March 29, 2024
Crypto

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

NEW YORK (AP) — Crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced Thursday to 25 years in prison for a massive fraud on hundreds of thousands of customers that unraveled with the collapse of FTX, once one of the world’s most popular platforms for exchanging digital currency. Though he described Bankman-Fried as “extremely smart,” U.S. District Judge

Read More
Loans

Energy Department conditionally approves $2.26 billion loan for huge lithium mine in Nevada

RENO, Nev. (AP) — President Joe Biden’s administration has conditionally agreed to loan more than $2 billion to the company building a controversial lithium mine in Nevada with the largest known U.S. deposit of the metal critical to making batteries for electric vehicles key to his renewable energy agenda. The U.S Energy Department agreed on

Read More
Property

New York AG says she’ll seize Donald Trump’s property if he can’t pay $454 million civil fraud debt

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump could be at risk of losing some of his prized properties if he can’t pay his staggering New York civil fraud penalty. With interest, he owes the state nearly $454 million — and the amount is going up $87,502 each day until he pays. New York Attorney General Letitia

Read More
Mortgage

China cuts mortgage rates by record amount to help struggling property sector

Published: Feb. 20, 2024 at 2:55 a.m. ET China made its biggest ever cut to mortgage rates on Tuesday, as the authorities try to support the struggling property sector, though the response from stock markets was muted. The People’s Bank of China said that the country’s lenders would reduce their five-year loan prime rate (LPR)

Read More
Investors

Investors will have to wait awhile for interest-rate cuts, Fed’s Bostic says

Investors will have to wait until at least July for those widely expected interest-rate cuts, according to one Federal Reserve president’s outlook. Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic said rate cuts probably wouldn’t be suitable until the third quarter given the current strength of the economy.  That’s a quarter earlier than he originally predicted, Bostic said,

Read More
Investors

Here’s what investors expect as Indonesia goes to the polls

Indonesia will go the polls on Wednesday to elect a new president to replace Joko Widodo. The vote’s importance should not be underestimated. Covering 17,000 islands across South East Asia and Oceania — including Java and Sumatra — the republic has important geopolitical and global economic clout.  With about 280 million inhabitants, encompassing an estimated

Read More
Investors

This is the mistake investors are making in thinking about a second Trump term, says UBS strategists

Published: Jan. 24, 2024 at 8:20 a.m. ET Donald Trump, the Republican former president, has won the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary and is leading Nikki Haley by a substantial margin in South Carolina, where she was governor from 2011 to 2017. So it’s highly likely that Trump will be the Republican presidential

Read More
Loans

States expand low-interest loan programs for farms, businesses and new housing

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — On the first business day of the new year, Missouri Treasurer Vivek Malek began accepting applications for about $120 million of state-subsidized, low-interest loans to small businesses, farmers and affordable housing developers. Within six hours, Malek had so many requests for the money that he had to cut off applications.

Read More
Investors

Taiwan’s elections: Here’s what investors should watch

This Saturday, Taiwan will head to the polls, in elections that will be closely watched by investors, due to the self-governing territory’s outsized role in the global economy as the biggest semiconductor manufacturer in the world.  For voters, the choice between the three candidates – representing the center-left Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the center right

Read More
Finance

Resilient economy energizes investors, as financial markets end 2023 up 24%

NEW YORK (AP) — The S&P 500 closed out 2023 with a gain of more than 24% and the Dow finished near a record high, as easing inflation, a resilient economy and the prospect of lower interest rates buoyed investors, particularly in the last two months of the year. Stocks closed Friday with modest losses.

Read More