With economy reeling, Hong Kong to give big cash handouts to 7 mn residents

The cash handout alone will cost HK$71 billion but officials hope consumers will plough much of the money back into local businesses

International News: Hong Kong’s legislature on Wednesday said it will give a HK$10,000 ($1,280) gift to 7,000,000 changeless inhabitants in an offer to kick off a downturn hit economy presently intensified by the coronavirus episode. Monetary Secretary Paul Chan revealed the money blessing in a yearly spending plan, submitting $120 billion to help mitigate the most noticeably terrible monetary midtown the global budgetary center point has looked in 10 years.

Hong Kong brags huge financial saves more than HK$1 trillion developed over the blast years, a store that the administration is presently taking advantage of. The money gift alone will cost HK$71 billion however authorities trust buyers will furrow a great part of the cash over into neighborhood organizations. “Utilizing financial stores to help endeavors and alleviate individuals’ hardship is surely in accordance with our kin’s desires,” he said.

Hong Kong’s economy is reeling from the US-China exchange war, long periods of genius majority rules system fights a year ago and now the coronavirus: a triple whammy Chan portrayed as “uncommonly somber”.Different estimates declared in the financial backing included benefits and pay tax cuts just as low intrigue credits for organizations battling to pay staff compensation. The traveler, café and retail areas have been hit particularly hard with insolvencies taking off and generally low joblessness rising…

Here’s why Japan boasts the world’s most powerful force of retail traders

About 85 per cent of traders are men, mostly in their 30s, 40s and 50s, according to estimates from Gaitame

Popular tales of “Mrs Watanabe” — the canny Tokyo housewife who dabbles in currency trading in between school runs and shopping — barely begin to tell the story of Japan’s retail traders in the foreign exchange market.

With almost 800,000 active forex accounts, Japan boasts the world’s most powerful force of retail traders. It has doubled in size in little more than a decade and spurred some of the most dramatic price moves of recent times, including the January “flash crash” that hammered the dollar and sent the yen soaring.

Contrary to the enchanting notion of “Mrs Watanabe,” most of the traders are middle-age men, who’ve been driven into the market by years of ultra-low interest rates. They toil in offices by day and trudge home to moonlight in foreign exchange, hoping to build a family nest egg in a country where banks pay savers next to nothing.

“A lot of individual investors don’t realize that they’re doing something extraordinary,” says Yasushi Takagi, a 44-year-old financial writer who started forex trading in his early 30s to supplement his earnings. “They bet heavily on high-yielding currencies like the Turkish lira, the Mexican peso and the South African rand, while many players outside of Japan wouldn’t touch them.”

US removes India from its currency monitoring list; China, Japan stay

India maintains ample reserves according to the IMF metrics for reserve adequacy

The Trump organization on Tuesday expelled India from its cash observing rundown of significant exchanging accomplices, refering to specific improvements and steps being taken by New Delhi which address a portion of its real concerns. Switzerland is the other country that has been expelled by the US from its cash checking list which among others incorporate China, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam.

“India has been expelled from the checking list in this report, having met just one out of three criteria – a huge two-sided surplus with the US – for two back to back reports,” the Treasury Department said in its most recent semi-yearly report on macro economic and remote trade approaches of real exchanging accomplices of the US sent to the Congress.

In the wake of buying remote trade on net in 2017, the national bank relentlessly sold stores for the greater part of 2018, with net offers of outside trade achieving 1.7 percent of GDP throughout the year, it said. India keeps up adequate stores as indicated by the IMF measurements for hold sufficiency, it said. In both Switzerland and India, there was an outstanding decrease in 2018 in the scale and recurrence of remote trade buys, the report said.

“Neither Switzerland nor India met the criteria for having occupied with persevering, uneven mediation in either the October 2018 report or this report. Both Switzerland and India have been expelled from the observing rundown,” the Treasury said in its report running into more than 40 pages…

Facebook’s cryptocurrency Facecoin: Why you should be sceptical

Like many other companies, Facebook is exploring ways to leverage the power of blockchain technology

Facebook is reportedly preparing to launch its own version of Bitcoin, for use in its messaging applications, WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram. Could this “Facecoin” be the long-awaited breakthrough by a global technology giant into the lucrative market for retail financial services? Or will it be yet another exaggerated “crypto” project, buying into the continuing excitement about decentralised peer-to-peer exchange but, in the end, not delivering very much? Time will tell, but my two decades of research into the economics of payments makes me sceptical.

We know little about Facebook’s plans. So far there is just one company statement about a new group set up to look into cryptocurrencies reported by Bloomberg: “Like many other companies, Facebook is exploring ways to leverage the power of blockchain technology. This new small team is exploring many different applications. We don’t have anything further to share”…(Read More)

Reasons to be sceptical

While this is a fascinating development, some scepticism is in order. If there is one common feature to the many hundreds of crypto and blockchain finance projects announced over the past four years, it is exaggerated early claims.

In one ongoing research project, I have found that of 103 projects announced since 2015 applying so-called blockchain technologies to financial services, all but a handful have quietly disappeared. None have yet been taken through to commercial-scale launch (although around half a dozen may achieve that by 2021)...(Read More)

Explained: Why poorer nations can’t just print more money and become rich

When Zimbabwe was hit by hyperinflation, in 2008, prices rose as much as 231,000,000% in a single year

Economy News: Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages, where The Conversation asks experts to answer questions from kids. All questions are welcome: find out how to enter at the bottom of this article.

Why don’t poorer countries just print more money? – Clementine, age 12, London, UK

Thanks for the question, Clementine. When a whole country tries to get richer by printing more money, it rarely works. Because if everyone has more money, prices go up instead. And people find they need more and more money to buy the same amount of goods. (Click Here: Business Standard OR BS)

This happened recently in Zimbabwe, in Africa, and in Venezuela, in South America, when these countries printed more money to try to make their economies grow. As the printing presses sped up, prices rose faster, until these countries started to suffer from something called “hyperinflation”. That’s when prices rise by an amazing amount in a year.

When Zimbabwe was hit by hyperinflation, in 2008, prices rose as much as 231,000,000% in a single year. Imagine, a sweet which cost one Zimbabwe dollar before the inflation would have cost 231m Zimbabwean dollars a year later….Read Full Story

Rupee slumps to 71-mark first time ever, drops 26 paise against US dollar

Forex dealers said besides robust month-end demand for the American currency from oil importers, dollar's strength against its rival currencies on expectations of rising interest rates amid lingering

The rupee slumped to a fresh record low of 71 against the dollar for the first time ever by falling 26 paise on persistent demand for the US currency amid rising crude prices.

At the Interbank Foreign Exchange (Forex) market, the local currency opened lower at 70.95 a dollar and slipped further to hit its lifetime low of 71 from its previous close of 70.74.

Forex dealers said besides robust month-end demand for the American currency from oil importers, dollar's strength against its rival currencies on expectations of rising interest rates amid lingering Sino-US trade tensions, weighed on the domestic currency.

On Thursday, the rupee slid further by 15 paise to close at a fresh lifetime low of 70.74 to the dollar due to strong demand for the greenback from oil importers and surging crude oil prices stoking inflation fears.

Growing fears about rising inflation in amid high global crude oil prices and consistent outflow of foreign funds from the domestic equity market also weighed on the domestic currency.

Read More : BS

99.3% of demonetised notes are back; Rs 15.31 trillion returned, says RBI

500- and 1000-rupee notes worth Rs 15.41 trillion were demonetised

Demonetisation : As many as 99.3 per cent of the old 500 and 1,000 rupee notes, that was banned overnight in November 2016, have been returned, the Reserve Bank of India said in its annual report.

Of the Rs 15.41 trillion worth 500 and 1,000 rupee notes in circulation before November 8, 2016, notes worth Rs 15.31 trillion have been returned.

The "humungous task of processing and verification of specified bank notes (SBNs) was successfully achieved," it said.

The SBNs received were verified, counted and processed in the sophisticated high-speed currency verification and processing system (CVPS) for accuracy and genuineness and then shredded, it added.

SBNs refer to the demonetised old 500 and 1,000 rupee.

RBI said the processing of SBNs has since been completed. "The total SBNs returned from circulation is Rs 15,310.73 billion".

News Source : BS

England, Israel now planning bitcoin-like currency but can it replace cash?

This could help lure people back into using an official system that combines some of the benefits of both traditional and cryptocurrencies

market: Governments are extremely worried about cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. These virtual currencies mean you can make payments without involving the banks that most economies and government financial models are built on. People can transfer large amounts of money without the authorities knowing, potentially making it easier to evade tax or launder money.

So several countries’ central banks, including the Bank of England and the Bank of Israel, are reportedly planning to launch their own digital currencies. This could help lure people back into using an official system that combines some of the benefits of both traditional and cryptocurrencies. But the risks involved may be too great for many typical cash users to bear.

One of the major drawbacks of existing cryptocurrencies is that their value tends to swing widely and it is often difficult to pinpoint how much they are really worth. National cryptocurrencies would be tied to the value of the country’s official currency, making them less volatile and easier to actually use as a way of spending.

National cryptocurrencies would also make payments much faster because transactions would be recorded instantly and wouldn’t have to be cleared by a bank (although some implementations require around eight minutes to be verified). The existing systems for electronic payments and transfers can often involve several banks and companies sending each other data and running security checks that add time and expense to transactions. Cryptocurrencies are able to bypass this clearing process altogether because they don’t actually involve transfers from one entity to another...

Read more :  Bitcoin 

Bitcoin tumbles as PBOC declares initial coin offerings illegal

Bitcoin tumbled as much as 11.%, the most since July, to $4,326.75

Bitcoin tumbled the most since July after China’s central bank said initial coin offerings are illegal and asked all related fundraising activity to be halted immediately, issuing the strongest regulatory challenge so far to the burgeoning market for digital token sales.

The People’s Bank of China said on its website Monday that it had completed investigations into ICOs, and will strictly punish offerings in the future while penalising legal violations in ones already completed. The regulator said that those who have already raised money must provide refunds, though it didn’t specify how the money would be paid back to investors.

It also said digital token financing and trading platforms are prohibited from doing conversions of coins with fiat currencies. Digital tokens can’t be used as currency on the market and banks are forbidden from offering services to initial coin offerings.

“This is somewhat in step with, maybe not to the same extent, what we’re starting to see in other jurisdictions —the short story is we all know regulations are coming,” said Jehan Chu, managing partner at Kenetic Capital in Hong Kong, which invests in and advises on token sales. “China, due to its size and as one of the most speculative IPO markets, needed to take a firmer action.”

Bitcoin tumbled as much as 11.4 percent, the most since July, to $4,326.75. The ethereum cryptocurrency was down more than 16 per cent Monday, according to data from Coindesk.

ICOs are digital token sales that have seen unchecked growth over the past year, raising $1.6 billion. They have been deemed a threat to China’s financial market stability as authorities struggle to tame financing channels that sprawl beyond the traditional banking system.

Reasons why RBI is introducing Rs 200 notes

The decision to introduce the new note was taken by RBI board in March

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will issue Rs 200 notes soon, possibly at the end of August itself, filling the missing link between Rs 100 and Rs 500, and thus facilitating ease of exchange for common public.

The finance ministry on Wednesday notified the introduction of the new notes. The decision to introduce the new Rs 200 note was taken by RBI board in March.

Introduction of currency notes is done by any central bank based on an assessment of inflation, economic growth, replacement of soiled banknotes, reserve stock requirements, needing to combat counterfeiting but most importantly, to facilitate ease of transactions for the common man.

The optimal system of denominations of currency is worked out on the basis of minimising the number of denominations needed for offering the exact change. There are actually some renowned international research works behind determining the optimal mix of currency notes.(read more)

Why no category for those who couldn't exchange notes by Dec 30, asks SC

Of Rs 15.4 lakh cr worth of currency that was banned, Rs 14 lakh cr has been deposited or exchanged

 

LATEST| The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Centre why it chose not to create a separate category for those who couldn't deposit demonetised notes by December 30, 2016 unlike the NRIs and people who were abroad.

A bench headed by Chief Justice J S Khehar said that the Prime Minister, in his November 8 address, had said that those with valid reasons could deposit the demonetised currency even after December 30, 2016, till March 31, 2017.

"Prime Minister in his address had said that people with genuine difficulties can deposit the demonetised currency even after December 30, 2016, till March 31, 2017 with the RBI branches.Give us the reasons why despite having powers under the law, you did not create a category for those people who couldn't deposit the demonetised notes before December 30, 2016" the bench said.

The apex court bench also comprising Justices D Y Chandrachud and S K Kaul said that the PM's address had given hope that those in difficulty would get a chance, till March 31, 2017, after giving valid reasons.

It also said that the government should file an affidavit by April 11 explaining the reason why the window was not created for the people having difficulty and the chance was only given to NRIs and the citizens who travelled abroad.

The SC also asked the Centre whether it intends to give a chance to those category of..... |Read More