan may deal a heavy blow to the US economy by stepping up spending, damaging vital industries and slapping taxes on businesses and the rich, some finance experts say. The presumptive US Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, has rolled out a new $2 trillion green energy jobs and infrastructure plan that seeks to set the US economy “on an irreversible course to meet the ambitious climate progress” in the coming four years and achieve a carbon pollution-free and sustainable power sector by 2035. “When Donald Trump thinks about climate change, the only word he […]
Fresh new soils can now be tilled for yield on Ethereum: the world of digital collectibles. Yield farming has turned decentralized finance (DeFi) into the juggernaut of crypto earnings here in mid-2020, but one non-DeFi startup believes that its users will also be interested in earning a new governance token for making trades. Starting Wednesday, Rarible, a dapp that enables users to create and market non-fungible tokens (NFTs, will begin keeping track of all transactions on the site in order to reward users each week with its new governance token: RARI. In fact, the largest share of RARI will go to […]
New Delhi (Sputnik): In the wake of COVID-19 outbreak, India’s Gross Domestic Product growth fell to a 12-year-low of 3.1 percent in January- March. Observers have projected negative growth for the Indian economy during the financial year 2020-21. The country entered a national lockdown on 24 March at the direction of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A lawmaker from the Indian state of West Bengal on Sunday equated federal Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman with a “venomous snake” for her handling of the economy. Kalyan Banerjee is a lawmaker from Trinamool Congress (TMC), the rival party of Sitharaman’s Bharatiya Janata Party, the main […]
Far from a fly-by-night, uneducated mania, the new day trader class represents a much more significant force for how public markets are changing. Even before the COVID-19 crisis, Reddit’s WallStreetBets channel was featured on the cover of Bloomberg BusinessWeek as an emerging market force. Since then, between the surge in signups for Robinhood and the wave of followers of Davey Day Trader Global Global, these day traders have taken an even bigger place in the conversation about the stock market. While many finance professionals (and, most certainly, traditional financial media) have treated the movement with skepticism, paternalism or outright derision, Slow […]
A bitter feud at between two of the world’s richest brothers has culminated in one of them being declared bankrupt with debts of $160 million. Pramod Mittal, who reportedly spent $82 million on his daughters three-day wedding in 2013, is the brother of Lakshmi Mittal. Lakshmi is Britain’s 19th richest person, having made a fortune as head of Arcelor Mittal, the world’s largest steel maker. He is worth some $10bn. British newspaper The Times reports that Pramod, 64, “appears to have lost a fortune while becoming embroiled in an investigation into organized crime.” Pramod was questioned by Bosnian police last year. […]
Earlier this week, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer pointed out that no progress had been made in negotiations between American and EU officials on a global digital tax deal. French Foreign Minister Bruno Le Maire has slammed the US over its move to suspend talks on a global digital services tax, proposed by the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Referring to US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s recent letter on the matter, Le Maire described the document as “a provocation”. “It’s a provocation towards all the partners at the OECD when we were centimetres away from a deal on the […]
The Public Debt Management Office (PDMO) within Thailand’s Ministry of Finance has announced it plans to sell 200 million baht ($6.42 million) in savings bonds using a blockchain-based e-wallet. In a statement released on its website Tuesday, the ministry said the bonds carry an extremely low face value of 1 baht ($0.032) each and would be sold through the state-owned Krung Thai Bank’s blockchain wallet. The statement said distributing the bonds through the blockchain e-wallet was a step towards increasing the efficiency of the government system and an investment in the true digital economy. According to a report by the local […]
London-based crypto custodian Copper has joined the Digital Monetary Institute (DMI) as a founding member to inform a range of discussions on the adoption of digital currencies by central banks. The DMI is run by the Official Monetary and Financial Institution Forum (OMFIF), an independent think tank concerned with central banking, economic policy and public investment. According to Copper, the move marks a major milestone in realizing the custodian’s ambitions to bridge the gap between the world of traditional finance and the emerging potential of blockchain and crypto-related technologies. “We are delighted to be joining OMFIF’s Digital Money Institute. The forum […]
The New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) and its French regulatory counterpart will work to “ease the entry” for fintech innovators into their respective markets. An agreement with the French Autorite de Controle Prudentiel et de Resolution (ACPR), signed Wednesday, seeks to further develop New York and France as “innovation hubs for financial services technology,” according to a press release from the NYDFS. “DFS is pleased to partner with our French regulatory counterparts through this signed agreement,” said the regulator’s superintendent, Linda A. Lacewell, who signed the memorandum of understanding with François Villeroy de Galhau, the governor of the Bank of France and chairman of the ACPR. Through the […]