The sister of White House adviser Jared Kushner won’t be attending an investor conference in China this weekend as reported after she was criticized for trying to raise money there last weekend, using the lure of a U.S. visa program.

Nicole Kushner Meyer, who had been representing her family’s company in China, came under fire for what critics said was an attempt to attract investors using the family’s ties to the White House.

Meyer mentioned her brother at a conference in Beijing on Saturday. Marketing materials for the event also promoted her as Jared’s sister and cited the Kushner family’s “celebrity” status.

The family real estate company, Kushner Cos., later apologized. It said Meyer had not meant to attract investors by using her brother’s name.

The Kushner Cos. said Thursday that no representative would be attending conferences in China this weekend. The Washington Post earlier reported that a Chinese website had listed Meyer as planning to attend an event in Shenzhen on Saturday.

The family company is trying to raise money to help build a 79-story apartment building in Jersey City, New Jersey, called One Journal Square. The company is seeking 300 wealthy Chinese to invest a total of $150 million.

Anchor tenant bows out

The building is facing difficulty. Office-sharing company WeWork confirmed this week that it was canceling plans to lease space as an anchor tenant. And the Jersey City mayor recently came out against awarding a valuable tax break for the building.

The EB-5 visa program offers a path to citizenship for wealthy investors willing to put at least $500,000 in rural areas or places with high unemployment in the United States. After as little as two years, participants can then apply for a fast-track green card and later U.S. citizenship.

The Kushner Cos. has used the program to finance other projects, including another building in Jersey City. That one, Trump Bay Street, is in a licensing deal with President Donald Trump’s company.

Jared Kushner, who stepped down as CEO of Kushner Cos. to assume his White House role, is married to Trump daughter and White House adviser Ivanka Trump.

Critics say the EB-5 program has not helped the downtrodden areas of the country enough and has become a way for developers to essentially sell visas in exchange cheap financing.

At a press briefing earlier this week, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Jared Kushner had no involvement in the One Journal Square project. An attorney for Jared Kushner said he had sold his stake to a trust benefiting other members of the Kushner family and would recuse himself from related policy matters while serving as an adviser to Trump.
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Iraq and Algeria support the extension of oil production cuts by OPEC and non-OPEC producers through the end of the year to try to boost prices, they said in a joint statement Thursday.

The oil ministers of the two countries held a press conference in Baghdad where Iraqi Oil Minister Jabar Ali al-Luaibi said “there might be new ideas to be presented” at an OPEC meeting on May 25, without providing further details.

In late November, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to cut production by 1.2 million barrels a day, the first such reduction agreement since 2008. The following month, 11 non-OPEC oil-producing countries pledged to cut an additional 558,000 barrels a day, reaching an overall reduction of 1.8 million.

In March, OPEC announced the possibility that such cuts would be extended.

Iraq – OPEC’s second-largest producer and a country that relies on oil revenues for nearly 95 percent of its budget – committed to reduce daily production by 210,000 barrels to 4.351 million.

News of a possible extension of the OPEC cuts and reports that U.S. crude stockpiles have dropped by 5.2 million barrels last week slightly boosted worldwide oil prices.

Crude oil sold for over $100 a barrel in the summer of 2014, before bottoming out below $30 a barrel in January 2016. Brent Crude, used to price international oils, now trades at around $50 a barrel in London.
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Uber is launching its private ride-hailing service in the Myanmar commercial capital of Yangon on Thursday, aiming to tap into one of the world’s youngest and fastest-growing online markets.

The launch follows Singapore-based GrabTaxi’s debut by about two months.

Uber is one of the world’s largest on-demand transportation platforms. It is seeking an alliance with the government to smooth acceptance of the use of private vehicles for commercial transport.

A taxi ride in Myanmar usually involves negotiating prices, no use of meters and a lack of air conditioning or seat belts. Using a ride-hailing app is still a relatively new concept, though the practice has been gaining in popularity.

Local travel services start-up Oway and Hello Cabs, a rival service run by a construction and auto dealership tycoon, also provide ride-hailing services. 

“I definitely want to try Uber,” said Nyan Zay Htet, 26, a company worker who was haggling with a driver over a fare on a downtown street in Yangon. “I welcome having international companies come in because it can be more convenient for us if we don’t have to bargain over prices and can just hop in and go.”

More than two-thirds of Southeast Asians are younger than 40 and the number going online to buy goods and services is soaring. A recent research report by Google and the Singaporean investment arm Temasek put the potential ride-sharing market in six larger regional markets at $13 billion by 2025, up from $2.5 billion in 2015.

With more than 50 million people, Myanmar is growing fast and its public transport networks are not keeping up. Taxis are plentiful in Yangon, with local media reporting authorities estimate there are more than 50,000 on the city’s jammed roads. The industry is something of a free-for-all, with non-licensed drivers turning their cars into taxis as they please. But the government has said it intends to crack down on that.

Incomes for most people are still low, so price competition may be key.

An online Uber fare estimator put the base fare in Yangon at 1,500 kyats (pronounced chuts) ($1.09) with a minimum charge of 1,800 kyats ($1.31).

Uber has faced trouble from regulators in various markets, including China, France, Spain and Mexico. But generally they target services transporting paying customers using private vehicles that are not registered for public transport, not ride-hailing that uses smartphone apps to call licensed taxis.
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Housing foreclosure activity in the United States dropped to the lowest level since 2005 last month, according to a business research group.

ATTOM Data Solutions tracks default notices, auctions and bank repossessions across the nation and says the number of actions dropped 23 percent from a year ago. That means more than 77,000 homeowners missed payments, and banks took some kind of action to encourage the repayment of their loans.

Severe problems in the U.S. housing market, and sales of securities backed by sometimes-faulty mortgages, played a key role in the financial crisis, which is one reason that investors and economists watch the housing market closely.

Seattle, a city in the Pacific Northwest state of Washington, did the best in this study, with the number of foreclosure notices dropping 38 percent from the same time a year ago. Atlantic City, New Jersey, had the worst foreclosure problem in this study, with one out of every 237 housing units getting a notice of some kind.
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China’s President Xi Jinping initiated the ambitious Belt and Road development plan but it has become a world plan not tied to his presidency, the Commerce Ministry said Wednesday, days before Xi hosts a global forum on the initiative.

The forum in Beijing next week will draw heads of state to discuss Xi’s plan to expand trade links between Asia, Africa and Europe through billions of dollars in infrastructure investment.

Representatives from more than 100 countries will attend China’s biggest diplomatic event of the year, though only one leader from the Group of Seven (G7) industrialized nations, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, is set to join.

China says that between 2014 and 2016, its businesses signed projects worth $304.9 billion along inland and maritime corridors of the plan, also known as the New Silk Road. But some of the projects could be in development for years.

Judging by recent precedent in China’s political system, Xi is slated to step down from the presidency in early 2023 at the end of his second five-year term.

Asked what guarantee the world had that the initiative would go on after Xi’s second term, Vice Minister of Commerce Qian Keming told a news briefing that its vitality lay in countries’ hopes for development and not in the idea of “who proposed it or what term in office there is later.”

“The Belt and Road initiative was proposed by President Xi in 2013, but this initiative is not an individual proposal, or merely left at a proposal level. Rather it is an initiative that has been widely received by the whole world. It is jointly owned by everyone,” Qian said.

China has repeatedly rebuffed concern that the plan is part of a grand strategy to expand its economic interests for selfish gain and to seek global dominance, saying that anyone can join the plan to boost common prosperity.

Xi has used the initiative to help portray China as an open economy, distinct from a rising wave of global protectionism.

However, the government has faced criticism from foreign business groups and governments alike, who say it has done little to remove discriminatory policies and market barriers that favor Chinese companies.

Foreign business groups have questioned whether multinational companies would be able to compete with Chinese firms through the plan in transparent bidding processes.

Zhang Xingfu, an official from the Commerce Ministry’s cooperation department, played down such concerns.

“Chinese enterprises conducting investment and cooperative business in countries along the Belt and Road initiative will … actively participate in project bidding, and cooperate and compete with international enterprises in the same industries on the same platform,” Zhang said.
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Analysts at a liberal research institution in Washington say U.S. employers are stealing $15 billion a year from workers by failing to pay legally required minimum wages.

The Economic Policy Institute says the wage theft hits nearly one-fifth of low wage workers in the 10 largest U.S. states. The study’s authors say affected workers lose an average of $64 a week, or $3,300 a year out of their modest salaries.

Young people, women, minorities and immigrants are often stuck in low-level jobs and thus are most likely to be affected by wage theft. EPI says the shortfall obviously hurts workers, but also slows demand for goods and services, which can crimp economic growth.

On Thursday, government officials will look at the job market from a different angle, when the weekly jobless claims are published.  Economists track the number of Americans who sign up for unemployment assistance to gauge the health of the market.

A survey of economists shows most experts expect the number of such layoffs to rise slightly but still remain at a relatively low level consistent with a strong job market. A separate study produces the U.S. unemployment rate, which was just 4.4 percent in April, less than half the rate during the worst of the recession. Some analysts say with fewer unemployed workers seeking jobs, employers may have to boost wages to attract and keep staff members.  

Higher wages could contribute to inflation, and so could rising prices of imports, including oil. Friday, officials will report the latest data on price changes at the retail level with the Consumer Price Index. Experts predict the study will show inflation rose about 2 percent over the past year, a moderate level.  

U.S. central bank officials are supposed to guide the economy in ways that keep prices stable and unemployment low. They try to cool inflation by raising interest rates, but do so cautiously to avoid stalling the economy and hurting job growth. That is why experts quoted in the financial press say the Federal Reserve will raise rates again, slightly, at their June meeting.
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Yemen’s planning minister says 60 percent of the country’s population is in dire poverty more than two years since the Shi’ite rebels forced the country’s internationally recognized government and president out of the capital.

Mohamed El-Saadi says 22 million Yemenis are in need of humanitarian relief, a figure that exceeds the U.N.’s recent estimate that 19.8 million in Yemen need assistance.

El-Saadi spoke during a meeting on Wednesday in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, attended by the Gulf Cooperation Council and international organizations.

He warned that the “general security, political and humanitarian situation has witnessed an unprecedented decline.”

A Saudi-led coalition has been battling Yemen’s Houthi rebels March 2015. The war has killed more than 10,000 civilians and pushed a large portion of the population to the brink of famine.

 
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In August, 2014, planners in the northeastern Chinese city of Hunchun argued in state media that it should be included in the “One Belt, One Road” project, Beijing’s vision laid out the previous year of a new Silk Road across Asia to Europe.

In 2015, the official Xinhua news agency ran stories about how Hunchun was accelerating its “OBOR” plans, and early in 2016, China’s cabinet released a list of Chinese cities included in “OBOR:” Hunchun was on the map.

The fact that the list came about slowly, and that some cities felt moved to lobby to be included, underlines how the pet project of Chinese President Xi Jinping is as amorphous as it is ambitious.

The challenge of defining exactly what OBOR means will come to the fore later this month, when heads of state and senior officials from around the world gather in Beijing for the first major summit dedicated to the project.

“Frankly, I don’t really know what the belt and the road are. The reason being that I think Beijing doesn’t know either,” said Tom Miller of Gavekal Dragonomics, who recently wrote a book on the New Silk Road.

Reality is complicated

In theory, incentives for cities, companies and countries to be involved are strong: hundreds of billions of dollars are expected to be spent on roads, railways, pipelines, ports and industrial zones stretching from Sri Lanka to Djibouti.

But as Hunchun shows, the reality of OBOR can be complicated and requires buy-in from other countries.

The city’s position at the apex of Russia, North Korea and China is a blessing and a curse. While Russia is gradually opening up to more trade, North Korea has stalled.

Tantalizingly close to the sea but without a sea port after Russia’s annexation in 1860, local businesses said they wanted to ship more goods via Rason, a nearby North Korean port earmarked as an export hub to China, Japan, South Korea and beyond.

That would open a shipping route to southern China, but with sanctions in place against Pyongyang, global tensions rising over its arms programme and Rason developing slowly, expectations of progress are low.

“We currently transport goods by rail to southern China. We’d like to ship from Rason, but at present that’s not happening,” said Wang Hai, general manager of Guanghai Import and Export Trading Company in Hunchun, a small firm with 12 staff, both Chinese and Russian. “Hunchun is a hub for northeast Asia, so in theory it should play a big role in ‘One Belt, One Road,’ but for now it hasn’t been able to get its act together.”

Russia more promising?

North Korea remains largely shut to the outside world, and China, while remaining its main economic and diplomatic backer, has signed up for tough U.N. sanctions against it.

But China said on Tuesday that North Korea would be sending a delegation to the upcoming OBOR summit.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will also attend, reflecting his country’s importance in China’s OBOR strategy; in Hunchun, some enterprises are already seeing benefits from mutual trade.

Xingyang Seafood, for example, imports 90 percent of its seafood from Russia and 10 percent from North Korea, said chairman Zhao Yang.

“The main advantage of being in Hunchun is that we are close to Russia,” Yang told Reuters. The company is headquartered in northern China’s Shandong province, but in 2015 it opened a branch in Hunchun to exploit its proximity to Russia.

“How does North Korea help us? It doesn’t help us at all, they have hardly any seafood left there.”

Trade with Russia

Hunchun’s spokesman Hao Qiang declined to comment about the city’s relationship with North Korea, because of the “current political situation,” and would not say how many North Koreans were working in the city. “But we can talk about Hunchun’s trade with Russia, the city’s clean air and successful tree-planting initiatives,” he said.

In addition to oil and gas export opportunities between Russia and China, Putin has spoken of roads and bridges being built to strengthen links.

Russia has struggled, however, to lure enough people to sparsely populated regions bordering China’s northeast, and there are concerns among Russians of creeping colonization if too much land is leased to the Chinese.

“They [Chinese] will live there, their relatives will come, they will deepen their roots there, they will take Russian women as wives,” firebrand opposition politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky said in 2015, when proposals to lease Russian land to Chinese farmers were put forward. “We will only have problems. I see no advantages.”

For Hunchun, OBOR is the latest in a series of development programs aimed at revitalizing Jilin province and China’s northeast.

Benefits of investments are clear

In the 1990s, the United Nations backed the Tumen River Area Development Project, which became the Greater Tumen Initiative linking China, Mongolia, South Korea and Russia.

The benefits of large-scale state investment are clear. From 25th place among smaller cities in Jilin in terms of economic growth, Hunchun now stands third. Foreign trade has doubled since 2011, according to city statistics.

Whether OBOR can add value over the longer term is uncertain, Peter Cai wrote in a report for the Lowy Institute, an Australian think-tank.

“If the Chinese government fails to connect its domestic projects with overseas components, OBOR will be little different from other domestic infrastructure programs, greatly diminishing its economic and strategic value.”
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Mexico is embarking on a strategy to combat illegal pipeline thefts that includes going after those who purchase and deal in stolen fuel as well as the thieves, the country’s treasury secretary said Tuesday.

Jose Antonio Meade said it’s a problem that costs Mexico somewhere between 15 billion and 20 billion pesos a year, or $780 million to $1 billion, and one that requires a holistic approach to solve.

Mexico’s government wants to reduce the siphoning of gasoline and diesel from illegal pipeline taps by attacking “not only the supply but also the demand,” Meade said, according to a transcript of remarks during a Q&A session released by the Treasury Department.

Besides quick-response actions against thieves, authorities must work to make the illicit business less profitable and make those who buy it face consequences, he said.

Armed gangs add to problem

The topic is front-and-center in Mexico these days after gun battles between the army and suspected thieves killed four soldiers and six gunmen last week in the central state of Puebla. Armed gangs have gotten involved in the business of fuel thefts, and gunmen were said to have used civilians as human shields in one of the clashes.

Fuel thieves are also suspected of being behind a shocking crime in Puebla on May 2, when eight assailants raped a woman and her 14-year-old daughter, killed her toddler son, beat her husband, stole the family’s pickup truck and left on them on a highway at night. In March, three state detectives were abducted and killed by a fuel theft gang allegedly with the help of the local mayor and police officers.

Meade said those who “tear at the social fabric, who in a very cowardly fashion hide behind … women and children,” cause problems for communities and are “terribly dangerous.”

Corrupt workers a concern

Meade acknowledged it’s “very likely” that corrupt workers at state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, are involved in facilitating pipeline thefts. He said officials are working with the company to identify them.

Officials are also looking at gas stations that may be selling stolen fuel, as well as the mass transportation sector. To that end, authorities raided 13 gas stations last month after detecting irregular fuel-buying patterns, Meade said.

“There was even a gas station that had been shut down (by authorities) for a year but was continuing to sell gasoline, which of course was stolen,” he said.

Looking for help from Senate

The secretary said authorities are looking into technology that would allow them to better track illegal pipeline taps and “mark” gasoline to help identify fuel that has been stolen.

Meade also noted legislation passed in the Chamber of Deputies and pending in the Senate would make it easier to prosecute fuel theft.

“The theft is illegal, but possession of stolen gasoline … since we don’t catch them physically and flagrantly stealing, we often find it impossible to take legal action,” he said.

Stolen fuel part of local economy

The Puebla state Public Security Department reported Tuesday that in a series of raids it seized over 21,000 liters (5,600 gallons) of fuel and 12 vehicles apparently involved in thefts.

Some communities in Puebla and elsewhere have come to base much of their economies on selling fuel stolen from the thousands of taps that are drilled into state-owned pipelines each year. It can also be dangerous — on Sunday one such illegal tap exploded into flames.

Meade said Puebla is the state with the highest incidence of fuel theft, followed by Guanajuato and Veracruz.
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Four U.S. states filed a lawsuit Tuesday over President Donald Trump’s decision to restart the sale of coal leases on federal lands, saying the Obama-era block of the leasing program was reversed without studying what’s best for the environment and for taxpayers.

The attorneys general of California, New Mexico, New York and Washington, all Democrats, said bringing back the federal coal lease program without an environmental review risks worsening the effects of climate change on those states while shortchanging them for the coal taken from public lands.

“Climate change has to be considered when we are talking about compensating states and New Mexico citizens for their resources,” said Cholla Khoury, New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas’ director of consumer and environmental protection.

The U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management administers 306 coal leases in 10 states, producing more than 4 billion tons of coal over the past decade. Most of that coal — 85 percent — comes from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana.

Production and combustion of coal from federal lands accounted for about 11 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2014.

The Obama administration blocked the sale of new leases in 2016 to conduct an environmental study and a review of the royalties that mining companies pay the U.S. government for coal that’s extracted. Federal officials and members of Congress said the current royalty rates were shortchanging taxpayers.

In January, Interior officials said they were considering raising those royalty rates to offset the effects of climate change from burning the coal.

In March, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to amend or withdraw the coal leasing program moratorium.

The next day, Zinke did so, saying the Obama administration’s environmental review would cost “many millions of dollars” and that improvements to the program can be made without a full-scale environmental review.

The lawsuit by the four attorneys general, which was filed in Great Falls, Montana, says the reversal was made “with no justification other than an objection to the time and cost of complying with the law.”

Lifting the moratorium without properly considering the environmental effects or ensuring that the program is providing fair market value for the publicly owned coal violates federal laws, they allege.

“They didn’t follow the law,” Khoury said. “You can’t make piecemeal changes without doing this assessment to fully understand all parts of this program.”

Interior Department officials did not return telephone and email messages seeking comment.
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The U.S. economy won’t achieve the Trump administration’s 3 percent growth goal this year and not until all of its tax, regulatory, trade and energy policies are fully in place, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Tuesday.

Ross also said trade enforcement actions would be a major tool to cut U.S. trade deficits, adding that he has problems with World Trade Organization rules which allow widely divergent tariffs and are slow to punish violators.

The 3 percent growth target “is certainly not achievable this year,” Ross told Reuters in an interview. “The Congress has been slow-walking everything. We don’t even have half the people in place.”

But Ross said the growth target ultimately could be achieved in the year after all of President Donald Trump’s business-friendly policies are implemented. He noted that delays were possible if the push for tax cuts was slowed down in Congress.

“I think between the change in regulatory attitudes which will make it easier to make big projects, and the new taxes, which will make the rates of return much better, the reduced regulatory environment, I think over time you will see increases in capex – and that in turn has a big multiplier effect through the economy,” Ross said.
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Now onto his third job since finishing high school a decade ago, Festus Chege is hoping his latest venture as a water vendor in Githurai, a growing suburb to the south of Kenya’s capital Nairobi, will pay off.

Like many young people from poor families, the 30-year-old passed his high-school exams but lacked the funds to pursue his studies, confining him to work in the city’s fast-expanding informal sector.

Kenya’s current drought, which is affecting some 3 million people across the East African country, has led to a drop in water volumes in reservoirs serving Nairobi residents.

The city authorities have been forced to ration water services, giving priority to critical facilities like hospitals, as well as manufacturers. Taps in poor households are now empty of piped water most of the time, and they have little choice but to buy their water from vendors like Chege.

“The water business is good,” said Chege, who has been selling water for the past four months. “People call me to supply them with water as early as 4 a.m.”

Chege, who uses a rickshaw to transport the water, sells 20-liter drums of water for 50 shillings ($0.49) each. In a day, he can supply as many as 40 drums, earning him 2,000 shillings — more than double a government clerk’s wage.

It’s five times more than what he was making last year hawking secondhand clothes.

“There were days when I would find myself idle because of a lack of customers,” said Chege. That’s when he would join his friends to smoke bhang, a form of cannabis — a common pastime among young slum-dwellers who take the drug in secret dens.

Now, Chege says he no longer has time to mess around with drugs because he is busy from dawn to dusk selling water.

In January this year, he joined a youth group called Ni Sisi Sasa (“It is our time”), which helps jobless young people in the neighborhood improve their lives. One activity it offers is water vending.

The group has a water depot in Githurai, which purchases its supply from the Kiambu County Council water unit.

Group members like Chege buy water from the depot at low rates and resell it to local residents at a profit.

“By the end of the year, I want to make enough money so that I can enroll in a teacher training college,” said Chege. He plans to continue supporting the group even if he realizes his ambition of becoming a teacher.

Growing population

According to the Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company (NCWSC), the capital’s residents need 740,000 cubic meters of water daily to meet demand.

Currently only 462,000 cubic meters of water are being supplied due to declining water levels in the Ndakaini reservoir, said Philip Gichuki, NCWSC’s managing director.

The reservoir, which supplies 85 percent of the city’s water, has a capacity of 70 million cubic meters, but due to poor rains this season, it is only around 40 percent full.

For instance, the Aberdares water tower in central Kenya — the source of rivers feeding the reservoir — has received just 250 mm of rain since December, way below the 1,000 mm it would normally receive in the rainy season, said Gichuki.

“The shortage has forced us to ration water,” said Nairobi County’s executive for water, Peter Kimori. “Estates have been forced to look for alternative sources due to the rationing.”

The county government plans to sink 140 boreholes in Nairobi’s fringe estates to ward off future water shortages.

But experts like Gichuki say more will be needed to meet demand in the capital due to its growing population, as rural migrants flock to areas like Githurai where many find work as manual laborers.

According to the World Bank, there are over 4 million people — around a tenth of Kenya’s population — living in Nairobi and its suburbs. In 1963, when Kenya attained independence, the city was home to only a third of a million people.

Creaking infrastructure

Gichuki said the solution was to upgrade the city’s water infrastructure.

“[It] has not been developed since post-independence days,” said Gichuki. “This is leading to the increasing water pressure and shortage in Nairobi.”

Fred Kihara, water fund manager at The Nature Conservancy, an international NGO, said the worsening water problem in Nairobi is linked to climate change, as rainfall volumes in central Kenya have declined.

On top of this, the government is not doing enough to conserve water towers like the Aberdares, he added, by preventing forests being cut down for farming, for instance.

“Clearing of trees reduces the soil’s ability to retain water which seeps into rivers feeding reservoirs like Ndakaini dam,” said Kihara, explaining that without trees, the water evaporates faster.

Meanwhile, Kenya’s Central Organization of Trade Unions says 4 million jobs are needed for the country to cut poverty to zero by 2020.

Youth unemployment has shrunk to 15 percent from 25 percent in 2006, as the economy’s informal sector has expanded.

“I am able to do this [water] business because the government has removed harsh regulation on the informal sector,” said Chege. “There is less harassment from tax officials.” But he called for better access to government support such as the youth enterprise development fund, which is hard to tap for young people without political connections.
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The U.S. Treasury on Tuesday launched an upgrade of a website to allow for the first time the tracking of all federal government spending categories, which totaled $3.85 trillion last year.

The new Beta.USAspending.gov website culminates a three-year initiative to improve the existing USAspending.gov to provide a broader view of government spending than the grant and procurement data previously available on the site.

The project brings together some 400 different data sets from more than 100 federal agencies, extracting spending information from thousands of divergent computer systems across the government.

It also is designed to be machine readable, with open source code allowing private companies to analyze and develop commercial applications for the data, said a senior Treasury official working on the project.

The beta site is launching with year-to-date data for fiscal 2017, with historical data to be added later. The data will be updated quarterly, the official said.

The spending site upgrade was mandated by the Data Accountancy and Transparency Act of 2014, a bipartisan law aimed at shedding new light on federal spending by making data readily available.

“The new site provides taxpayers with the ability to track nearly $4 trillion in government spending from Washington, D.C., directly into their communities and cities,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.

“Greater access to data will drive better decision-making and strengthen accountability and transparency — qualities central to the Administration’s focus on a more innovative and effective government,” Mnuchin said.

The new version of the site makes clear with a prominent block chart what budget wonks already know — that more than half of all federal spending is consumed by three categories: Social Security (23.9 percent), Medicare (14.9 percent) and National Defense (14.9 percent).

The beta site is expected to run alongside the original for several months in order to collect feedback from users to help plug “holes” in the data and make the site more user-friendly, the Treasury official said.

The site also will be expanded to show sources of contributions to federal tax revenues by state.
…

Indian airline IndiGo said it plans to start flying smaller planes to second-tier towns and cities later this year, in a shift in strategy for the carrier that has prided itself on the simplicity of running only one type of jet.

IndiGo, which has a fleet of 131 Airbus A320 aircraft, said on Tuesday it has placed a provisional order for 50 ATR 72-600 aircraft from European turboprop maker ATR, worth over $1.3 billion at list price.

IndiGo joins national carrier Air India and SpiceJet which have finalized plans under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s scheme to make it cheaper for people to fly within India. The scheme subsidizes part of the cost for airlines to fly to smaller towns.

“We should see increased business activity in small towns and cities which will increase demand for air travel in these regions,” IndiGo’s President Aditya Ghosh said after the company reported a 25 percent fall in quarterly net profit.

InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, owner of IndiGo, said net profit fell to 4.4 billion rupees ($68 million) in the quarter ended March 31, from 5.84 billion rupees a year ago, as fuel costs jumped 71 percent over the same period.

The company said it expects available seat kilometer, a key measure of an airline’s capacity, to increase by 22 percent in the April-June quarter.

IndiGo, which has maintained its efficiency by operating only one type of aircraft, said it plans to set up a separate unit to manage the ATR fleet to reduce the complexity of flying two different types of aircraft.

Functions such as flight operations, in-flight services, route planning and revenue management will be managed by a separate team, whereas administrative functions like human resources, finance and legal would be controlled by IndiGo.

“It would avoid adding complexity to mainline operations,” Ghosh said during an analyst call, adding that it would also result in synergies in corporate overheads and ground handling.

The company said it expects to have up to seven ATR aircraft by March 2018 if it reaches an agreement to buy the planes.

IndiGo also expects to add 39 new aircraft in the current fiscal year that started on April 1, of which 28 will be A320neos, taking the total to 170 A320 aircraft.

The carrier has faced operational issues with some A320neo aircraft due to problems with engines built by Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp.

Ghosh said IndiGo expects Pratt & Whitney to provide a solution to one part of the problem by the fourth quarter of 2018 and the engine maker is working on a new design solution that will be retro-fitted later.

Pratt & Whitney has also carried out hardware and software changes on all of IndiGo’s A320neos which should address part of the issue, he said.

IndiGo has ordered a total of 430 A320neo aircraft in the past two years, making it one of Airbus’s biggest customers.
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Gibraltar is preparing for a post-Brexit setup in which its firms will have no longer access to the European Union market but will maintain a preferential relationship with Britain, a top Gibraltar financial official said on Tuesday.

The tiny British enclave on Spain’s southern tip, with a population of 30,000, is home to around 15,000 companies and is a major provider of insurance and gambling services.

“We are currently planning for a hard Brexit,” James Tipping, director at Gibraltar’s government body for financial promotion, told EU lawmakers in a hearing in Brussels.

He said Gibraltar did not expect to obtain a “special status” and was resigned to lose its access to the EU market after Britain leaves the EU at the end of a process triggered in March by British Prime Minister Theresa May.

This would mark a shift in Gibraltar’s stated policy of seeking extraordinary arrangements with the EU after Brexit.

Many companies have so far been attracted to Gibraltar by the prospect of being able to operate in all 28 EU countries from a territory with low tax rates and business-friendly regulations.

The loss of the access to the EU market, granted to EU member states by so-called passporting rules, may reduce firms’ appetite to establish their headquarters in the British enclave.

But this may not discourage Gibraltar-based firms that operate in the United Kingdom.

“Our financial model will not have to change,” Tipping told lawmakers, noting Britain has committed to guarantee full access to its market for Gibraltar companies.

He said about 20 percent of motor vehicles in Britain are underwritten by Gibraltar-based insurance companies, making insurers the largest financial sector in Gibraltar, which is also home to more than a dozen banks, several investment funds and top online gambling firms.

Gibraltar, often dubbed “the Rock” because of its famous cliff-faced mountain, voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU at last year’s Brexit referendum.

It remains, however, committed to remain part of Britain after Brexit. The enclave rejected the idea of Britain sharing sovereignty with Spain by 99 percent to 1 percent in a 2002 referendum.

The future of Gibraltar is one of the many thorny issues that will have to be sorted in the two-year divorce talks between Britain and the EU which will end in March 2019.

The EU offered Spain a veto right over the future relationship between Gibraltar and the EU after Britain leaves the bloc.
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Cambodia’s rapidly normalizing economy will receive an additional boost when it hosts the regional World Economic Forum (WEF) for the first time this week with business leaders looking for opportunities to diversify the country’s fledgling industries.

American lawyer and chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Cambodia, Brett Sciaroni, said Cambodia’s economy remained the fastest growing in Southeast Asia with annual GDP growth exceeding seven percent year-on-year.

Garments, tourism, construction and agriculture are key planks in the local economy, but he said he would prefer to see the number of industries substantially broadened.

“Well, we’re very hopeful that we’ll be getting more light manufacturing in the future because we do need to diversify the economy. Right now we have a strong agricultural sector and we have a strong garment sector but we want to graduate that light manufacturing from garments to other things,” he said. 

Sprucing-up Cambodia’s image

Across the capital, buildings are getting a lick of paint, parks are being cleaned-up and gardens manicured ahead of the arrival of 700 delegates from 40 countries for the May 10-12 forum with its focus on technology, growth and youth.

Sciaroni said the WEF, which Cambodia will host on behalf of the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), would help improve Cambodia’s image and an international reputation that is often maligned by corruption and issues like human rights.

“Old views of Cambodia are frequently hard to change. So, I think there’s still an impression out there of Cambodia as a war-torn country with genocide and Khmer Rouge and land mines and so on,” he said. “But once people come here, scales fall from their eyes. They see all of the new buildings going up, they see so many developments going on.”

The economy has been a strong point for the ruling Cambodia People’s Party (CPP) and Prime Minister Hun Sen, who is facing commune elections next month and a national election in July of next year.

His heavy-handed autocratic style – often criticized – has characterized the government since three decades of war ended in 1998 when Cambodia was still struggling to shake off its image as a failed state. Since then, Hun Sen has been credited with ensuring national security that has underpinned an unprecedented period of economic growth.

Sciaroni’s sentiments were echoed by David Totten, the Phnom Penh-based director of Emerging Markets Consulting, who said the WEF was a great idea.

“Cambodia isn’t a perfect country, but not being perfect is not the same as being bad. In many industries, in many sectors, you will find vibrant, entrepreneurial communities setting up and running successful businesses and growing them year-on-year,” he said. 

Not everyone is happy with the Forum

Nevertheless, the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) and human rights activists are far from convinced that Phnom Penh is an ideal venue to host the WEF.

Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, said “Cambodia is one of the last places that a major meeting like the WEF should be held” adding that the human rights situation here is “in free fall”.

He also noted Cambodian authorities were prone to rounding-up poor people, the homeless and sex workers, who in the past have been thrown into detention as part of a so-called ‘beautification campaign’ ahead of major events in the capital.

Hun Sen has also faced international criticism for a crackdown on the CNRP over the past 18 months. Party supporters have been jailed for criminal defamation and other charges while senior leaders have also been threatened with prison terms and legal maneuvers which could bar them from holding public office.

Robertson said the WEF should speak out on such issues while Mu Suchua, a senior CNRP figure, said human rights should be a part of the world economy and country’s like Cambodia should be required to significantly improve before being given the privilege of hosting the WEF.

Spokespeople for the WEF and the government were unavailable for comment.

Cambodia’s youth

Cambodia’s demographics are changing as rapidly as its economy with post-war baby boomers maturing. WEF organizers noted the median age here is 23.8 years and young people are demanding higher pay and skilled work alongside life’s luxuries.

At elections in 2013, the youth vote sided with the CNRP resulting in Hun Sen being returned to office, but with a substantially reduced majority.

Despite the political issues, Muoy Piseth, a spokesman for the Federation of Cambodian Intellectuals and Students, said Cambodia was ready to hold the WEF event and it should improve the country’s reputation and lead to further economic partnerships and investment.

“Cambodia needs investment and cooperation. The lack of human resources and modernization, when compared to other ASEAN member countries, is still a challenge that needs to improve,” he said.

Molyny Pann contributed to this story.
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The International Monetary Fund called on Asian economies to learn from Japan’s experience and act early to cope with rapidly aging populations, warning that parts of the region risk “getting old before becoming rich.”

Asia has enjoyed substantial demographic dividends in the past decades, but the growing number of elderly is set to create a demographic “tax” on growth, the IMF said in its economic outlook report for the Asia-Pacific region on Tuesday.

“Adapting to aging could be especially challenging for Asia, as populations living at relatively low per capita income levels in many parts of the region are rapidly becoming old,” the report said. “Some countries in Asia are getting old before becoming rich.”

The population growth rate is projected to fall to zero for Asia by 2050 and the share of working-age people – now at its peak – will decline over the coming decades, the report said.

The share of the population aged 65 and older will increase rapidly and reach close to two-and-a-half times the current level by 2050, it said.

That means demographics could subtract 0.1 percentage point from annual global growth over the next three decades, it said.

The challenges are particularly huge for Japan, which faces both an ageing and shrinking population. Its labor force shrank by more than 7 percent in the past two decades, the IMF said.

The high percentage of its citizens living on pensions may be behind Japan’s excess savings and low investment, which are weighing on growth and blamed in part for keeping inflation below the Bank of Japan’s 2 percent target, the report said.

“Japan’s experience highlights how demographic headwinds can adversely impact growth, inflation dynamics and the effectiveness of monetary policy,” it said.

The IMF called on Asian nations to learn from Japan’s experience and deal with demographic headwinds early, such as by introducing credible fiscal consolidation plans, boosting female and elderly labor force participation, and revamping social safety nets.
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Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo will travel to Washington next week for talks about sugar exports, he told reporters on Monday, in an attempt to break an impasse that threatens to trigger tit-for-tat duties on sweeteners.

U.S.-Mexican trade relations are already under strain as U.S. President Donald Trump seeks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement pact with Mexico and Canada and build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border and have Mexico pay for it.

The U.S. sugar industry pressed the Commerce Department late last year to withdraw from a 2014 trade agreement that sets prices and quota for U.S. imports of Mexican sugar unless the deal could be renegotiated.

Mexico and the United States last week extended a deadline to June 5 to reach an agreement on how much Mexican refined and crude sugar can enter the United States.

Speaking at an event in Mexico City, Agriculture Minister Jose Calzada said Mexico was willing to react in-kind to any U.S. duties imposed on its sugar.

“If we were to have to pay … tariffs on Mexican sugar imports, the federal government would energetically consider similar measures on some U.S. product,” Calzada said.

Mexico is the top foreign supplier of sugar to the United States, a coveted market of 12 million tons where the U.S. government gives export quotas to about 40 sugar-producing countries each year through trade programs.
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Protests over jobs and development in southern and central Tunisia have halted production at or shut the fields of two foreign energy companies in a new challenge to the country’s Prime Minister Youssef Chahed.

For Tunisia, a small oil and gas producer compared to its OPEC neighbors Libya and Algeria with national production at around 44,000 barrels per day, the protests come at a sensitive time as Chahed’s government tries to enact austerity reforms.

Tunisia’s Energy Minister Hela Chikhrouhou told reporters that sit-ins halted production at energy company Perenco’s Baguel and Tarfa fields, which the company website says are joint ventures for gas and condensate output.

A Perenco spokesman declined to comment.

Perenco operates the El Franig, Baguel, and Tarfa gas condensate fields with a production of 17 million standard cubic feet of gas per day, 2 mmscfd of LPG equivalent and 750 bopd of condensates, according to the company website.

A spokesman for Canada-based Serinus Energy said by email that its Chouech Essaida field in southern Tunisia had been shut since Feb. 28 due to labor and social unrest.

Protests have centered on the southern Tataouine province where Italy’s ENI and Austrian firm OMV have mainly gas operations, but have also begun in the central Kebili region.

Since its 2011 uprising brought democracy to Tunisia, successive governments have struggled with social unrest in the south and central provinces where unemployed youth feel they have been left out of the economic benefits of the revolution.

In Tatouine region, a group of demonstrators has camped out for several weeks in the Sahara desert and threatened to blockade roads used by oil and gas companies unless they see more jobs and a share in the region’s energy riches.

OMV said last week it had moved around 700 non-essential staff and contractors from its southern Tunisia operations as a precaution. It said production had not been affected.

ENI said protests had had no impact on its Tunisian production but it was monitoring the situation.

Chikhrouhou told a conference that total oil production had fallen to 44,000 barrels per day (bpd) from 100,000 bpd in 2010 because of social unrest, protests and low investment due to a lack of energy legislation.

Oil revenues fell from 3 billion Tunisian dinars ($1.24 billion) in 2010 to 1 billion Tunisian dinars in 2016, he said.

In the past, Tunisian protesters targeted the state-run phosphate business, where production falls since 2011 caused about $2 billion in losses. Output in phosphate — a key source of foreign income — has risen this year after agreements were reached with protesters.

The revival of the state-run phosphate production will help the North African country’s economic growth, which also suffered from a decline in revenues from the tourism sector after major Islamist militant attacks in 2015.
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Canada escalated a trade dispute with United States by making threats Washington called inappropriate in part because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is under pressure to secure support in a key region ahead of the country’s 2019 elections.

Washington last month slapped tariffs on timber imports, prompting Trudeau to say he was considering a ban on exports of U.S. coal through Pacific ports.

As well as lumber, the administration of President Donald Trump has targeted Canadian dairy farmers, while Boeing Corp. launched a trade challenge against Montreal-based planemaker Bombardier Inc.

All three are vital to the economy of Quebec, Canada’s second most-populous province. And Quebec is seen as vital to Trudeau’s hopes of maintaining a strong grip on power in a national election set for October 2019.

As contentious talks on renegotiating NAFTA draw closer, Trudeau has little choice but to defend dairy farmers and offer help to the lumber industry, even though that is likely to prompt fresh U.S. challenges.

“Quebec is the key,” said one senior Liberal organizer.

The predominantly French-speaking province holds 78 of the 338 seats in the House of Commons and Liberals acknowledge they need to win extra seats there to offset expected losses elsewhere in 2019.

The challenge is that they captured 40 seats in Quebec in 2015, which was far more than expected.

The Liberals say they can take another 10 to 15 seats, but only if everything goes their way. This means showing support for the dairy industry – and its influential lobby – amid fresh attacks from Washington.

No Choice?

The United States has long complained about Canada’s system of domestic protections for its dairy industry, which bars most imports and keeps prices high. Trump last month branded the industry “a disgrace.”

The system is unpopular in large parts of Canada, where people complain about high prices for milk and cheese. Trudeau, however, has little choice but to defend it.

Leger Marketing pollster Christian Bourque noted there are dairy farms in every part of Quebec.

“If you’re seen as attacking farming and the land, it’s probably easy for the farmers’ union to get Quebeckers onside.

You don’t necessarily want to forget farmers,” he said.

While observers see little risk of Trudeau being defeated outright in 2019, the danger for the Liberals is losing their majority, forcing them to rely on opposition parties to govern.

This would inevitably mean political compromises and a diluted policy agenda.

The Liberals have so far tried to maintain calm as tensions ratchet up, relying on visits from cabinet ministers and to key states to press the message that trade benefits both sides.

Bark vs Bite

The outreach efforts will continue, according to a source familiar with official strategy, adding that Ottawa will show its teeth where necessary.

“Do people honestly expect the Canadian government just to say ‘We accept these lumber duties, we will move on and pay the price?'” asked the source, who requested anonymity given the sensitivity of the situation.

In Washington, White House spokesman Sean Spicer dismissed talk of a trade war.

“That’s why we have dispute settlement mechanisms to do this in a responsible way,” he told reporters on Monday.

In a sign of the mounting pressures on Trudeau over lumber, former Quebec Liberal premier Jean Charest said Ottawa should consider loan guarantees to affected firms.

“It is very black and white now: either the government supports them or they will just close down,” he said in an interview.

Although giving such aid could prompt fresh U.S. challenges, insiders make clear Canada has no option.

Trudeau last week met with Quebec’s timber unions and tweeted “supporting softwood lumber producers in Quebec and across the country is a priority.”

In the short term, he faces few immediate threats. Polls show the Liberals well ahead of the opposition Conservatives and New Democrats, both of which have stand-in leaders and will not choose permanent replacements until later this year.

“He’s had an exceptionally long honeymoon, he’s still having a honeymoon, but that has a lot to do with the absence of opposition,” said pollster Nik Nanos.

Although being seen to openly favor one province or region over another can be politically fatal in Canada, Liberal sensitivity toward Quebec is clear.

When it came time to deciding on aid to Bombardier – which has received billions in subsidies from Ottawa – the Liberals made clear the only question was not if, but how much.

Party operatives also admitted relief once became clear Ottawa would not have to decide before the election on whether to allow TransCanada Corp. to build an oil pipeline across Quebec.

Environmentalists and aboriginal activists had promised protests that Quebec Liberals said they feared could hurt the party’s chances.
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Warren Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Saturday faulted Wells Fargo & Co for failing to stop employees from signing up customers for bogus accounts even after learning it was happening.

Wells Fargo, whose largest shareholder is Berkshire, with a 10 percent stake worth roughly $27 billion, gave employees too much autonomy to engage in “cross-selling” multiple products to meet sales goals, Buffett said.

This “incentivized the wrong type of behavior,” and former Chief Executive John Stumpf, who lost his job over the scandal, was too slow to fix the problem, Buffett said.

Wells Fargo was among many topics discussed at Berkshire’s annual meeting in Omaha, where Buffett, 86, and Vice Chairman Charlie Munger, 93, fielded dozens of questions from shareholders, journalists and analysts.

“If there’s a major problem, the CEO will get wind of it. At that moment, that’s the key to everything. The CEO has to act,” Buffett said. “The main problem was they didn’t act when they learned about it.”

Still, Buffett’s support of current management and board was key to ensuring the re-election of the entire board last month.

Wells Fargo spokesman Mark Folk said “we agree” with Buffett’s comments, and have taken “decisive actions” to fix the problems and “make things right for customers.”

Asked whether Berkshire’s decentralized structure could lead to a similar scandal, Buffett said “as we sit here, somebody is doing something wrong at Berkshire,” whose units employ 367,000 people. But he said Berkshire has an internal hotline to flag possible misbehavior, which gets 4,000 calls a year.

Succession and dividends

The meeting also included discussions about Berkshire’s succession plans, its controversial partnership with Brazilian firm 3G Capital, and whether it will start paying dividends or make an acquisition.

Buffett has said Berkshire could have a new chief executive within 24 hours if he died or could not continue, and that nothing had changed just because he praised fewer managers than usual in his February shareholder letter.

He said it may have been harder to single people out because “we have never had more good managers.”

But he also said it would be a “terrible mistake” if capital allocation were not the “main talent” of his successor.

Buffett did lavish much praise on top insurance executive Ajit Jain, who some investors believe could be that successor, saying “nobody could possibly replace Ajit. You can’t come close.”

On 3G, with which Berkshire controls Kraft Heinz Co and tried to merge it with Unilever NV, Buffett acknowledged a dislike for the cost-cutting for which the Brazilian firm is known.

But, he said, “it is absolutely essential to America that we become more productive,” and 3G was “very good at making a business productive with fewer people.”

Buffett also raised the possibility Berkshire could pay its first dividend since 1967, if “reasonably soon, even while I’m around,” the company had too much cash it could not reasonably deploy.

“It could be repurchases, it could be dividends,” he said.

Berkshire ended March with more than $96 billion of cash and cashlike instruments, and Munger said it could do a “$150 billion” acquisition now if it wanted.

Airlines and IBM

Buffett defended Berkshire’s foray into airlines, where it is a top investor in American Airlines Group Inc., Delta Air Lines Inc., Southwest Airlines Co. and United Continental Holdings Inc.

He had long disdained the industry, which had gone through many bankruptcies, but said he is confident it will not resort to “suicidally competitive” pricing strategies that could spell doom.

Munger added: “You’ve got to remember railroads were a terrible business for decades and decades and decades, and then they got good.” Berkshire bought the BNSF railroad in 2010.

Buffett also admitted he was wrong to think International Business Machines Corp. “would do better” when he started amassing 81 million shares six years ago.

Berkshire recently sold about one-third of those shares even as it built a huge stake in Apple Inc., which Buffett said is more as a “consumer” company that a technology company.

He also addressed criticism that Berkshire discloses too little about businesses such as aircraft parts maker Precision Castparts Corp, which it bought last year for $32.1 billion.

“We want you to understand what you own,” he said, and “there are just a million things that are of minor importance” at Berkshire, whose market value is about $411 billion.

Buffett also noted that Berkshire reported far fewer investment gains in the first quarter, which dragged on results, but said the company now has a slight preference for taking tax losses, which could lose value if Washington lawmakers reduce the 35 percent corporate tax rate.

The annual meeting, expected to draw more than last year’s estimated 37,000 shareholders, is the main event of a weekend of events that Buffett calls “Woodstock for Capitalists.”

Buffett and Munger took questions after the traditional shareholder movie, and after Buffett had roamed a nearby exhibit hall featuring products from Berkshire companies.

He was joined at the traditional newspaper tossing contest by friends including Microsoft Corp co-founder and Berkshire director Bill Gates, and Miami Dolphins defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh.

Hundreds of shareholders lined up early outside downtown Omaha’s CenturyLink Center for the meeting. Several said they got there nearly five hours before doors opened around 6:45 a.m.

“Every year it seems I have to come earlier,” said Chris Tesari, a retired businessman from Pacific Palisades, California who said he arrived at 3:20 a.m. for his 21st meeting. “It’s a pilgrimage.”
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Berkshire Hathaway Inc Chairman Warren Buffett fumed Saturday that health care costs are eating away at the U.S. economy like “tapeworm” and said the Republican approach to overhaul Obamacare is a tax cut for the rich.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday narrowly approved a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, a victory for Republican President Donald Trump who has called the 2010 law a “disaster.”

Speaking at Berkshire’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Omaha, Buffett said his federal income taxes last year would have gone down 17 percent had the new law been in effect.

“So it is a huge tax cut for guys like me,” he said. “And when there’s a tax cut, either the deficit goes up or they get the taxes from somebody else.”

The Republican bill would repeal most of the taxes that paid for the law formally known as the Affordable Care Act. The party’s leadership has promised that the new American Health Care Act, which faces a likely overhaul and uncertain passage in the Senate, would address growing health care costs.

Buffett said rising health care costs are crippling the competitiveness of U.S. companies abroad.

Unlike in many other countries where much of health care spending is publicly financed, employers provide health insurance coverage for nearly half of Americans and often face skyrocketing rates.

Buffett said health care costs have risen much faster in the United States than in the rest of the world and “will go up a lot more.”

“Medical costs are the tapeworm of American economic competitiveness,” he said. “That is a problem this society is having trouble with and is going to have more trouble with.”

Buffett is a Democrat who vocally supported Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful bid for the presidency against Trump. The fourth richest man in the world with a net worth totaling $74.3 billion, according to Forbes magazine, Buffett has vowed to donate nearly his entire fortune to charity.

Berkshire Vice Chairman Charlie Munger added that he thinks neither political party “can think rationally” about health care because they “hate each other so much.”
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President Daniel Ortega downplayed the possible impact of a U.S. bill that would condition international lending to Nicaragua on a range of democracy and rights issues, saying it’s more of a political than an economic threat to his country.

“The world is not going to disappear, the economy is not going to disintegrate” if the so-called Nica Act passes, Ortega said late Thursday after meeting with representatives of the International Monetary Fund during a visit to the Central American nation.

The bill before the House and Senate calls for the U.S. to oppose most loans to Nicaragua’s government through organizations such as the IMF, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, with the exception of funds for humanitarian purposes or to promote democracy.

That would be the official U.S. position unless the secretary of state certifies that Nicaragua is taking steps to hold fair and competitive elections, safeguard political rights, strengthen the rule of law and fight corruption, among other conditions.

Similar legislation last year failed to advance in Congress.
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More Americans age 65 and over are still punching the clock. In fact, the last time the percentage was this high was when John F. Kennedy was in the White House.

Last month, 19 percent of Americans age 65 and over were still working, according to government data released Friday. That’s the highest rate since 1962, and the trend has been upward since the figure bottomed out at 10 percent in 1985.

As America grows older and as life expectancy gets longer, some workers keep heading to the office because they like it and still feel engaged. But many others are continuing to work for a simpler, darker reason: They can’t afford not to.

More than a quarter of workers age 55 or older say they have less than $10,000 in savings and investments, according to the latest retirement confidence survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Perhaps because of small nest eggs, nearly a third of workers in that age group say they expect to work until at least 70, if they retire at all.

Older workers still heading for jobs may also be the lucky ones. Many older Americans would like to work but say they can’t find a job, whether because they lack the skills or because employers are looking for someone younger. The unemployment rate for workers age 65 and over was 3.7 percent last month. That’s a tick higher than its median over the last 30 years, though it’s down from earlier this year.

The numbers may rise higher, critics say.

Congress this past week voted to overturn a federal rule designed to help states give more workers access to retirement savings plans.

Several states have been pushing to create their own plans to get more workers into plans like a 401(k) that automatically deduct savings from each paycheck. Low-income workers tend to have much less access to savings plans through their jobs.

Republicans and players in the investment industry, though, argue that the state-run plans could end up being much more expensive than imagined and would water down safeguards in place to protect investors.
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