On Sunday April 3, documents from a Panama-based firm, Mossack Fonseca, were leaked in what is being called the biggest leak of confidential information ever. The leak amounts to approximately 11.5 million documents or 2.6 terabytes’ worth of data. The leaked documents reveal corruption and shady business dealings of politicians, world leaders, and celebrities. The leak exposes how major banks, law firms, and asset management companies manage the wealth of the world’s most powerful people.
globalEDGE Blog - By Author: Carson Jones
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Iran, OPEC’s number 3 crude oil producer, is expected to raise its oil exports to around 1.65 million barrels per day in March. Previously, Iran was exporting about 1.5 million barrels per day. With the rise in exports, the state-run National Iranian Oil Company plans to increase shipments to several countries throughout Europe. The National Iranian Oil Co. is expected to ship around 250,000-300,000 barrels per day to Europe beginning on March 1. France is contracted to receive about 200,000 barrels per day, while Spain is set to receive about 35,000 barrels per day. Russia and Greece are also expected to receive shipments from Iran.
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The World Bank, an international lender to many developing nations, recently released its quarterly Commodity Markets Outlook. In the report, that includes projections for the rest of 2016, the agency lowered its forecasts for most global commodities. The bank warns that an oversupply of commodities, which caused prices to fall in 2015, will continue into and throughout 2016.
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On Tuesday, The U.S. House of Representatives voted almost unanimously to pass legislation that would broaden sanctions on North Korea. This bill comes after North Korea announced last Wednesday that they had successfully completed a hydrogen bomb nuclear test. The bill proposes stronger sanctions that would deny North Korea the money that it needs for developing nuclear warheads, long-range missiles, and for paying its army and police forces. It will also use financial and economic pressure to keep North Korea away from maintaining the assets that they hold in foreign banks.
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The ever-changing oil industry is currently facing a downturn, as the price of oil per barrel has been cut roughly in half since June 2014, the lowest since the economic recession in 2009. Over the last decade, oil prices were normally around $90 or $100 per barrel. On Tuesday, the international standard of Brent crude oil was trading at around $46 per barrel while American oil was trading at around $43 per barrel.
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A month ago, I wrote about how the Volkswagen Emissions Crisis could affect the German Economy. Recently in Australia, Bannister Law filed two class action lawsuits in federal court on behalf of Australian citizens who purchased the defective Volkswagen vehicles. More than 100,000 cars in Australia had been sold with software that manipulated pollution controls.
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Volkswagen, one of the world's largest automobile makers, was recently exposed as having cheated on diesel emissions tests as far back as 2009. The Environmental Protection Agency said that Volkswagen could face penalties of up to $18 billion for their wrongdoings. Potentially worse is the fall out from a class-action lawsuit, as anyone who bought one of the affected cars now owns a vehicle that is illegal to drive in the United States. Along with severe repercussions to Volkswagen itself, there could also be difficulties that the German economy faces.
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A year into her second term as the President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff faces an economic crisis in a country that was once a rising star on the global stage. On Wednesday, Standard & Poor’s downgraded Brazil’s credit rating to junk status causing a sell off of Brazilian financial assets. Political leaders in Brazil were quick to cast the blame for this crisis on slumping markets such as China, however this crisis was more self-inflicted than anything else.