Petition maintains that tax agreement with Airbnb should have been subject to a public rulemaking process as required under the state’s Administrative Procedures Act.
Petition asserts that the state’s tax agreement prohibits the state and dozens of local governments from obtaining detailed information that is necessary to verify accurate tax collection.
These taxes collected are designed to fund state, county, and city services such as mass-transit facilities, health care services to indigent populations, and land purchases for conservation and recreation. Hotels must pay these taxes and are subject to robust audits.
The Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA) has filed a petition challenging the Florida Department of Revenue’s voluntary tax collection agreement (VCA) with Airbnb. The challenge alleges the VCA was adopted without following the proper rule-making process, and the Department lacked the legislative authority to enter into the agreement.
The petition, filed February 26 with the Division of Administrative Hearings, maintains that the VCA with Airbnb (adopted in 2015) should have been subject to a public rulemaking process as required under the state’s Administrative Procedures Act.
“Airbnb negotiated its secretive agreement with the state of Florida behind closed doors with no opportunity for public input and zero transparency,” said Rachel Humphrey, interim president and CEO of AAHOA, which counts approximately 1,100 hoteliers in Florida among its members. “While traditional lodging providers adhere to strict tax collection and remittance laws, the VCA essentially allows Airbnb to operate under their own honor system with no way to verify whether they are collecting and remitting all applicable taxes. Airbnb and other short-term rentals should be held to the same standard as law-abiding lodging businesses in Florida.”
Airbnb’s VCA prohibits the state and dozens of local governments from obtaining the detailed information that is necessary to verify accurate tax collection. This means Florida taxpayers and government agencies have no way to ensure that Airbnb is paying what it truly owes.
“Online lodging marketplaces operating in our state can benefit the economy, but the appropriate short-term rental tax system would require these online marketplaces to collect and remit all applicable hotel and lodging taxes in a fair and transparent fashion,” said Brewster Bevis of Associated Industries of Florida. “Taxes are not ‘voluntary,’ and all similarly situated businesses should follow the same collection rules. How much in state and local tax revenue is potentially being lost because of this lack of transparency and accountability?”
Transient rental taxes should be collected on all short-term lodging accommodations in Florida. These taxes collected are designed to fund a wide-range of state, county, and city services such as mass-transit facilities, health care services to indigent populations, and land purchases for conservation and recreation. Hotels must pay these taxes and are subject to robust audits by the Department. Under the VCA, Airbnb is not subject to the same rules.
Airbnb’s VCA with Florida requires that any government audit must be done using anonymous user data and prevents state and local tax agencies from sharing information. This makes it impossible to identify owners of illegal rental listings or rentals that are not complying with existing regulatory laws. It also only calls for aggregate data on gross rent and tax due to be reported to state and local governments, which is not enough to ensure they are collecting all applicable taxes.
The VCA also allows Airbnb to withhold information necessary to enforce regulatory and business licensing rules on short-term rental properties booked via Airbnb.
A Bloomberg report recently concluded that VCAs create a system lacking in certainty and stability for governments because they can be terminated at any time and lack transparency – making proper oversight from tax officials “difficult, if not impossible.”
“The state’s current tax agreement allows Airbnb to effectively operate under its own honor system, as do similar tax agreements at the local level,” said Anne Gannon, Palm Beach County Tax Collector. “Florida’s taxpayers and communities are potentially being shortchanged if these short-term rental marketplaces are not collecting and remitting the full amount of taxes owed. There is no public benefit to letting them avoid paying taxes that are dedicated for important local uses, such as health care to underserved populations, trauma care services, and community recreation and conservation.”
AAHOA is the largest hotel owners association in the world. The over 18,500 AAHOA members own almost one in every two hotels in the United States. With billions of dollars in property assets and hundreds of thousands of employees, AAHOA members are core economic contributors in virtually every community. AAHOA is a proud defender of free enterprise and the foremost current-day example of realizing the American dream.
A user asked, “Do you think being a billionaire has made you a happier person than if you were just a middle class person?” The Microsoft co-founder responded: “Yes. I don’t have to think about health costs or college costs. Being free from worry about financial things is a real blessing.”
He added, though, that “of course, you don’t need a billion to get to that point. We do need to reduce the cost growth in these areas” — health care and education — “so they are accessible to everyone.” Both are systems in which he and his wife Melinda have invested billions and which they are determined to help improve.
“The rich see money as a positive tool that has the power to create freedom and opportunity for themselves and their families,” Siebold writes in “How Rich People Think.” After all, “if you have a problem, and you can make it disappear by writing a check, you don’t have a problem.”
Accepting that money can create options is a key reason the rich continue to generate more wealth, he says: “While the world class sees money as a critical resource that opens up endless possibilities, the middle class is demonizing it and denying its importance.”
“Being free from worry about financial things is a real blessing.” -Bill Gates
That’s why Siebold advises changing your mindset: “Start telling yourself on a daily basis that money is your friend and a positive force in your life, and your mind will go to work to help you acquire more.”
Still, Gates also says there’s more to happiness than your bank balance. When asked later during the Reddit AMA about what makes him happy, he replied: “Some recently said that when your children are doing well it really is very special, and as a parent I completely agree.”
And, he added, “sometimes following through on commitments to yourself like doing more exercise also improves your happiness.”
As Social Security’s funding problems loom ever closer on the horizon, the program has emerged as a pet project on many lawmakers’ fix-it list. Now in control of the House, Democrats have thrown their weight behind a measure that would extend and expand the program — largely by asking high earners to pony up, along with a gradual increase in the Social Security tax rate that applies to workers’ income.
“Democrats have agreed that we should expand, not cut, Social Security and have the wealthy pay their share,” said Nancy Altman, president of advocacy group Social Security Works.
Due to a variety of factors — including an aging demographic, longer life spans, lower birth rates and the widening income gap — the Social Security Trustees 2018 report projects that beneficiaries will see a 21 percent cut in benefits by 2034 unless Congress takes action to prevent the funding shortfall. The Congressional Budget Office’s estimate is more dire, pegging the year at 2031.
More than 200 lawmakers, all Democrats, have signed onto the Social Security 2100 Act in the House. Introduced by Rep. John Larson, D-Connecticut, the bill would require that earnings above $400,000 be subject to the payroll tax that funds the program.
Currently, earnings above a certain level — $132,900 for 2019 — are not subject to Social Security taxation. This means someone who makes $132,900 pays the same amount into the program as someone earning, say, $1 million.
A CBO report released in December shows that because earnings for the highest-paid workers have grown faster than the average wage, about 83 percent of earnings fell below the Social Security’s taxable wage cap in 2016, down from 90 percent in 1983.
“When Congress enacted Social Security changes in 1983, no one anticipated the income stagnation,” Altman said.
The bill also would gradually increase the payroll contribution by workers and employers to 7.4 percent each by 2043 from 6.2 percent (to 14.8 percent altogether from the current 12.4 percent).
Social Security recipients also would benefit, getting an increase of about 2 percent of average benefits. And, the yearly cost-of-living adjustment — called COLA — would use a different formula to determine annual bumps intended to more accurately reflects rising costs for older Americans.
Additionally, the bill also would create a new minimum benefit set at 125 percent of the poverty line and take other steps to ease financial pressure on retirees, including doubling the amount of Social Security income that isn’t subject to taxation.
The end result would be extended solvency for the program for 75 years, according to Social Security’s Office of the Chief Actuary.
A recent poll conducted by The Senior Citizens League of its members explored what they thought the new Congress should focus on. Boosting Social Security benefits was cited by 42 percent, followed by reducing taxation of those benefits at 31 percent (reducing prescription drug prices came in third, at 18 percent).
“I think there’s a growing sense that something needs to be done,” said Mary Johnson, Social Security and Medicare policy analyst for the league. “It can take time to get legislation with many moving parts up and running, so you need to allow time to phase in changes.”
However, congressional Republicans typically have balked at the idea of expanding the program due to the associated higher taxes that would come with it, and past GOP proposals have advocated reducing benefits as a way to ease the program’s financial woes.
And, not everyone supports a program expansion. “Expanding benefits could help low-income retirees, but middle and high-income workers would likely reduce their personal savings in response to higher expected Social Security benefits,” said Andrew Biggs a resident scholar of the American Enterprise Institute, according to written testimony presented at recent congressional hearing about retirement security. Biggs was a deputy commissioner of Social Security under President George W. Bush.
Biggs also said that while tax increases would eliminate shortfalls, higher taxes could increase borrowing and debt by low-income workers and reduce work and encourage tax evasion by higher earners, according to his written testimony.
While it’s not certain whether Larson’s bill would be able to clear the House in its present form anyway, a Democrat-controlled House bodes well that it could progress.
However, as with most major pieces of legislation, it could go through various iterations before facing approval or rejection by the full House. And even if it made it through, the measure would also need approval from the Republican-dominated Senate, where priorities could be much different. “If it gets through the House, and then goes to the Senate and doesn’t get brought up for debate or a vote, it’s going to be a 2020 election campaign issue,” Altman said.
The measure, which would expand benefits for current and future recipients, would extend the program’s solvency for 75 years, according to Social Security’s Office of the Chief Actuary.
To help fund the proposed changes, earnings above $400,000 would be subject to Social Security taxes. In 2019, earnings above $132,900 are not subject to the levy.
The payroll tax also would gradually rise to 14.8 percent from the current 12.4 percent by 2043, with workers and their employers splitting that tax as they already do.
Two Bills introduced on February 7th simultaneously in the US Senate and the House proposing to end per-country limits on employment-based green cards, a long-standing demand of advocacy groups of high-tech workers from India, has given rise to hope among hundreds of thousands green card applicants.
The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act Bill also increases the per-country caps for family-sponsored green cards from 7 percent to 15 percent. Without adding any new green cards, S. 386 creates a “first-come, first-served” system that alleviates the backlogs and allows green cards to be awarded more efficiently, the senators said in a press statement.
Sens. Kamala Harris (D-CA) who has announced candidacy for 2020 presidential election and Mike Lee (R-UT), introduced the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act that would also adjust per-country limits for family-based green cards.
An identical bill was tabled in the House of Representatives by Congressmaen Zoe Lofgren and Ken Buck, Chair and Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship, with co-sponsorship of a bipartisan group of 112 members of Congress.
“Ours is a nation of immigrants, and our strength has always come from our diversity and our unity,” Sen. Harris said in a statement. “We must do more to eliminate discriminatory backlogs and facilitate family unity so that high-skilled immigrants are not vulnerable to exploitation and can stay in the U.S. and continue to contribute to the economy. I’m proud to join with Sen. Lee on this bipartisan legislation to ensure that our country remains vibrant and dynamic,” she said.
News reports said the bill has broad bipartisan support and is additionally cosponsored by Sens. Roy Blunt (R-MO), Susan Collins (R-ME), Jim Moran (R-KS) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Michael Bennet (D-CO), among others.
The bill has also been endorsed by Immigration Voice, Compete America Coalition, the Information Technology Industry Council, Google, Microsoft, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, The Heritage Foundation, La Raza, and many others.
“There is consensus that reforms to fix the nation’s immigration laws for high-skilled workers are long overdue,” said Andy Halataei, ITI Senior Vice President of Government Affairs.
“The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act would allow U.S. employers to attract and retain the world’s best and highly-educated employees, enabling highly-skilled workers who are committed to the United States to propel American innovation, grow the economy, and help create jobs in America. This bill will help maintain U.S. competitiveness as a nation,” it said.
A looming 1 March deadline to prevent another round of escalating tariffs between the United States and China is more fraught than typical trade disputes. If that wasn’t already clear to observers, U.S. President Donald Trump made it abundantly so during his State of the Union address on 5 February.
Trump said any trade deal with China “must include real, structural change to end unfair trade practices, reduce our chronic trade deficit and protect American jobs.”
It remains to be seen how palatable such changes might be to China’s government following two days of talks in Washington, D.C., on 30-31 January between U.S. and Chinese negotiators. Those talks reportedly produced little progress, though China did end the talks with “soybean diplomacy” — a promise to buy an additional 5 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans.
On the other hand, China has already signaled its intention to retaliate with new tariffs once the 90-day trade truce between the two countries negotiated by Trump and China President Xi Jinping expires on 2 March, if the U.S. moves ahead with stated plans for a massive round of tariff increases on Chinese imports.
The stakes are high as United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin traveled to China in mid-February to continue talks.
To help understand the underlying issues of the trade dispute and what could happen to the two nations’ economies if a trade war escalates, Dr. Ha Jiming, economist and former vice chairman and chief investment strategist at Goldman Sachs in China, recently spoke to the University of Virginia Darden School of Business chapter of the Adam Smith Society. He focused on what would happen when the tariffs were raised and which countries could advance as a result of the conflict.
ECONOMIC IMPACTS: THE VICIOUS CYLE OF TARIFFS
The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has promised a tariff rate increase from 10 percent to 25 percent on $200 billion worth of Chinese products on 2 March, which comes in addition to a 25 percent tariff already placed on $50 billion of goods such as vehicles and semiconductors last summer. The U.S. government said it would impose the tariffs as part of its “continuing response to China’s theft of American intellectual property and forced transfer of American technology,” and to reduce its trade deficit with China and bring jobs back from overseas.
Ha predicted a 25 percent tariff would lead to an overall 0.1 percent decrease in China’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth. While this would cause some problems for the world’s economy, Ha said, he predicted a more negative outcome if the tariffs encouraged China to retaliate with additional tariffs — perhaps up to a 1 percent decline in China’s GDP. When the USTR announced the tariff increase on the $200 billion of Chinese products in September, China quickly announced it would raise tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. goods, once the new U.S. tariffs were enacted.
If the trade war deepens, Ha said the Chinese government could depreciate its currency and the U.S. dollar would become stronger, making the exports of U.S. goods more expensive, which could neutralize the U.S. goal to close the trade gap. Changes in the value of the currencies of the world’s two largest economies could potentially exert significant pressure on both the Chinese and U.S. stock markets. Darden Professor Robert F. Bruner predicted a similar potential for a currency-driven shock in a recent Darden Ideas to Action article on threats to the U.S. economy.
Ha said China and the U.S. will likely try to limit dependence on the other, in the event of a full-blown trade war. The World Trade Organization indicates that the U.S. is the largest importer, having imported physical goods totaling $2.4 trillion in 2017 compared to $1.8 trillion for China. But what is the U.S. importing and who are the major contributors?
Ha cited data from the UN Comtrade international statistics database from 2016, which indicate the top products imported to the U.S. were electrical equipment, mechanical equipment, furniture, clothing, toys, cars and accessories, plastics, and footwear. China is a leading exporter in all of those categories except cars and accessories, Ha said.
While Trump has said his intent with the tariffs is to relocate industries back to the U.S., Ha said he was not so sure the measures would result in that outcome. Ha believes there could be a relocation of the supply chain, but industries would likely relocate to another export leader such as Mexico.
SURVEYING THE LANDSCAPE FOR CLUES AND VULNERABILITY
Professor Dennis Yang, academic director of Darden’s Asia Initiative, has conducted research into the U.S.-China trade relationship, including current and potential impacts of the ongoing trade dispute. He identified several factors that shed light on the consequences of the tariffs and on areas in which each nation has leverage in negotiations:
Amid the ongoing trade negotiations, there has been significant weakening of the Chinese economy with lowered GDP growth and increasing corporate borrowings. The 6.4 percent year-over-year growth rate in China in the fourth quarter of 2018 was the lowest since the global financial crisis. For the full year, China’s economy only expanded 6.6 percent, the slowest pace since 1990.
Adverse global macroeconomic conditions have begun to influence corporate earnings in the U.S., affecting a wide range of industries.
Apple and many of its suppliers recently cut sales forecasts, citing weak China demand and the uncertainty surrounding trade talks between Washington and Beijing. Deteriorating macroeconomic conditions, particularly in China, also impacted companies like heavy equipment producer Caterpillar and NVIDIA, where consumer demand for gaming graphics processing units slowed.
Based on research by Chinese University of Hong Kong economics professor Sheng Liugang and GF Securities senior economist Zhao Hongyan, with summaries published in the Financial Times, foreign-owned firms in China will bear much of the tariff burden. If the U.S. imposes its planned 25 percent tariffs on 2 March, 47 percent of the burden will be borne by Chinese private companies, while 32 percent of the burden will be borne by foreign companies, including many U.S. companies operating in China.
WHICH ISSUES ARE KEY TO A DEAL?
After analyzing the vulnerabilities of each economy and potential economic implications of a trade war escalation following 2 March, Yang predicted several core issues must be resolved for a successful U.S.-China trade deal to be reached.
“On the surface, the central issue of the negotiation is the trade gap,” Yang said. “But the real core of the issue is intellectual rights protection, China’s state-sponsored industrial policies, and fairness and competition in technological advancement.”
The arrest in Canada and attempted U.S. extradition of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou highlights the issue. Yang said the arrest was seemingly independent of the trade negotiations, but both aim at resolving issues related to intellectual property and future strategic competition in tech.
Regarding the trade gap, China’s offer to buy more U.S. soybeans provides the basis for a trade deal, but Yang said the more important issue is what agreements can be made on structural reforms.
“It is hard to imagine China can change its industrial policies,” Yang said. “In addition, implementation of certain agreements would be obscure and difficult.”
There is still hope that a trade war between the U.S. and China will not occur, but Ha said he suspects things will get worse before they get better. He believes the two countries are culturally very different and their trade associations have kept their relationship intact. When asked if he thought there was a possibility of military conflict, Ha said it was not a topic to which he could speak, but that global disputes over the South China Sea did not make him optimistic.
About Dennis. T. Yang:
Yang is an expert on China — its labor markets, financial systems and phenomenal growth, which have made it an economic contender. His broader research expertise includes economic development and growth, comparative economic systems, as well as labor and demographic economics in the context of emerging markets. A native of China, Yang has co-edited three books on economic reforms in China and served on the editorial boards of China Economic Review, Comparative Economic Studies, Journal of Demographic Economicsand Pacific Economic Review.
His wide-ranging research covers household behavior, education, savings and investment, wage structure, population policies, trade and labor markets, income distribution, analysis of famines, economic structural transformation and long-term growth.
He has consulted with international organizations such as the World Bank and Hong Kong Monetary Authority, as well as leading businesses such as The Conference Board and McKinsey. He is president of the Association for Comparative Economic Studies, and he was recently elected by the Ministry of Education in China to the Chang Jiang Chair Professorship.
The University of Virginia Darden School of Business delivers the world’s best business education experience to prepare entrepreneurial, global and responsible leaders through its MBA, Ph.D. and Executive Education programs. Darden’s top-ranked faculty is renowned for teaching excellence and advances practical business knowledge through research. Darden was established in 1955 at the University of Virginia, a top public university founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819 in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Deutsche Bank India CEO Ravneet Singh Gill has been named the new MD and CEO of Yes Bank. Ravneet Singh Gill will assume the charge at Yes Bank from March 1. Over 26 years in banking, Gill has spent 21 years with the German bank across portfolios like structured financing, foreign exchange, transaction banking, risk management and private banking.
Deutsche Bank AG of Frankfurt, Germany multinational investment bank and financial services has operation in 58 countries with a large presence in Europe, the Americas and Asia. is the 15th largest bank in the world. It sits on three pillars – the Private & Commercial Bank, the Corporate & Investment Bank (CIB) and Asset Management (DWS). Deutsche is the fifth largest foreign bank in India in terms of number of branches, behind StanChart, HSBC, Citibank and RBS.
Yes Bank Limited is India’s fourth largest private sector bank, founded by Rana Kapoor and Ashok Kapur in 2004. It primarily operates as a corporate bank, with retail banking and asset management as subsidiary functions. As on 31 January 2019, Yes Bank had 1, 150 branches and 1800+ ATMs in India. It had a balance sheet size of Rs. 250,000 crore and Gross NPA of 1.72%, making it the fourth largest private sector bank in India
“The RBI’s decision is a warning shot to the new private sector banks that they can no longer continue to mismanage their operations, that the regulator’s writ reigns supreme and that bank CEOs violate it at their peril,” Hazari noted. “Such a decision, though causing uncertainty for shareholders, reinforces the banking regulator’s credibility as a supervisor.”
In September 2018, The Reserve Bank had asked Kapoor, who is one of the promoters of the city-based lender along with his sister-in-law Bindu Kapur, to leave the office by the end of this month. It has been a troubling year for India’s private sector banks. The latest one to receive a blow is YES Bank, the country’s fourth-largest private lender. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Sept. 19 extended its managing director and CEO Rana Kapoor’s term only till Jan. 31, 2019.
The RBI has asked the private sector lender to find the replacement of MD and CEO Rana Kapoor, whose term ends on January 31, 2019.
On January 9, 2019, YES Bank informed stock exchanges that it has shortlisted the names of potential candidates to succeed Kapoor, who is to demit office by month-end. The bank, however, did not disclose the names of the shortlisted candidates for the top post.
The bank has received Reserve Bank approval for new managing director and chief executive Ravneet Gill. He can join on or before March 1, 2019,” Yes Bank said in a statement.
He will succeed Rana Kapoor, whose term ends on January 31. In 2012, Ravneet Gill had been appointed as the chief executive officer of Deutsche Bank AG in India. He inducted into the bank’s Asia-Pacific executive committee as a member. He had joined Deutsche Bank in 1991 in private wealth management and moved to the corporate bank in 1993.
In 2003, Gill took over as head of corporate banking coverage and held the position till December 2008 when he was appointed head of coverage for global markets.
Mobile technology has spread rapidly around the globe. Today, it is estimated that more than 5 billion people have mobile devices, and over half of these connections are smartphones. But the growth in mobile technology to date has not been equal, either across nations or within them. People in advanced economies are more likely to have mobile phones – smartphones in particular – and are more likely to use the internet and social media than people in emerging economies. For example, a median of 76% across 18 advanced economies surveyed have smartphones, compared with a median of only 45% in emerging economies.
Countries are grouped into two economic categories, “advanced” and “emerging,” based on multiple sources and criteria, including: World Bank income classifications; per capita gross domestic product (PPP); total size of the country’s economy, as measured by GDP; and average GDP growth rate between 2013 and 2017. For more information, see Appendix A.
Smartphone ownership can vary widely by country, even across advanced economies. While around nine-in-ten or more South Koreans, Israelis and Dutch people own smartphones, ownership rates are closer to six-in-ten in other developed nations like Poland, Russia and Greece. In emerging economies, too, smartphone ownership rates vary substantially, from highs of 60% in South Africa and Brazil to just around four-in-ten in Indonesia, Kenya and Nigeria. Among the surveyed countries, ownership is lowest in India, where only 24% report having a smartphone.
Whether in advanced or emerging economies, younger people, those with higher levels of education and those with higher incomes are more likely to be digitally connected.12 Younger people in every country surveyed are much more likely to have smartphones, access the internet and use social media. In all of the advanced economies surveyed, large majorities under the age of 35 own a smartphone. In contrast, smartphone ownership among advanced economies’ older populations varies widely, ranging from just about a quarter of Russians 50 and older to about nine-in-ten older South Koreans.
However, in many of these advanced economies, the age gap in smartphone ownership has been closing since 2015. Two factors may contribute to this narrowing gap: First, those under 35 were already very likely to own smartphones when asked in 2015, presenting a “ceiling” of sorts. Second, the older age group appears to be steadily adopting smartphone technology. For example, nine-in-ten or more Americans ages 34 and under have had a smartphone since 2015, while the ownership rate among the 50-and-older age group has risen from 53% to 67% over the same period.
In most emerging economies, however, patterns of smartphone ownership look quite different. In these countries, ownership rates across all age groups tend to be lower than those seen in advanced economies. For example, while majorities of adults ages 50 and older own smartphones in many advanced economies, in no emerging economy surveyed do smartphone ownership rates among this older group rise above 35%.
Further, in most emerging economies, the age gap in smartphone ownership has been growing in recent years. Although the older age group is more likely to have phones now than they were a few years ago, the rate of adoption has been much faster among the younger age group. In the Philippines, for example, those 34 and under are 47 percentage points more likely to have a smartphone today than those ages 50 and older – compared with a gap of only 23 percentage points in 2015.
Education and income level also play sizable roles when it comes to explaining differences in technological use in most countries. In every country surveyed, better-educated and higher-income people are more likely to use the internet than people with lower levels of education or income. And in nearly every country, the same is true of social media use. The education gaps in emerging economies are especially wide. For example, a majority of Nigerians with a secondary education or more use social media (58%) compared with just 10% of Nigerians with less education, for a gap of 48 percentage points. The education gap in internet use is an even wider 53 points: 65% of more-educated Nigerians use the internet compared with just 12% of those with lower levels of education.
In contrast, gender plays only a limited role in explaining differences in technological use in most countries. Whether in advanced or emerging economies, men and women generally use technology – including smartphones, the internet and social media – at similar rates. For example, the gender gap in smartphone ownership is usually in the mid-single digits, where gaps exist at all. In Japan, for instance, 69% of men own smartphones compared with 63% of women. And, in most countries, men and women have largely obtained smartphones at similar rates in recent years, meaning that the gender gap in usage has remained constant. In Brazil, for example, while 38% of women and 43% of men owned smartphones in 2015, today 57% of women and 63% own them – a nearly identical gap at both points in time.
The notable exception to this pattern is India, where men (34%) are much more likely than women (15%) to own smartphones – a gap of 19 percentage points. And India’s gender gap is growing: Today’s gap is 10 points wider than it was just five years ago (then, 16% of men and 7% of women owned smartphones). These are among the major findings from a Pew Research Center survey conducted among 30,133 people in 27 countries from May 14 to Aug. 12, 2018.
Like publics in other economically advanced countries with a high number and share of immigrants, a majority of Americans support encouraging the immigration of high-skilled people into the United States, according to a new survey of 12 countries by Pew Research Center in spring 2018.1
Roughly eight-in-ten U.S. adults (78%) support encouraging highly skilled people to immigrate and work in the U.S., a percentage that roughly matches or is exceeded by Sweden, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and Australia.
Smaller majorities share this positive view of high-skilled immigration in France, Spain and the Netherlands. Among the countries analyzed, only in Israel (42%) and Italy (35%) do fewer than half back high-skilled immigration.
Across the 12 countries, younger adults, more highly educated adults and adults with higher incomes tend to be more supportive of encouraging highly skilled people to immigrate to their countries – findings that are generally in line with other surveys on attitudes toward immigrants and immigration. (See Appendix B for demographic breakdowns.)
The Pew Research Center survey also reveals that even among people who would like to see overall immigration reduced, half or more in all but the Netherlands, Israel and Italy support encouraging high-skilled immigration.
More than a third of U.S. immigrants are highly educated, ranking the country in middle of similar advanced economies with high immigration
Among surveyed countries, in only two – Canada and Australia – do highly educated immigrants make up the majority of the foreign-born population, based on analysis of 2015 government censuses and labor force surveys.2
In the U.S., just over a third (36%) of immigrants ages 25 and older are college educated, ahead of Spain, Netherlands, France, Germany, Greece and Italy among the 12 countries, but behind the UK, Israel and Sweden.
Moving beyond surveyed countries, the share of the U.S. immigrant population with a college degree still ranks among the middle of 20 economically advanced countries that have 500,000 or more immigrants and populations that are about 10% or more foreign born (see Appendix B for more educational data by country).
It’s important to note that while the share of college-educated immigrants in the U.S. trails those of some other countries, the U.S. is home to the largest number of college-educated immigrants in the world. As of 2015, the U.S. had some 14.7 million immigrants ages 25 and older with a postsecondary diploma or college degree. This is more than three times the number in Canada (4.4 million) and about four times as many as the UK (3.4 million). Other countries with high numbers of college-educated immigrants include Australia (3.0 million), Germany (2.0 million) and France (1.8 million).
Despite trailing some other economically advanced countries, the U.S. immigrant population is better educated than ever, due in part to increased schooling in origin countries and a boost in high-skilled workers arriving from Asia and Africa.
Depending on country or region of origin, U.S. immigrant groups vary in their overall education levels. In 2015, fewer than one-in-ten (9%) Mexican immigrants ages 25 and older – the largest origin immigrant group in the U.S. – are college-educated. By contrast, more than half of immigrants from China (52%) and India (80%), the next two largest origin groups in the U.S., have a postsecondary education. Meanwhile, many sub-Saharan African immigrants in the U.S. are highly educated, often exceeding average education levels in the U.S.
How highly educated immigrants enter and stay in the U.S.
There are several ways for highly educated immigrants to enter the United States. Each year, thousands of highly educated foreigners temporarily work in the U.S. under the federal government’s Optional Practical Training (OPT) program and H-1B visa programs, the two largest sources of temporary, highly educated immigrant workers. Other highly educated immigrants enter or stay in the U.S. as lawful permanent residents, or immigrants with “green cards” (some of whom entered through family reunification visas).
There were nearly 1.5 million foreign graduates of U.S. colleges and universities who obtained authorization to remain and work in the U.S. through the Optional Practical Training between 2004 and 2016. The OPT program was developed to allow foreign students studying in the U.S. under student, or F-1, visas to gain practical work experience after graduating from a U.S. college or university. There are no limits on the number of foreign student graduates that can participate in the program. OPT participants can work between 12 and 36 months after graduation, depending on whether they have a STEM (science, technology, engineering or math) degree.
Between 2004 and 2016, there were about 1.5 million initial approvals in the H-1B visa program, the primary way that companies in the U.S. hire highly educated foreign workers, with most entering the U.S. from abroad. These are temporary visas that are awarded to employers on a first-come, first-served basis, with applications accepted each year beginning in April. H-1B visas are issued for up to six years and are renewable if the H-1B visa holder has a pending permanent residency (green card) application filed.
The U.S. government granted more than 14 million green cards from fiscal years 2004 to 2016 for lawful permanent residence based on a complex system of admission categories and numerical quotas. The majority (66% in fiscal 2017) went to immigrants who are sponsored by family members – either immediate family or other relatives of U.S. citizens – and a further 13% went to refugees or asylum seekers. There is no educational requirement for people applying as a family member of a U.S. citizen or coming into the country as a refugee or asylum seeker. Employment-related categories (including those with employment-based green cards, workers’ family members and those previously sponsored under the H-1B visa program) accounted for 12% of 2017 issued green cards. There is a limit on the number of family-sponsored and employment-based green cards that can be issued to immigrants from any one country in a fiscal year (currently set at no more than 7%). This has contributed to long wait times for certain nationalities, such as Indians or Mexicans, with these potential immigrants waiting for up to 10 years or more for their green cards, depending on the admission category.
Glass is a $20 million-budgeted, self-financed, distribution-only flick that just nabbed a $40.5 million Fri-Sun/$48.06m Fri-Mon debut weekend. Yes, it’s a sequel, it but it’s a sequel to what began as a wholly original genre flick and a sequel to a genuine cult favorite. So, to the extent that this opening feels anything like a disappointment, it’s mostly a matter of potentially unrealistic expectations, concern for long-term grosses and what its critical reception means for the guy above the title. There’s a lot of context to discuss, but for the record, this is a $20m superhero flick that just nabbed a $90m global opening weekend, which is a record global bow for M. Night Shyamalan. Even if it is as frontloaded as Watchmen or Green Lantern, it will make money for all parties.
Universal/Comcast, which distributed Glass in North America, swore that it wouldn’t open any higher than $50 million for the four-day weekend, and they were correct. A $48m launch is close to the projection, and I’d argue that reviews (36% rotten and 5.1/10 on Rotten Tomatoes) and word-of-mouth (a B from Cinemascore) were to blame. There is nothing wrong with how the movie was presented or how it was marketed, other than, like WB’s Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald trailers, it tricked me into thinking the movie would be good. That Glass opened to the same as Split (a $40m Fri-Sun launch in 2017) and Unbreakable ($32m Fri-Sun/$46m Wed-Sun in 2000) shows that perhaps the fan base for both IPs was almost entirely overlapping.
Glass is a combo sequel, existing as 2 Split 2 Unbreakable. The film plays off the twist epilogue from Split which revealed that the James McAvoy/Anya Taylor-Joy thriller took place within the same world as the 2000 Bruce Willis/Samuel L. Jackson cult classic Unbreakable. That film was somewhat divisive 18 years ago, turning off many with its unspoiled “Hey, this is a real-world superhero drama!” reveal just before (2.5 years after Blade and four months after X-Men) the superhero movie sub-genre entered its secondary mainstream phase. Ironically, it suffered a fate not unlike Mystery Men, a pinpoint superhero satire (one very much aimed at the notion of superhero stories as white male power fantasies) that got clobbered by the opening weekend of… The Sixth Sense.
18 years later, superhero movies are all the rage, and Glass (hopefully) represents the culmination of Shyamalan’s recent artistic and commercial comeback which began with The Visit and continued with Split (which snagged a $40 million opening weekend and legged it to $137m domestic and $275m worldwide). It also represents the first wholly original cinematic universe (in at least a few decades) give-or-take Fast and Furious (which became a cinematic universe by accident by being unable to snag both Vin Diesel and Paul Walker for the first two sequels). Come January 18, 2019, Glass will be a big deal to fans of Unbreakable, fans of Glass and folks who just think it looks like an exciting and offbeat fantasy thriller. It’ll benefit from being the first “big” movie since the triple whammy of Aquaman, Bumblebee and Mary Poppins Returns a month prior.
Moreover, and this could be the kicker, it may benefit from a generation of adult moviegoers who grew up with Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs and now have kids who are old enough to tag along. As someone who never gave up on him even during the grim years (2006-2014), I’m beyond thrilled to see my faith (eventually) rewarded as the filmmaker has embraced his destiny (ala Bruce Almighty) as a maker of high-end pulp. It has been even more wonderful to see a generation of young genre filmmakers who grew up on Shyamalan’s early triumphs making their own genre classics (Searching, A Quiet Place, etc.) that retain the empathetic spirit which made everyone cry at the end of The Sixth Sense. Even if this comeback doesn’t stick, that’s a hell of a legacy.
Pre-election measures and promises made by the Narendra Modi government to support farmers, small enterprises and low-income households will derail the country’s fiscal consolidation roadmap, a global rating agency said on Friday.
Moody’s Investors Service, which has already forecast a slippage in fiscal deficit to 3.4 per cent in the current fiscal against the budgeted target of 3.3 per cent, warns of further slippage in the fiscal consolidation roadmap that the country has planned.
Over the past month, the Indian government has announced a range of policies to support the incomes of small enterprises and low-income households, and it is also considering additional steps to support farmers facing financial distress, Moody’s said.
“In the absence of new revenue boosting measures, the policies will collectively make it harder for the government to achieve its fiscal consolidation objectives.
“If implemented, the proposed measures will cause further slippage from India’s fiscal consolidation roadmap, which targets reducing the central government’s deficit to 3.1 per cent and 3.0 per cent of GDP in fiscal 2019-20 and fiscal 2020-21, respectively,” Moody’s said in its report.
Besides, the effort to meet the short-term fiscal objectives through one-off sources of revenue and cuts in capital expenditure would denote low fiscal policy effectiveness, it said and added that the permanent measures would have a long-lasting impact on public finances.
Despite lower-than-planned expenditure, weakening revenue has resulted in the government already exceeding its full year deficit target for fiscal 2018-19, reaching 114 per cent of the budgeted amount from April to November 2018.
It also said the relief and tax cuts in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) will erode the revenue base near term. In January, the GST Council doubled the income tax exemption limit for firms to Rs 40 lakh in annual revenue and adjusted turnover limits under the concessionary GST composition scheme.
“The latest changes are due to take effect in April 2019 and follow several cuts to GST rates since their initial implementation in July 2017,” it said.
In December 2018, the government additionally cut sales tax on more than 20 items. The authorities are also considering reducing personal income tax and corporate tax rates to boost incomes and support growth.
“Doing so would further undermine the Central government’s revenue generation capacity,” the rating agency said.
Besides, income from divestment of government assets has been weaker than budgeted in the current fiscal. From April to December 2018, proceeds from divestment only amounted to 42.7 per cent of the Rs 80,000 crore that the government planned to raise, highlighting the challenges in relying on divestment as a sustained source of revenue.
Moody’s warned that while the government could accelerate stake sales in public sector banks and seek special one-off dividend payments or deferments of subsidy payments to government-related entities, including the Reserve Bank of India, to bridge budget shortfalls, the positive impact on India’s government finances would be short lived.
“Achieving deficit reduction through such unpredictable revenue sources denotes weaker fiscal policy effectiveness than if consolidation were achieved through more durable and predictable revenue sources, such as tax revenue,” it added.
Finally, the global credit rating agency said that the proposals to support farmers’ income, who are facing financial difficulties due to low crop prices, will increase government expenditure.
The government is considering a slew of measures to support farmers, including introduction of a new direct income support scheme, a revamped crop insurance scheme and agriculture crop loans at zero interest rates.
Without other expenditure rationalisation, higher subsidy spending on the agricultural sector will increase future fiscal deficits, the report noted.
India is likely to surpass the United Kingdom in the world’s largest economy rankings in 2019, according to a report by global consultancy firm Pricewater Cooper (PwC). As per the report, while the UK and France have regularly switched places owing to similar levels of development and roughly equal populations, India’s climb up the rankings is likely to be permanent.
PwC’s Global Economy Watch report projects real GDP growth of 1.6 % for the UK, 1.7 per cent for France and 7.6 per cent for India in 2019. “India and France are likely to surpass the UK in the world’s largest economy rankings in 2019, knocking it from fifth to seventh place in the global table,” the report said.
According to World Bank data, India became the world’s sixth largest economy in 2017 surpassing France and was likely to go past the UK which stood at the fifth position. PwC’s Global Economy Watch is a short publication that looks at the trends and issues affecting the global economy and details its latest projections for the world’s leading economies.
“India should return to a healthy growth rate of 7.6 % in 2019-20, if there are no major headwinds in the global economy such as enhanced trade tensions or supply side shocks in oil.
“The growth will be supported through further realisation of efficiency gains from the newly adopted GST and policy impetus expected in the first year of a new government,” said Ranen Banerjee, Partner and Leader – Public Finance and Economics, PwC India.
Mike Jakeman, senior economist at PwC, said India is the fastest growing large economy in the world, with an enormous population, favourable demographics and high catch-up potential due to low initial GDP per head.
“The UK and France have regularly alternated in having the larger economy, but subdued growth in the UK in 2018 and again in 2019 is likely to tip the balance in France’s favour. The relative strength of the euro against the pound is an important factor here,” Jakeman said. The global economy as a whole is expected to slow in 2019 as G7 countries return to long-run average growth rates, the PwC report said.
PwC expects that the pick-up in growth of most major economies seen between the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2018 is now over. As per the World Bank data, in 2017, India became the sixth largest economy with a GDP of USD 2.59 trillion, relegating France to the seventh position. The GDP of France stood at USD 2.58 trillion.
The UK, which is facing Brexit blues, had a GDP of USD 2.62 trillion, which is about USD 25 billion more than that of India, the data showed. The US was the world’s largest economy with a size of USD 19.39 trillion, followed by China (USD 12.23 trillion) at the second place in 2017.
Japan (USD 4.87 trillion) and Germany (USD 3.67 trillion) were at the third and fourth places, respectively.
Chicago IL: VIA Voters is a new community group launched with the goal of increasing the civic engagement of Indian-Americans in Chicagoland & nationally. The founding members of the group are prominent business persons and community members Mr Sanjjeev Singh, Dr. Anuja Gupta & Dr Bharat Barai. “We felt there was a need for a Non-Partisan Platform that promoted the civic engagement of the Indian-Americans at the local and national levels” said the founders. The top goals of the group include seeking a better level of engagement with elected officials, creating a more informed voter base and increasing the participation of Indian-Americans in the election process.
The VIA Voters was officially Launched at the Waterford Banquets, Elmhurst IL on Sunday, January 13th 2019. Several community business persons, leaders and the media attended this event. “In our businesses we often need to interact with elected public officials and a big goal for me to initiate such a cause was to seek a better level of engagement with them” said Dr. Anuja Gupta. Dr. Gupta is a physician and real-estate developer of Verandah Retirement Community. She is also an active community leader, having founded the Womens Empowerment Campaign (WE) Chicago a networking & empowerment platform for Indian women in Chicagoland. “Indian-Americans are the most successful minority in the country, yet currently we do not get the attention we deserve from elected officials because there is no significant powerful group” said Mr Sanjjeev Singh, president of ASAR America, Inc. a technology company based in Naperville, IL.
The participation of Indian-Americans in the election process is sadly much below the national average. “As a community we need to be more involved in the voting process. The time has come to engage more seriously in our civic responsibility in keeping with our economic & social success” added Dr. Bharat Barai. Dr. Barai is a practicing Oncologist & president of Prime Partners Inc based in Indiana. Dr. Barai is widely regarded as the pillar of the Indian community and played a prominent role in many high-level community events including the World Hindu Congress, the Federation of Indian Associations among others.
The Leadership Council of the group includes prominent citizens & community leaders of local organizations including Gulzar Singh president Pan Oceanic Inc, Nimish Jani trustee Schaumburg Township, Kanti S Patel president Gujarat Cultural Society, Vidya Joshi secretary Bruhan Mumbai Maharashtra, Syed Hussaini vice-president of commercial loans at Wintrust Bank, Khaja Moinuddin trustee Hanover Township, Ulka Nagarkar member Maharashtra Mandal, Girish Kapur member United Punjabi Association, Shree Guruswamy member Chicago Andhra Association, Vandana Jhingan TV Asia, Keerthi Ravoorie member Indian-American Democrat Org, Savi Singh, Deepti Suri, Dr Rahul Deepankar & Dr Kamal Patel, Sapan Shah, Mr. Gladson Varghese, and Ashfaq Syed. “Being more engaged in the election of public officials is essential to the continued success of our community” said Mr Syed Hussaini. Mr Hussaini also belongs to other boards of Muslim members who are active in the local community.
“As Indians we value certain life-styles of higher education, marriage, family and entrepreneurship. We want to promote those values by electing candidates who represent them” said Mr Sapan Shah, a physician & attorney who recently ran for State Representative from Des Plaines IL. “As a community we can promote the values which led to our success as immigrants to this country” he added. The Leadership Council of the group has 26 active community leaders who feel passionate about the cause.
The group intends to organize seminars & debates of public office candidates to create a more informed voter base, create a national list of Indian-Americans & start local chapters in other cities that have a sizable Indian population like New Jersey, New York, Dallas, Los Angeles. The inaugural event of the group is a reception of the Chicago Mayoral Candidates for the Indian-American community. The event is planned for Sunday February 10th at Taft Highschool in Chicago. The event will be moderated by Mr. Ravi Baichwal, ABC TV Network’s Prime News anchor. Front-running candidates in the Chicago Mayors race have been invited including Toni Preckwinkle, Gery Chico, Garry McCarthy, Susana Mendoza & Paul Vallas. VIA Voters expects 500 guests to attend the event including business persons, community leaders & the media.
Many of the big economic questions in coming decades will come down to just how extreme the weather will be, and how to value the future versus the present. By now, it’s clear that climate change poses environmental risks beyond anything seen in the modern age. But we’re only starting to come to grips with the potential economic effects.
Using increasingly sophisticated modeling, researchers are calculating how each tenth of a degree of global warming is likely to play out in economic terms. Their projections carry large bands of uncertainty, because of the vagaries of human behavior and the remaining questions about how quickly the planet will respond to the buildup of greenhouse gases.
A government report in November raised the prospect that a warmer planet could mean a big hit to G.D.P. in the coming decades.
of the world’s most influential economists called for a tax on carbon emissions in the United States, saying climate change demands “immediate national action.” The last four people to lead the Federal Reserve, 15 former leaders of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and 27 Nobel laureates signed a letter endorsing a gradually rising carbon tax whose proceeds would be distributed to consumers as “carbon dividends.”
The Trump administration has long rejected prescriptions like a carbon tax. But policy debates aside, many of the central economic questions of the decades ahead are, at their core, going to be climate questions. These are some of the big ones.
How permanent will the costs be?
When we think about the economic damage from a hotter planet, it’s important to remember that not all costs are equivalent, even when the dollar values are similar. There is a big difference between costs that are high but manageable versus those that might come with catastrophic events like food shortages and mass refugee crises.
The farmland’s yield decline is a permanent loss of the economy’s productive capacity — society is that much poorer, for the indefinite future. It’s worse than what happens in a typical economic downturn. Usually when factories sit idle during a recession, there is a reasonable expectation that they will start cranking again once the economy returns to health.
The road rebuilding might be expensive, but at least that money is going to pay people and businesses to do their work. The cost for society over all is that the resources that go to rebuilding the road are not available for something else that might be more valuable. That’s a setback, but it’s not a permanent reduction in economic potential like the less fertile farmland. And in a recession, it might even be a net positive, under the same logic that fiscal stimulus can be beneficial in a downturn.
By contrast, new investment in the power grid could yield long-term benefits in energy efficiency and greater reliability.
There’s some parallel with military spending. In the 1950s and ’60s, during the Cold War, the United States spent more than 10 percent of G.D.P. on national defense (it’s now below 4 percent).
Most of that spending crowded out other forms of economic activity; many houses and cars and washing machines weren’t made because of the resources that instead went to making tanks, bombs and fighter jets. But some of that spending also created long-term benefits for society, like the innovations that led to the internet and to reliable commercial jet aircraft travel.
Certain types of efforts to reduce carbon emissions or adapt to climate impacts are likely to generate similar benefits, says Nicholas Stern, chair of the Grantham Research Institute on
Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics.
“You couldn’t provide sea defenses at large scale without very heavy investment, but it’s not investment of the kind that you get from the things that breed technological progress,” Mr. Stern said. “The defensive adaptations don’t carry anything like the dynamism that comes from different ways of doing things.”
There is more fertile ground in areas like transportation and infrastructure, he said. Electric cars, instead of those with internal combustion engines, would mean less air pollution in cities, for example.
How should we value the future compared with the present?
Seeking a baseline to devise environmental regulations, the Obama administration set out to calculate a “social cost of carbon,” the amount of harm each new ton of carbon emissions will cause in decades ahead.
At the core of the project were sophisticated efforts to model how a hotter earth will affect thousands of different places. That’s necessary because a low-lying region that already has many hot days a year is likely to face bigger problems, sooner, than a higher-altitude location that currently has a temperate climate.
Michael Greenstone, who is now director of the Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago and of the Energy Policy Institute there, as well as a contributor to The Upshot, was part of those efforts.
“We’ve divided the world into 25,000 regions and married that with very precise geographic predictions on how the local climate will change,” Mr. Greenstone said. “Just having the raw computing power to be able to analyze this at a more disaggregated level is a big part of it.”
But even once you have an estimate of the cost of a hotter climate in future decades, some seemingly small assumptions can drastically alter the social cost of carbon today.
Finance uses something called the discount rate to compare future value with present value. What would the promise of a $1,000 payment 10 years from now be worth to you today? Certainly something less than $1,000 — but how much less would depend on what rate you use.
Likewise, the cost of carbon emissions varies greatly depending on how you value the well-being of people in future decades — many not born yet, and who may benefit from technologies and wealth we cannot imagine — versus our well-being today.
The magic of compounding means that the exact rate matters a great deal when looking at things far in the future. It’s essentially the inverse of observing that a $1,000 investment that compounds at 3 percent a year will be worth about $4,400 in 50 years, whereas one that grows 7 percent per year will be worth more than $29,000.
In the Obama administration’s analysis, using a 5 percent discount rate — which would put comparatively little weight on the well-being of future generations — would imply a social cost of $12 (in 2007 dollars) for emitting one metric ton of carbon dioxide. A metric ton is about what would be released as a car burns 113 gallons of gasoline. A 2.5 percent rate would imply a cost of $62, which adds up to hundreds of billions of dollars a year in society-wide costs at recent rates of emissions.
The Obama administration settled on a 3 percent discount rate that put the social cost of carbon at $42 per metric ton. The Trump administration has subsequently revised that estimate to between one dollar and seven dollars.
That sharp decrease was achieved in part by measuring only the future economic costs to the United States, not factoring in the rest of the world. And the Trump administration analyzed a discount rate of up to 7 percent — a rate at which even costs far into the future become trivial.
Mr. Greenstone favors substantially lower discount rates, based on evidence that financial markets also place high value on investments that protect against risk.
Understood this way, spending today to reduce carbon emissions tomorrow is like insurance against some of the most costly effects of a hotter planet — and part of the debate is over how much that insurance is really worth, given that the biggest benefits are far in the future.
Fires devastated Paradise, Calif., in November. Climate change increases the odds of such wildfires in the state.CreditNoah Berger/Associated Press
When a government report raises the possibility of a 10 percent hit to G.D.P. as a result of a warming climate, it can be easy to picture everyone’s incomes being reduced by a tenth.
In reality there is likely to be enormous variance in the economic impact, depending on where people live and what kind of jobs they have.
Low-lying, flood-prone areas are at particularly high risk of becoming unlivable — or at least uninsurable. Certain industries in certain places will be dealt a huge blow, or cease to exist; many ski slopes will turn out to be too warm for regular snow, and the map of global agriculture will shift.
Adaptation will probably be easier for the affluent than for the poor. Those who can afford to move to an area with more favorable impacts from a warmer climate presumably will.
So the economic implications of climate change include huge shifts in geography, demographics and technology, with each affecting the other.
“To look at things in terms of G.D.P. doesn’t really capture what this means to people’s lives,” said William Nordhaus, a Yale economist who pioneered the models on which modern climate economics is based and who won a Nobel for that work. “If you just look at an average of all the things we experience, some in the marketplace and some not in the marketplace, it’s insufficient. The impact is going to be highly diverse.”
Can we adapt to a warmer climate?
Despite all these risks, it’s important to remember that humanity tends to be remarkably adaptable. A century ago, most people lived without an automobile, a refrigerator, or the possibility of traveling by airplane. A couple of decades before that, almost no one had indoor plumbing.
Changes in how people live, and the technology they use, could both mitigate the impact of climate change and ensure that the costs are less about a pure economic loss and more about rewiring the way civilization works.
Most capital investments last only a decade or two to begin with; people are constantly rebuilding roads, buildings and other infrastructure. And a warmer climate could, if it plays out slowly enough, merely shift where that reinvestment happens.
But a big risk is that the change happens too quickly. Adaptation that might be manageable over a generation could be impossible — and cause mass suffering or death — if it happens over a few years.
Imagine major staple food crops being wiped out for a few consecutive years by drought or other extreme weather. Or a large coastal city wiped out in a single extreme storm.
“Whether it’s jobs, consumption patterns or residential patterns, if things are changing so fast that we can’t adapt to them, that will be very, very costly,” Mr. Nordhaus said. “We know we can adapt to slow changes. Rapid changes are the ones that would be most damaging and painful.”
It’s clear that climate change and its ripple effects are likely to be a defining challenge of the 21st-century economy. But there are wide ranges of possible results that vary based on countless assumptions. We should also recognize that the economic backdrop of society is always changing. Projecting what that will mean for ordinary people is not simply a matter of dollars.
“I’ve spent the last 20 years trying to communicate it and it’s not easy to process,” Joseph Aldy, who teaches at Harvard’s Kennedy School for Public Policy, said of the connection between climate change and the economy. “It’s really hard to convey something that is long term and gradual until it’s not.”
The US India Chamber of Commerce, Midwest organized its “2018 Annual Gala Dinner” on December 07, 2018 at Ashyana Banquets, Downers Grove, Illinois. The theme of the event was “The New India-Recent Economic Reforms and Fresh Strides in US India Relations”.
The event was graced by Ms. Neeta Bhushan, Consul General of India, Ms. Nicki Anderson, President/CEO, Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Amit Jhingran, CEO, State Bank of India, Chicago, Commissioner Frank Avila, Commissioner, MWRD. The event was also attended by distinguished guests Pastor Larry Bullock, CEO,US Minority Contractors Association, Ms. Malini Vaidyanathan, Manager Midwest, Air India and Dr. Bharat Barai a prominent Physician and Indian Community Leader from Indiana and many other industry leaders, entrepreneurs, business owners and professionals
Porus Dadabhoy made the initial welcome and invited the gathering to take their seats and invited Dr. Ajit Pant, President of the Chamber to address the gathering.
In his address Dr. Ajit Pant gave a brief description of the activities of the Chamber and explained the “Future Vision of the Chamber”. He also discussed the chosen theme and mentioned that the recent far reaching economic changes made in India as well as the latest progress in US India relations needed to be discussed so as to create positive awareness among the Indo American Community.
Consul General of India Ms Neeta Bhushan spoke on the topic Transforming India. She mentioned that over the last 4 and half years the Government of Prime Minister Modi had accelerated the reform process and brought a number of changes which had resulted in world class infrastructure, introduction of bullet trains, up gradation of urban as well as rural connectivity, ports, airports etc. The make in India policy had led to increased jobs for the youth. The policies of startup India, Mudra scheme had spurred greater entrepreneurial spirit as well as economic activity in the country. IMF had described India as an Elephant that has started to run. The growth rate of 7.2 percent was amongst the highest in the world.
The rating agency Moody has enhanced its rating from Stable to positive. In terms of Ease of doing business India ranked 77 and could soon be in the top 50. Reforms such as Goods and services tax, Bankruptcy and Insolvency code had been welcomed by the companies in a big way. It was easier for companies to get construction permits pay taxes and trade across borders. Access to sanitation has increased to over 90 percent.
Ayushmann bharat or the Pradhan Mantri arogya yojna launched in sept 2018 has already seen a large number of beneficiaries. Atal pension Yojana. Which is directed at the unorganized sector has seen substantial benefit for 10 millilnpeoplein the unorganized sector.
Ms. Nicki Anderson President and CEO of the Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce shared her ideas about the value of partnership between our Chambers and the Business Community and mentioned how working together would be a big positive for both Chambers.
Mr. Amit Jhingran CEO of SBI Chicago gave an overview of the Indian Banking System and role of State Bank of India, Chicago Branch in US.
Commissioner Frank Avila and Dr Prakasam Tata briefed about the Water and Waste Reclamation Training Conference that is being organized in Hyderabad, India with their expertise and technical knowhow.
The talks were followed by an interesting Question Answer Session which was taken by Dr. Pant
Dr. Prakasam Tata, thanked all the attendees with his own personal and philosophical touch.
The event was attended by Chamber Board members Dr.Ajit Pant (President), Dr. Prakasam Tata, Kanapathy M, Harsh Muthal, Porus Dadabhoy and Rajeev Jain.
The event was partly sponsored by SBI Chicago and ended with more networking, cocktails and a gala dinner
TiE-Boston’s Lifetime Achievement Award was conferred on entrepreneur and philanthropist Dr. Amar Sawhney, during the annual gala on December 13th at the annual black-tie gala which was attended by its founding charter members, past presidents and over 250 guests.
TiE Boston, one of the region’s largest business organizations supporting the Massachusetts entrepreneurial ecosystem, said in a statement that the highest honor by TiE-Boston was bestowed on Sawhney, who has founded numerous companies and is credited with creating thousands of jobs and over millions in value for shareholders.
Dr. Amar Sawhney, has founded six companies, including Confluent Surgical (acquired by Covidien), Ocular Therapeutix, Incept LLC and Augmenix, which was recently acquired by Boston Scientific. He has been honored with numerous business and technology awards, including being named one of the “White House’s Champions of Change” by President Obama, the MIT Global Indus Technovator award and the E&Y Regional Entrepreneur of the Year award.
Sawhney is one of the foremost innovators and entrepreneurs in medical technology. He currently serves as the Chairman of Ocular Therapeutix, Inc. and of Instylla, Inc. Previously, he served as Chairman of Augmenix, Inc., which was acquired by Boston Scientific in September 2018 for $600 million. Prior to that, Mr. Sawhney founded Confluent Surgical (acquired by Covidien), Focal Inc. (acquired by Genzyme), and Access Closure, Inc. (acquired by Cardinal Health). His innovations are the subject of over 120 issued and pending patents in biomaterials and bio-surgery.
“We are pleased to honor Dr. Sawhney and the other awardees at this year’s Gala,” said Nilanjana Bhowmik, President of TiE Boston. “Each of these awardees embodies our organization’s values — they have built, innovated and given back to their communities. Each has also assumed a responsibility to create something important — not just companies, but relationships and communities to support innovation and entrepreneurialism on an ongoing basis.”
TiE Boston also recognized its charter members, as well as individuals across numerous categories who exemplified TiE’s values by supporting entrepreneurship with an eye towards giving back to the community.
The colorful event at the Four Seasons Boston highlight the achievements of innovators and entrepreneurs across categories such as venture capital, digital health, B2B & B2C technology and robotics & automation.
These awards highlight the achievements of innovators and entrepreneurs across categories such as venture capital, digital health, B2B & B2C technology and robotics and automation, TiE Boston said in a statement.
The nominating committee selected individuals who have created or shaped a category through a significant contribution in their field of work, deemed “mission-critical” to the innovation economy, and have contributed to the well-being of the community through time, money, mentoring, guidance, etc.
Nilanjana Bhowmick announced the set-up of the TiE Boston Foundation to support and grow the activities of THe Young Entrepreneur (TyE) program with an initial endowment of $500K with nearly $350K already raised. Entertainment for the evening was provided by Avanti Nagral and her band from Harvard University and Berklee School of Music.
The TiE-Boston Board awards the Lifetime Achievement Award when an individual has made a lasting impact in the business community, and a significant contribution to the success of TiE-Boston.
Sawhney, an IIT-Delhi graduate, is always trying to solve unmet needs in medical technology, and in the process has founded numerous successful medical device companies. His inventions include several “first of a kind” surgical sealants to be approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration, including DuraSeal for neurosurgery, FocalSeal for lung surgery, and Mynx for femoral puncture sealing.
“I don’t profess to be a perfectionist, but I am persistent,” says Mr. Sawhney. “When I take on a mission, I ensure that it reaches a logical conclusion, with not only the best possible financial outcome, but also the best outcome for patients and the team.”
His mantra for success is simple. “In my area of focus, which is medical innovation and entrepreneurship, I employ a value system. At the apex is identifying a genuine unmet need, or a worthwhile cause to focus on,” says Mr. Sawhney. “Next comes the right people to onboard for the journey, with the right values. And finally, we need to be good stewards of capital, to generate value for our shareholders.”
Sawhney grew up in India and came to the United States for higher studies. “My father was in the Indian Air Force, so I grew up in a number of different cities, Pune, Shillong, Allahabad, and Gandhinagar. As a family we were middle class. We never had a lack of what we felt we needed, but we never had much excess either,” recalled Mr. Sawhney. “My father believed in getting us the best education and he did everything within his power to ensure we had every opportunity in this regard.”
His mother was a teacher and she was always very friendly and concerned about the people around her – friends, family, neighbours and her students. “There were always people around us, who supported us, and looked up to my parents. This had a lasting impression on me, that it is not money that matters, but character, compassion, and concern for others,” shares Mr. Sawhney. “These principles are important in my personal life but are equally applicable in my professional life too. I make it a point that the teams we assemble feel like they belong to a family that is engaged in a mission that is greater than any one of us individually. It keeps us grounded, excited, and motivated.”
What is jewelry? Why do we wear it? What meanings does it convey? At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, an exhibition, “Jewelry: The Body Transformed,” traversing time and space to explore how jewelry acts upon and activates the body it adorns, opened On November 12th.
The exhibition emphasizes the universality of jewelry, including from India—precious objects made for the body, a singular and glorious setting for the display of art. Great jewelry from around the world are presented in a radiant display that groups these ornaments according to the part of the body they adorn: head and hair; nose, lips, and ears; neck and chest; arms and hands; and waist, ankles, and feet.
This global conversation about one of the most personal and universal of art forms brings together some 230 objects drawn almost exclusively from The Met collection. A dazzling array of headdresses and ear ornaments, brooches and belts, necklaces and rings created between 2600 B.C.E. and the present day are shown along with sculptures, paintings, prints, and photographs that will enrich and amplify the many stories of transformation that jewelry tells.
“Jewelry is one of the oldest modes of creative expression—predating even cave painting by tens of thousands of years—and the urge to adorn ourselves is now nearly universal,” commented Max Hollein, Director of The Met. “This exhibition will examine the practice of creating and wearing jewelry through The Met’s global collection, revealing the many layers of significance imbued in this deeply meaningful form of art.”
If the body is a stage, jewelry is one of its most dazzling performers. Throughout history and across cultures, jewelry has served as an extension and amplification of the body, accentuating it, enhancing it, distorting it, and ultimately transforming it. Jewelry is an essential feature in the acts that make us human, be they rituals of marriage or death, celebrations or battles. At every turn, it expresses some of our highest aspirations.
“To fully understand the power of jewelry, it is not enough to look at it as miniature sculpture,” stated Melanie Holcomb, Curator, Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters. “While jewelry is ubiquitous, the cultures of the world differ widely regarding where on the body it should be worn. By focusing on jewelry’s interaction with—and agency upon—the human body, this exhibition brings in a key element that has been missing in previous studies of the subject.”
The exhibition is being shown along with sculptures, paintings, prints, and photographs that will enrich and amplify the many stories of transformation that jewelry tells; how it served as an extension and amplification of the body, accentuating it, enhancing it, distorting it, and ultimately transforming it.
There is also a riveting Jasmine Bud Necklace (Malligai Arumbu Malai), a marriage necklace made of gold, from the late 19th century, with its origin in Tamil Nadu. Elaborate necklaces of this type were presented by the groom’s family during wedding celebrations of the Chetiar community, a Shaivite mercantile caste, and formed part of the bride’s wealth (stridhan) thereafter.
The necklace was initially part of a dowry given to the bride by the groom at a climactic moment in the ceremony, the three knots ritual. This form of necklace is known as a Kali-Tiru; the elaborate Thali type generally includes a central Shiva and Parvati on a medallion. The four fingers of the central pendant are understood as denoting the four Vedas. There is another Jasmine Bud Necklace, from Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The ornament is inset with ruby and with tapering extensions. A pair of gold royal earrings from India, from the 1st century B.C. are in exhibit.
While splendid jewelry adorns the regal and divine figures represented on early stone sculptures and terracotta plaques, few actual ornaments still exist. It is thought that jewelry was not kept and reused but instead was melted down possibly to avoid transmitting the karma of the former owner.
In addition to clusters and rows of beads, each earring is decorated with a winged lion, and elephant and two vases filled with vegetation. Put on by slipping through a distended earlobe from the back, they are worn with the lion facing the wearer’s cheek and the elephant on the outside.
The place of these earrings in the history of Indian art is assured, not only for their intrinsic beauty, but also because of the light they shed on the superb quality of early gold-smithing in this region.
Early Indian statues of both male and female figures were usually portrayed with elaborate jewelry that sometimes seemed fanciful, since very little comparable jewelry from that period survived. The discovery of this pair of earrings provided the first tangible evidence that the jewelry depicted by the sculptors was in fact based on real exemplars, for a very similar pair is shown on a first century B.C. relief portrait of a Universal Ruler, the Chakravartin, from Jaggayapeta.
These earrings, judging from their material worth, the excellence of craftsmanship, and the use of royal emblems (a winged lion and an elephant) as part of their design, were most probably made as royal commissions. Each earring is composed of two rectangular, budlike forms, growing outward from a central, double-stemmed tendril. The elephant and the lion of repoussé gold are consummately detailed, using granules, snipets of wire and sheet, and individually forged and hammered pieces of gold.
The two pieces are not exactly identical: On the underside they are both decorated with a classical early Indian design of a vase containing three palmettes, but the patterning of the fronds differentiates the two earrings. They are so large and heavy that they must have distended the earlobes and rested on the shoulders of the wearer, like the pair worn by the Chakravartin.
An exquisite collection of jewelry over the ages from cultures globally, including some from India, is the focus of the exhibition ‘Jewelry: The Body Transformed’, which will be on exhibition through February 24, 2019.
The rupee, which has fallen for six straight months in the longest stretch since 2002, is seen sliding to Rs. 75 per dollar by year-end, according to median of 10 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
The worst run of rupee losses in 16 years is set to extend. Only this time, the declines might not be triggered by oil but by the surprise move by India’s central bank to hold rates despite the currency’s free fall.
At present, the value of India’s currency “rupee” is continuously falling and its value has declined by 12% between January – September 2018. Among the BRICS nations; after the Russian Ruble, the Indian rupee depreciated the most in this period.
Reserve Bank of India governor Urjit Patel’s comments that the rupee’s drop is moderate in comparison to emerging market peers and that the central bank doesn’t have any target in mind unnerved investors who were expecting the authority to boost its defense of Asia’s worst-performing major currency.
“Governor Patel has effectively left the rupee out in the cold and insinuated that it is not his job to determine the appropriate level for the currency,” said Charlie Lay, an analyst at Commerzbank AG in Singapore. “RBI has seemingly opened the floodgates for further rupee weakness.”
The rupee fell past the 74 to a dollar mark for the first time soon after the RBI’s decision, and analysts, whose year-end estimates have been obliterated by the meltdown, cut their targets further. Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB said the rupee could test 75 in the near term while ING Bank NV said the bank’s recent downgrade to 75 wasn’t enough.
To be sure, the RBI has for long maintained that it steps in only to curb undue volatility and doesn’t target any currency level. That stance places the authority behind counterparts in Indonesia and the Philippines, which have been actively supporting their currencies, Madhavi Arora, an economist at Edelweiss Securities Ltd., wrote last month. “We expect the weakness to persist, with the rupee heading toward 75-plus levels against the dollar, unless some additional assertive policy steps come through,” she said.
Devaluation Meaning: When the external value of the domestic currency depreciates while the internal value remains the same, such situation is known as the devaluation of the domestic currency.
The basic difference between the devaluation and depreciation is that, the devaluation is done by the government of the country deliberately while the depreciation take place because of market forces i.e. demand and supply.
At the time of independence; India adopted the Par Value System of International Monetary Fund (IMF). On the August 15, 1947; the exchange rate between the Indian rupee and US Dollar was 1USD = 1 INR. Indeed, in 1948, you would have been able to buy a US Dollar for less than Rs. 4. but in the past 71 years, it has seen an over 21-fold depreciation.
At the time of Independence in 1947, there were no foreign borrowings on India’s balance sheet. To finance welfare and development activities, especially with the introduction of the Five-Year Plan in 1951, the government started external borrowings. Back then the rupee was still pegged to the pound, so when the latter lost ground, so did the local currency. “Consequent to the devaluation of Pound Sterling, Rupee was automatically devalued to the same extent (as the Pound Sterling) on 18 September 1949,” the RBI stated.
Over the next 25 years, the rupee continued to slowly depreciate against the dollar – its link to the pound sterling was severed in 1971 and it was directly linked to the dollar. This was on account of a host of factors such as political instability, lack of robust growth of the Indian economy held back by numerous scams and global factors like the 1973 Arab oil embargo, which widened India’s trade deficit. And a high deficit means the country has to sell rupees and buy dollars to pay its bills, which further reduces the value of the rupee. In the bargain, the rupee sank to a fresh low of Rs 12.34 to a dollar in 1985, and was barrelling towards its third devaluation.
The rupee touched a high of Rs 39 to the dollar in 2007 but the global economic crisis of 2008 put a stop to the rally. By end 2008, the currency had hit a fresh low of Rs 51. Then, in 2012, the government’s budget conditions worsened due to spill-over effects of the Greece-Spain sovereign debt crisis, and the rupee fell further to Rs 56.
Factors ranging from volatile oil prices to vacillating foreign inflows, from global economic concerns to domestic issues like rising inflation have continuously rained on the rupee’s parade ever since.
When the Modi led BJP government came to power in May 2014, the exchange rate stood at 58.66. In simpler words, 1 Dollar= Rs. 58.66. in less than five years, however, the Rupee has undergone continuous changes, with the latest one being the all time low value of Rs. 74.07 (as on October 5th, 2018), although bouncing back to Rs. 70 in November end, 2018.
Anubhav Gupta, assistant director of the Asia Society Policy Institute, in his conversation with James Crabtree, author of The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India’s New Gilded Age, discussed India’s Billionaires in 2018. The conversation covered how India’s super-rich have grown in number over the past two decades, how they have altered their country’s perception in the eyes of the world, and the specter of corruption that looms over India’s economic future.
This story is part of Forbes’ coverage of India’s Richest 2018. Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of mobile payments giant Paytm, seems unstoppable. In August, billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway invested $300 million in Sharma’s firm, joining a galaxy of marquee investors such as Alibaba and SoftBank. “It’s an endorsement of the India story. I feel more responsibility than ever before,” says Sharma of Buffett’s bet, which valued Paytm north of $10 billion and boosted the 40-year-old’s net worth.
A rout in the rupee–down 13% since we last measured fortunes a year ago–practically wiped out the Indian stock market’s 14% rise in the same period. Even so, 11 of the nation’s 100 richest saw their fortunes jump by $1 billion or more. Oil and gas tycoon Mukesh Ambani added $9.3 billion amid the continuing success of his Reliance Jio broadband telco service. He remains at No. 1 for the 11th year in a row.
Overall, the top 100 have eked out only a 2.7% gain in their combined wealth to $492 billion since our 2017 list. Close to half are poorer, six of them by $1 billion or more. Among them is Acharya Balkrishna, cofounder of herbal consumer goods maker Patanjali Ayurved, whose fortune fell by more than a fourth as sales slowed. Higher fuel prices took a toll on the wealth of Kapil & Rahul Bhatia, the father-son pair behind IndiGo, the country’s biggest airline, which at least gained market share as rivals reeled under financial woes.
Graphite India’s Krishna Kumar Bangur is number 91 on the list. Among the five new faces are Krishna Kumar Bangur, who controls Graphite India, which is benefiting from acute demand from the steel sector for its graphite electrodes; and south Indian infrastructure magnate P.P. Reddy of Megha Engineering & Infrastructure.
Eight dropped off the list, including Rana Kapoor, whose Yes Bank shares plunged after the Reserve Bank of India said he must step down as CEO in January. The regulator’s move was reportedly a response to inadequate disclosure of bad loans, which Yes Bank has denied. The fortune of paints tycoon Ashwin Choksi, who died in September, is now listed under his family.
This list was compiled using shareholding and financial information obtained from the families and individuals, stock exchanges, analysts and India’s regulatory agencies. The ranking lists family fortunes, including those shared among extended families such as the Godrej and Bajaj families. Public fortunes were calculated based on stock prices and exchange rates as of September 21. Private companies were valued based on similar companies that are publicly traded.
The number of debit cards in India has increased to 1 billion from 84 million a decade ago, Times of India has reported. The number of debit cards as well as the value of transactions have more than doubled in the last five years.
Last August, debit cards were used for 1.16 billion transactions worth Rs 3.24 trillion as compared to 579 million transactions worth Rs 1.6 billion in August of 2013.
These findings mark a great success for Indian government’s ‘Digital India’ mission as well as push to cashless transactions. The government has launched several initiatives like Jan Dhan Yojana, Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT), MDR waiver, BHIM Application etc for its laudable goal of financial inclusion.
Government’s push to RuPay cards which come with all Jan Dhan accounts have played a significant role in the increase. The number of RuPay cards have doubled in the last two years, currently numbering 560 million.
Debit Cards are also increasingly being used, not just for cash withdrawal from ATMs, but also for merchant transactions. Five years ago, ATM transactions constituted 90% of the total number and 95% of the total value. Currently, PoS transactions have expanded to cover 30% of the total number and 10% of the total value of debit card transactions.
While urban customers value convenience as well as various advantages like cashbacks, discounts and special offers on digital payments, rural consumers are not far behind.
“We’ve seen our rural customers do e-commerce transactions to take advantage of festival offers on Amazon or Flipkart,” says RA Sankara Narayanan, MD, Vijaya Bank, as quoted by TOI.
The rural consumers are also increasingly becoming tech savvy, demanding information on benefits of various government schemes, said AK Sahu, GM-debit cards, Canara Bank.
The online consumption patterns are also changing with customers carrying out big ticket purchases. “The consumption story in the country has been aided by the fact that today customers are also able to make big ticket item purchases through offers even on debit cards. Availability of finance for say, durable purchase through EMI on debit cards is a big driver,” says Parag Rao, country head- card and merchant acquiring business, HDFC Bank.
The International Monetary Fund has appointed Gita Gopinath as economic counsellor and director of the IMF’s Research Department on October 1st. Managing Director Christine Lagarde made the announcement, the fund said in a news release.
Gopinath, currently the John Zwaanstra professor of international studies and economics at Harvard University, will succeed Maurice Obstfeld, who announced in July that he would retire at the end of 2018.
“Gita is one of the world’s outstanding economists, with impeccable academic credentials, a proven track record of intellectual leadership, and extensive international experience,” Ms. Lagarde said. “All this makes her exceptionally well-placed to lead our Research Department at this important juncture. I am delighted to name such a talented figure as our Chief Economist.”
Ms. Gopinath is co-editor of the American Economic Review and co-director of the International Finance and Macroeconomics Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). She is co-editor of the current Handbook of International Economics with Former IMF Economic Counsellor Kenneth Rogoff. She has authored some 40 research articles on exchange rates, trade and investment, international financial crises, monetary policy, debt, and emerging market crises.
Gopinath was born and grew up in India. She is a U.S citizen and an Overseas Citizen of India. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University in 2001 after earning a B.A. from the University of Delhi and M.A. degrees from both the Delhi School of Economics and University of Washington. She joined the University of Chicago in 2001 as an Assistant Professor before moving to Harvard in 2005. She became a tenured Professor there in 2010.
The rupee, which has fallen for six straight months in the longest stretch since 2002, is seen sliding to Rs. 75 per dollar by year-end, according to median of 10 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
The worst run of rupee losses in 16 years is set to extend. Only this time, the declines might not be triggered by oil but by the surprise move by India’s central bank to hold rates despite the currency’s free fall.
The rupee, which has fallen for six straight months in the longest stretch since 2002, is seen sliding to 75 per dollar by year-end, according to median of 10 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. The December-end estimate has inched up from 69 at the start of September.
Reserve Bank of India governor Urjit Patel’s comments Friday that the rupee’s drop is moderate in comparison to emerging market peers and that the central bank doesn’t have any target in mind unnerved investors who were expecting the authority to boost its defence of Asia’s worst-performing major currency.
“Governor Patel has effectively left the rupee out in the cold and insinuated that it is not his job to determine the appropriate level for the currency,” said Charlie Lay, an analyst at Commerzbank AG in Singapore. “RBI has seemingly opened the floodgates for further rupee weakness.”
The rupee fell past the 74 to a dollar mark for the first time soon after the RBI’s decision, and analysts, whose year-end estimates have been obliterated by the meltdown, cut their targets further. Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB said the rupee could test 75 in the near term while ING Bank NV said the bank’s recent downgrade to 75 wasn’t enough.
The currency rose 0.2 percent to 74.2275 at 10:22 a.m. in Mumbai, rebounding from a record low of 74.3950 touched on Tuesday.
To be sure, the RBI has for long maintained that it steps in only to curb undue volatility and doesn’t target any currency level. That stance places the authority behind counterparts in Indonesia and the Philippines, which have been actively supporting their currencies, Madhavi Arora, an economist at Edelweiss Securities Ltd., wrote in a note Tuesday.
“We expect the weakness to persist, with the rupee heading toward 75-plus levels against the dollar, unless some additional assertive policy steps come through,” she said.
This year’s Nobel prize for economics has been awarded to William Nordhaus and Paul Romer for their work on sustainable growth.
The US economists’ research focuses on how climate change and technology have affected the economy.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said they had addressed “some of our time’s most… pressing questions” on how to achieve sustainable growth.
The duo will receive nine million Swedish krona (£841,000).
Prof Nordhaus, of Yale University, was the first person to create a model that described the interplay between the economy and the climate, the academy said.
Prof Romer, of New York University’s Stern School of Business, has shown how economic forces govern the willingness of firms to produce new ideas and innovations.
“Their findings have significantly broadened the scope of economic analysis by constructing models that explain how the market economy interacts with nature and knowledge,” the academy said in statement.
Prof Romer courted controversy earlier this year when he stepped down as the World Bank’s chief economist after just 15 months in the job.
What these two prize winners have in common is that their research examined the unintended side effects from economic activity and how they affect growth in the long term.
In the work of William Nordhaus these spill-overs are the negative consequences of climate change, which have been highlighted once again by scientists in the new report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
He developed an integrated method for looking at economic activity, and its environmental consequences and for evaluating responses to it, such as carbon taxes, an approach he has advocated.
Paul Romer has focussed on the positive side-effects of technological change. He argued that innovators often don’t get all the benefit of what they do, so market economies left to their own devices tend not generate enough new ideas.
Addressing this shortfall, he suggests, requires for well-designed government action to stimulate more innovation, such as subsides for research and development.
Commenting on the prize, Prof Romer told reporters: “I think… many people think that protecting he environment will be so costly and so hard that they just want to ignore [this].
“[But] we can absolutely make substantial progress protecting the environment and do it without giving up the chance to sustain growth.”
The Nobel economics prize – technically known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize – was created by the Swedish central bank “in memory of Alfred Nobel” and first awarded in 1969.
That is unlike the other prizes which were created in the philanthropist’s last will and testament, and first awarded in 1901.
Last year, US economist Richard Thaler, author of the best seller Nudge, won for his work in behavioural economics.
In 2016 it went to British-born American economist Oliver Hart and Finn Bengt Holmstrom for their work on “contract theory” – the study of how people develop legal agreements in situations with uncertain conditions.
Since it was first awarded in 1969, Americans have dominated the awards. Only one woman has won the economics prize since 1969, Elinor Ostrom in 2009.
Something of enormous global significance is happening almost without notice. For the first time since agriculture-based civilization began 10,000 years ago, the majority of humankind is no longer poor or vulnerable to falling into poverty. By our calculations, as of this month, just over 50 percent of the world’s population, or some 3.8 billion people, live in households with enough discretionary expenditure to be considered “middle class” or “rich.” About the same number of people are living in households that are poor or vulnerable to poverty. So September 2018 marks a global tipping point. After this, for the first time ever, the poor and vulnerable will no longer be a majority in the world. Barring some unfortunate global economic setback, this marks the start of a new era of a middle-class majority.
We make these claims based on a classification of households into those in extreme poverty (households spending below $1.90 per person per day) and those in the middle class (households spending $11-110 per day per person in 2011 purchasing power parity, or PPP). Two other groups round out our classification: vulnerable households fall between those in poverty and the middle class; and those who are at the top of the distribution who are classified as “rich.”
Our “middle class” classification was first developed in 2010 and has been used by many researchers. While acknowledging that the middle class does not have a precise definition that can be globally applied, the threshold we use in this work has the following characteristics: those in the middle class have some discretionary income that can be used to buy consumer durables like motorcycles, refrigerators, or washing machines. They can afford to go to movies or indulge in other forms of entertainment. They may take vacations. And they are reasonably confident that they and their family can weather an economic shock—like illness or a spell of unemployment—without falling back into extreme poverty.
By classifying all households in the world into one of these four groups, using income and expenditure surveys from 188 countries, we are able to derive measures of the global distribution of income. Our social enterprise World Data Lab—the maker of World Poverty Clock—has refined these estimates and created a new interactive data model to estimate all income brackets for almost every country for every point in time until 2030 by combining demographic and economic data.
A lot has been written about the world’s progress in reducing the number of people living in extreme poverty, as highlighted in the recent Goalkeepers report put out by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. We believe that another story relates to the rapid emergence of the global middle class. This middle class story is probably bigger in terms of the number of people affected. In the world today, about one person escapes extreme poverty every second; but five people a second are entering the middle class. The rich are growing too, but at a far smaller rate (1 person every 2 seconds).
Why does it matter that a middle-class tipping point has been reached and that the middle class is the most rapidly growing segment of the global income distribution? Because the middle class drive demand in the global economy and because the middle class are far more demanding of their governments.
Consider the structure of global economic demand. Private household consumption accounts for about half of global demand (the other half is evenly split between investment and government consumption). Two-thirds of household consumption comes from the middle class. The rich spend more per person, but are too few in number to drive the global economy. The poor and vulnerable are numerous, but have too little income to spend. For most businesses, the sweet spot to target is the middle class. This has long been true in individual advanced economies; it is now true on a global scale.
Targeting the global middle class is not easy. The middle class like differentiated products, and their tastes will vary from country to country. The new middle class is predominantly Asian—almost nine in 10 of the next billion middle-class consumers will be Asian—but they are spread out in China, India, and South and South East Asia. It’s no accident that the latest Hollywood hit is Crazy Rich Asians or that Asian multinationals are emerging that have built a domestic brand and now look to compete abroad.
The middle class is already the largest segment of demand in the global economy. What makes it interesting for business is that it is also the most rapidly growing segment, projected to reach some 4 billion people by end 2020 and 5.3 billion people by 2030. Compared to today, the middle class in 2030 will have 1.7 billion more people, while the vulnerable group will have 900 million fewer people. Trends for the poor and the rich and more modest, at -150 million people and +100 million, respectively.
By our calculations, the middle-class markets in China and India in 2030 will account for $14.1 trillion and $12.3 trillion, respectively, comparable in size to a U.S. middle-class market at that time of $15.9 trillion.
In most countries, there is a clear relationship between the fate of the middle class and the happiness of the population. According to the Gallup World Poll, new entrants into the middle class are noticeably happier than those stuck in poverty or in vulnerable households. Conversely, individuals in countries where the middle class is shrinking report greater degrees of personal stress. The middle class also puts pressure on governments to perform better. They look to their governments to provide affordable housing, education, and universal health care. They rely on public safety nets to help them in sickness, unemployment or old age. But they resist efforts of governments to impose taxes to pay the bills. This complicates the politics of middle-class societies, so they range from autocratic to liberal democracies. Many advanced and middle-income countries today are struggling to find a set of politics that can satisfy a broad middle-class majority. The tipping point in the world today offers opportunities for business but complications for policymakers.
Bimal Patel, a former leading financial regulatory partner at O’Melveny & Myers, is the Trump administration’s nominee for a top supervisory post at the U.S. Treasury Department.
The White House Sept. 13 announced that President Donald Trump has nominated Bimal Patel for a post in the Treasury for Financial Institutions.The position, which requires U.S. Senate confirmation, coordinates the department’s efforts on legislation and regulation that affect financial institutions and securities markets.
Since May 2017, Patel has served as the deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury for the Financial Stability Oversight Council. He joined the Treasury from O’Melveny’s Washington office, where he headed the financial advisory and regulation practice.
At O’Melveny, Patel had been regulatory counsel on merger transactions and fund investments, and he represented financial industry clients in class action litigation over credit discrimination statutes.
Some of his clients included Deutsche Bank Securities, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, U.S. Bancorp, BB&T Corp., Alibaba Group Holding, Chain Bridge Partners, Fannie Mae and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, according to a financial disclosure on file at the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. Patel in 2017 reported about $666,000 in partner share at the firm. O’Melveny this year told The American Lawyer that revenue per lawyer in 2017 remained relatively flat at $1.2 million, while profits per partner saw an increase to $2.01 million.
Patel would succeed Christopher Campbell, who was confirmed in August 2017 to the post but left the Treasury in recent weeks. Campbell formerly was majority staff director on the Senate Finance Committee.
Campbell’s final financial disclosure report at the Treasury—called a “termination” report, which is filed when an official leaves an agency—shows he became a member of the board of directors at West Corp. and Coinstar. The companies are both owned by the private equity firm Apollo Global Management. West Corp., based in Omaha, Nebraska, provides voice and data services globally.
Americans are richer than ever. The stock market closed at a record high on Thursday. Filings for unemployment benefits just fell to a 48-year low. Consumer confidence is soaring. The poverty rate is extending a three-year slide, A Washington Post story stated last week.
The income disparity between the classes is growing, as advances by upper-income households outpace those of the middle and lower tiers. Earnings by the typical American household remain mired around where they were before the recession. Wages are inching up, despite a tight labor market, and inflation is all but wiping out those gains.
It’s a tale of two economies. The strength reflected in the headline numbers remains the GOP’s best defense against a midterm wipeout. But lurking just beneath them are reminders that the recovery remains patchy, and its gains have been unevenly distributed, The daily published from the nation’s capital, reported.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch points out that, like income, wealth in the United States is held by a declining percentage of the population. In 1992, 54% of all financial wealth was held by the top 10% of earners; today 63% is. The latest numbers from Gallup show that just 52% of Americans own stocks — the lowest percentage on record — down from 65% in 2007.
According to Market Watch, average annual earnings for people in their prime working years (ages 25 to 54) increased 30.2% after inflation between 1979 and 2016, based on an analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics by the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank that advocates for low-to-moderate income Americans. For the most part, however, that growth isn’t a reflection of higher hourly wages — instead it’s an indication that people are working more hours, researchers found.
For the bottom fifth of earners, an increase in wages only accounted for 25% of annual earnings growth, compared with 88% of earnings growth for the top fifth, or richest, earners.
Altogether, prime-age adults worked 7.8% more hours per year in 2016 than they did in 1979. But workers in the bottom fifth in terms of annual earnings upped their hours by 24.3% over that time span, compared with just a 3.6% uptick among top earners. People in the middle-class in terms of wages increased their hours by 9.4%.
The high-flying stock market, combined with a steady recovery in home prices during the last several years, has pushed total household net worth in the United States to about $95 trillion — nearly $30 trillion more than before the last recession began in 2007. As a percentage of disposable income, household net worth just hit a new peak, which means that wealth in the United States relative to the size of the population is now at the highest level on record. We’re rich!
India’s public sector lender Dena Bank reportedly has said, its board has approved the government proposal to merge the bank with Bank of Baroda (BoB) and Vijaya Bank. This is the first of the three state-run banks to approve their proposed amalgamation after it was announced by the government.
On September 10th, the government of India had proposed the merger of the three state-owned banks. The merged entity, comprising two relatively stronger banks and a weak one, will be the third-largest lender in India, after State Bank of India and HDFC Bank Ltd, with total business of ₹14.82 trillion.
A senior Dena Bank executive, who didn’t wish to be named, said the board meeting was the first step. The board’s decision will be forwarded to the government. “The investment bankers will be appointed only after the board meetings of the other banks take place,” said the executive.
Directors of Dena Bank also discussed the broad contours of setting up a steering committee and different coordination committees to work out the bank merger, said another senior bank official.
The committee is expected to be formed within 10 days after the respective boards of Vijaya Bank and Bank of Baroda approve the merger plan. The committee could call for bids from investment banks and look at selecting a banker to chalk out the merger strategy, the official added.
“We are pleased to inform you that the board of directors of the bank, at their meeting held on 24 September 2018, has considered and decided to recommend the amalgamation of our bank with Bank of Baroda and Vijaya Bank, in line with the department of financial services, ministry of finance, Government of India proposal, dated 17 September, 2018,” Dena Bank said in a filing to the exchanges.
The bank management had sent a letter to employees on 18 September, telling them that the merger is a confidence-building measure taken by the government of India, considering the financial position of the bank. Dena Bank’s capital adequacy ratio stood at 10.6% and its gross bad loans comprised 22.7% of its total assets as on 30 June. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had subsequently asked it to stop issuing new loans.
The Dena Bank management had also said in its letter that in the current state, where the banking industry is fragmented with 21 public sector banks, having limited differentiation, coupled with sub-optimal scale of operations and unhealthy competition, “consolidation is inevitable”.
“We would also like to state that Denaites should not have any apprehension on the amalgamation, since no employee will face any adverse service conditions,” said the letter signed by executive directors Rajesh Kumar Yaduvanshi and Ramesh S. Singh. Mint has seen a copy of the letter.
President Trump’s controversial trade war with China is heating up. That means consumers may soon have to pay more for goods ranging from furniture to electronics to food and clothing.
It started on Monday, when the Trump administration announced new tariffs of 10% on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods that will go into effect on Sept. 24 and climb to 25% by Jan. 1. The latest round of tariffs means that nearly half of all Chinese imports into the U.S. will soon face levies.
Beijing retaliated on Tuesday with tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. goods, prompting Trump to up the ante yet again, renewing a threat to slap taxes on another $267 billion of Chinese products. Including an initial $50 billion round of tariffs that went into effect over the summer, Trump has enacted or threatened to tax more than $500 billion worth of Chinese goods.
“That’s going to hit the pocketbook of every American family in 2019,” says David French, senior vice-president for government relations at the National Retail Federation, a trade group.
The latest round of levies includes all but 300 items originally proposed by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative before it held a public comment period over the summer.
Some politically sensitive products were able to dodge the new tariff. Apple gadgets, whose prices are widely followed by the tech press were left off the list, as were goods like bicycle helmets and child safety seats.
Here are the products that will cost you more:
Home Décor and Appliances
Tariffs will hit numerous home appliances, including refrigerators, vacuum cleaners and cooking appliances like plate warmers. Home decor such as lamps and lighting parts as well as wooden furniture, including baby cribs, have also been targeted. Overall prices for furniture are likely to increase 2% to 4%, according to a NRF report, as manufactures eat part of the new tax and pass part on to consumers.
Electronics
While some popular Apple devices were spared, other telecommunications and computer equipment were targeted, including so-called connected devices like modems, internet routers, and smart speakers. A recent Consumer Technology Association study estimated that tariffs on circuit board assemblies and connected devices could result in price increases of as much as 6%, costing overall American shoppers up to $3.2 billion extra each year.
Clothing
Certain types of hats, as well as furs, and many popular clothing fabrics fall under the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative’s Sept. 18 list. Given the already tight profit margins on low-end clothing, this could be one of the first product categories to see price increases, says Simon Lester, associate director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the CATO Institute.
Travel Goods
Products like backpacks, luggage, wallets, phone cases, handbags, and similar items are included and could see prices increase by 5% to 10%, according to the NRF report.
Food & Beverages
Fruits, nuts, grains, flours, vegetables, and other products like soy sauce, will all face new taxes. The tariffs could notably increase prices for seafood, since they already have low margins. Seafood company Chicken of the Sea “cannot absorb the costs of tariffs and must pass them on to consumers,” Chief Executiv Auto parts
Auto & Parts
The new tariffs target more than 100 different auto parts, according to the Detroit Free Press. “Raising the prices of vehicles is a real concern,” Republican Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder told the media.
Paper, Personal Care Products, and Just About Everything Else
Personal care and beauty products (make-up, shampoo) are also on the list. Other assorted items – dog leashes, calculators, sporting goods, paper, and pet products are all covered in the latest round of tariffs too.
Apple and Amazon are as different from each other as apples and oranges. Apple is a tech company that is also a trendy consumer brand. Its computers and devices have often been must-have gadgets, and customers are willing to pay far more for their products than cheaper alternatives.
On the other hand, Amazon is where people go when they want to get a product more cheaply, more easily, or more quickly. Since the iPhone first went on sale in 2007, Apple shares have soared by 1,100% and have jumped almost a third in the past year.
As for Amazon, the internet retail giant has seen a steady, yet speedy rise in its share price, with its market value jumping from $600bn to $700bn in just 16 days. In contrast, the same feat took Apple 622 days. Amazon.com Inc. shares rose as much as 1.9%, pushing the company briefly beyond a market value of $1 trillion, a milestone Apple Inc. reached last month.
It’s a historic accomplishment for Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos, who founded the company in his Seattle garage in 1994 as a small online book seller. Now Bezos is the world’s wealthiest person, running a diversified global enterprise with more than $200 billion in annual sales and more than 575,000 employees.
While Amazon has come a long way from its humble beginnings, things moved fast particularly in the past few years. The shares have more than tripled since 2015, reaching a high of $2,050.50 Tuesday. After crossing the $1 trillion mark, Amazon’s valuation slipped to $988.8 billion at 12:27 p.m. in New York. Tech competitors Alphabet Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are closing in on the mark, too.
Apple and Amazon aren’t the first trillion-dollar corporations. Energy company PetroChina Co. briefly crossed that valuation in late 2007 but slumped quickly as oil prices collapsed in the financial crisis. Still, the online retailer is among the most feared and menacing competitors across a broad swathe of industries. Just a hint of Amazon’s potential interest in a new business can send stocks tumbling.
Moving well beyond books, Bezos re-imagined the retail experience, seeing early on how the internet could connect shoppers with a selection of goods far larger than they’d find on shelves in nearby stores. He expanded the business from books to music and movies, then added toys and electronics.
In 2001, Amazon launched an online marketplace, looking to expand inventory more quickly by inviting independent merchants onto the site and charging them a commission on each sale. The marketplace now accounts for more than half of all goods sold on the site, and many of the merchants pay Amazon additional fees for warehouse storage, packing and delivery.
This also lets Amazon offer a tremendous inventory without having to buy anything, a key competitive edge over retail competitors like Walmart Inc., which is now building its own marketplace.
Bezos again displayed his forward-looking prowess in 2006 with the launch of cloud-computing division Amazon Web Services. Just like shoppers shifted spending from stores to websites, businesses are now changing their technology operations.
Rather than buying and maintaining their own servers, they rent computer power and data storage from centralized data centers run by Amazon and pay for it depending on how much they use like an electric bill. Cloud computing gives businesses greater flexibility to experiment since they can dial up computing power when they need it and scale back when they don’t, converting long-term investments like building their own data centers into a variable cost that’s easier to manage. Amazon now leads the cloud-computing market and Amazon Web Services provides more than half the company’s profit.
“This day would have either never come or not happened so soon were it not for the company’s cloud computing efforts, which have been a godsend for the company’s profitability and, ultimately, its share price,” said Tom Forte, an analyst at DA Davidson & Co. “The fact that its fastest growing business is also its most profitable is why we are celebrating this landmark achievement today. Were Amazon a money losing e-commerce company we would not be here today.”
It took investors a while to fully appreciate Bezos’ long-term strategies. The stock has surged in recent years, largely based on bets he made more than a decade ago.
“If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people,” Bezos told Wired magazine in 2011. “But if you’re willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people, because very few companies are willing to do that.”
There were concerns that Amazon was a “nonprofit” because Bezos invested so heavily in growth there were often money-losing quarters or results with razor-thin margins. The failed Fire smartphone in 2014 was perhaps the company’s biggest flop. But Amazon came roaring back later that year with its Echo voice-activated speaker and Alexa digital assistant — a surprise runaway hit that lets users dim lights, stream music and order pizza via voice commands.
The biggest contributor to Amazon’s success is the Prime membership, launched in 2005. Bezos borrowed a page from discount warehouse shopping clubs and offered cheaper shipping rates to customers paying an annual membership fee that is now $119 in the U.S. Membership converts the occasional online shopper into an Amazon devotee eager to get their money’s worth on shipping. And Amazon keeps adding more perks, like video streaming, online photo storage and most recently discounts at Whole Foods Market, which Amazon acquired last year for $13.7 billion to jump-start its grocery business.
Amazon now has more than 100 million Prime members, which it uses to lure more inventory to its web store, where competition among merchants keeps prices low. Its annual Prime Day sale, sometimes called Christmas in July, generates tremendous publicity and helps attract new members seeking discounts. The latest offshoot of all the customers and products is a fast-growing and profitable advertising business.
For all of its strengths, there are a limited number of foreseeable threats to Amazon’s unstoppable march: Antitrust concern percolating in the U.S., and a proven strategy to replicate its U.S. success abroad. Amazon’s reputation as a job-creation machine has helped keep U.S. politicians in check so far. A public-bidding process to be home to Amazon’s second headquarters has only further motivated policy makers to be nice. And investors now mostly shrug off Twitter broadsides from the company’s highest-profile critic, U.S. President Donald Trump.
The Indian rupee continues to fall sharply against the dollar in recent days, despite gains by other Asian peers, as investors worried about the pace of its fall and a lack of strong intervention by the central bank.
The rupee is Asia’s worst-performing currency this year, sliding 11% and setting a string of record lows. On September 5th, it dropped past 72 a dollar, reaching a record 72.1050. The pace of the decline has analysts scrambling to revise forecasts, with Mizuho changing its year-end estimate to 70.50 from an earlier prediction of 68.80.
Amid a rise in global crude oil prices, geopolitical uncertainty and a decline in the rupee, fuel prices across the country have witnessed a sharp spike over the last one month. Brent, the benchmark of half the world’s oil including India’s, has jumped by more than 70% from a low set in the middle of last year. The commodity is trading at $77.45 per barrel, a whisker below a three-year high of $80.50 reached in May.
Rising oil prices will probably see India’s current-account deficit widen to 2.6% of gross domestic product this financial year, from 1.5% a year earlier, according to Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd.
Brent crude trading at around $78 per barrel and the rupee trading below 71 to a dollar are a growing concern for the economy, affecting the country’s import bill and the current account deficit. A look at the fast-changing external environment and its impact on the domestic consumer and the Indian economy:
India’s currency had its worst month in three years in August as crude rallied on speculation sanctions on Iran will shrink global supplies. The crude import bill for the world’s fastest-growing oil user surged 76% in July from a year earlier to $10.2 billion. That pushed up the trade deficit to $18 billion, the most in five years.
“Dollar demand for crude heading into Iran sanctions is not helping with rupee pressures,” said Vishnu Varathan, head of economics and strategy at Mizuho Bank Ltd. in Singapore. “Demand for dollars is large, lumpy, and has been on an upward trend given the confluence of rising oil prices and actual demand pick-up for oil.”
Weakness in the rupee has fueled speculation the Reserve Bank of India may revisit a policy employed in 2013 of opening a foreign-exchange swap window to meet the entire daily dollar requirements of the nation’s oil-marketing companies.
The RBI using this route will immediately remove about $600 million a day of demand from the foreign-exchange market, according to a note from Kotak Mahindra Bank. It will help reduce currency volatility but also push down reserves, it said.
For now, state-owned refiners Indian Oil Corp., Bharat Petroleum Corp. and Hindustan Oil Corp. aren’t worried about central bank interference. The RBI hasn’t asked them to defer or stagger their dollar purchases for oil payments, an Indian Oil official familiar with the matter said last month.
As many as 15 people, including seven Indians, and five India-based call centers have been indicted in a multimillion-dollar scam that defrauded over 2,000 U.S. citizens, resulting in over $5.5 million in losses, the Department of Justice said on Friday.
The scam involved call center operators who impersonated officials from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) or individuals offering payday loans while calling potential victims, using information obtained from data brokers and other sources, U.S. Attorney Byung J. Pak said.
Later, they threatened the victims with arrest, imprisonment, or fines for failing to pay taxes or penalties to the government, the Justice Department said in a statement.
Seven individuals were arrested on Thursday in the U.S. Seven co-conspirators and five call-centers based in Ahmedabad were also charged for their alleged involvement.
Network of centers.
The indictment alleged that the accused were involved in a sophisticated scheme organised between 2012 and 2016 by co-conspirators in India, including a network of call centres in Ahmedabad. “IRS and payday loan phone schemes seek to profit by exploiting U.S. citizens, including the most vulnerable members of our community,” Mr. Pak said.
The operators would threaten potential victims with arrest, imprisonment, or fines if they did not pay taxes or penalties to the government, the indictment said. If the victims agreed to pay, the call centres would turn to a network of U.S.-based co-conspirators to liquidate and launder the extorted funds. The indicted call centres are Excellent Solutions BPO, ADN Infotech Pvt. Ltd, Infoace BPO Solutions Pvt. Ltd, Adore Infosource, Inc and Zurik BPO Services Pvt. Ltd.
Warren Buffett is gearing up to invest in India’s top mobile payments firm. The renowned investor’s company, Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA), is set to pick up a stake in Paytm, a source familiar with the deal told CNNMoney on Monday.
The two companies have been discussing for several months an investment of about 25 billion rupees ($360 million) that would value Paytm at around $10 billion, the source said, adding that the deal could be announced as soon as this week.
Paytm declined to comment, while Berkshire Hathaway did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.
Buffett’s first investment in an Indian company will see him enter a fast-growing market where some of Silicon Valley’s top players are already looking to make a mark.
“There is a lot of traction,” said DD Mishra, a research director at Gartner. “This market is going to be very competitive, and you need deeper pockets to survive for a long time,” he added.
Indians love to do business in cash, and most transactions in the country are still conducted in rupee notes and coins.
But Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s shock decision to ban 86% of India’s cash in November 2016 gave a big boost to online wallets such as Paytm, which signed up around 10 million new users within a month.
It is the market leader in mobile payments, with more than 300 million users, and has also started an online retail platform called Paytm Mall to take on Amazon (AMZN) and Flipkart, which was bought by Walmart (WMT) earlier this year.
India’s large young population with growing disposable incomes make it a hugely promising market for mobile payments and online shopping, said Kenny Liew, an analyst at research firm Fitch Solutions.
“This will be translated into more spending, leading to increased volumes of e-commerce sales and payments for Paytm to capture,” Liew added.
Buffett has spoken previously about his bullishness on India, saying in an interview with a local TV channel last year that the country had “incredible” potential as a market.
“If you tell me a wonderful company in India that might be available for sale, I’ll be there tomorrow,” he said.
An investment by the Oracle of Omaha, as he is popularly known, will make people sit up and take notice. Berkshire Hathaway will join Chinese tech giant Alibaba (BABA) and Japanese conglomerate SoftBank (SFTBF) as big name investors in Paytm.
“Given that Buffett is a fundamental investor and most of his investments last at least a decade, it is an unambiguous signal that Paytm would be relevant over such a long time horizon,” said Vaidyanathan Krishnamurthy, a professor of finance at the Indian School of Business.
“The fact that he is investing in an Indian tech company is a big moment for all Indian tech startups.”
And for good reason: A shocking 21 percent of Americans have nothing at all saved for the future, and another 10 percent have less than $5,000 tucked away, the study finds.
That means about a third of Americans have only a few thousand dollars, or less, put away for their golden years.
Of course, some people are more prepared: A quarter report having $200,000 or more stashed away, while 16 percent have between $75,000 and $199,999. But overall, Northwestern Mutual found that Americans with retirement savings have an average of $84,821 saved, which is far from enough. Experts typically recommend trying to accumulate at least $1 million.
Meanwhile, a new survey from Bankrate finds that 13 percent of Americans are saving less for retirement than they were last year and offers insight into why much of the population is lagging behind. The most popular response survey participants gave for why they didn’t put more away in the past year was a drop, or no change, in income.
“That’s consistent with federal data that show real wages have barely budged in decades,” Bankrate reports. According to the Pew Research Center, the average paycheck has the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago.
Day-to-day costs continue to soar, and salaries don’t go as far as they once did to cover the necessities, author and executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project Alissa Quart tells CNBC Make It. That makes it more difficult to set aside money for the future.
The good news is there are ways to make progress without feeling cash-strapped or committing to any drastic lifestyle changes. Here are three effective strategies:
Start ASAP. The sooner you begin putting your money to work, the less you’ll have to save each month to reach your goals, thanks to the power of compound interest.
If you start at age 23, for instance, you only have to save about $14 a day to be a millionaire by age 67. That’s assuming a 6 percent average annual investment return. If you start at age 35, on the other hand, you’d have to set aside $30 a day to reach seven-figure status by age 67.
Automate. If you automate your retirement savings — meaning, you have a portion of your paycheck sent directly to a retirement account, such as a 401(k), Roth IRA or traditional IRA — you’ll never even see the money you’re setting aside and will learn to live without it.
Check online to see if you can set up “auto-increase,” which allows you to choose the percentage you want to raise your contributions by and how often. This way, you won’t forget to up your contributions or talk yourself out of setting aside a larger chunk when the time comes.
If you can’t find the feature online, call your retirement plan provider to find out what’s possible.
Bank any surplus money. Whenever you come across any extra cash — a bonus, birthday check or small windfall — rather than blowing it on a new pair of shoes or a vacation, send at least a chunk of it straight to savings. To resist the temptation to spend any surplus money, deposit it right away, so you never even see it.
On the face of it, these should be heady times for American workers. U.S. unemployment is as low as it’s been in nearly two decades (3.9% as of July) and the nation’s private-sector employers have been adding jobs for 101 straight months – 19.5 million since the Great Recession-related cuts finally abated in early 2010, and 1.5 million just since the beginning of the year.
But despite the strong labor market, wage growth has lagged economists’ expectations. In fact, despite some ups and downs over the past several decades, today’s real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And what wage gains there have been have mostly flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers.
Average hourly earnings for non-management private-sector workers in July were $22.65, up 3 cents from June and 2.7% above the average wage from a year earlier, according to data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s in line with average wage growth over the past five years: Year-over-year growth has mostly ranged between 2% and 3% since the beginning of 2013. But in the years just before the 2007-08 financial collapse, average hourly earnings often increased by around 4% year-over-year. And during the high-inflation years of the 1970s and early 1980s, average wages commonly jumped 7%, 8% or even 9% year-over-year.
After adjusting for inflation, however, today’s average hourly wage has just about the same purchasing power it did in 1978, following a long slide in the 1980s and early 1990s and bumpy, inconsistent growth since then. In fact, in real terms average hourly earnings peaked more than 45 years ago: The $4.03-an-hour rate recorded in January 1973 had the same purchasing power that $23.68 would today.
A similar measure – the “usual weekly earnings” of employed, full-time wage and salary workers – tells much the same story, albeit over a shorter time period. In seasonally adjusted current dollars, median usual weekly earnings rose from $232 in the first quarter of 1979 (when the data series began) to $879 in the second quarter of this year, which might sound like a lot. But in real, inflation-adjusted terms, the median has barely budged over that period: That $232 in 1979 had the same purchasing power as $840 in today’s dollars.
Meanwhile, wage gains have gone largely to the highest earners. Since 2000, usual weekly wages have risen 3% (in real terms) among workers in the lowest tenth of the earnings distribution and 4.3% among the lowest quarter. But among people in the top tenth of the distribution, real wages have risen a cumulative 15.7%, to $2,112 a week – nearly five times the usual weekly earnings of the bottom tenth ($426).
Cash money isn’t the only way workers are compensated, of course – health insurance, retirement-account contributions, tuition reimbursement, transit subsidies and other benefits all can be part of the package. But wages and salaries are the biggest (about 70%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics) and most visible component of employee compensation.
Wage stagnation has been a subject of much economic analysis and commentary, though perhaps predictably there’s little agreement about what’s causing it (or, indeed, whether the BLS data adequately capture what’s going on). One theory is that rising benefit costs – particularly employer-provided health insurance – may be constraining employers’ ability or willingness to raise cash wages. According to BLS-generated compensation cost indices, total benefit costs for all civilian workers have risen an inflation-adjusted 22.5% since 2001 (when the data series began), versus 5.3% for wage and salary costs.
Other factors that have been suggested include the continuing decline of labor unions; lagging educational attainmentrelative to other countries; noncompete clauses and other restrictions on job-switching; a large pool of potential workers who are outside the formally defined labor force, neither employed nor seeking work; and broad employment declines in manufacturing and production sectors and a consequent shift toward job growth in low-wage industries.
Sluggish and uneven wage growth has been cited as a key factor behind widening income inequality in the United States. A recent Pew Research Center report, based on an analysis of household income data from the Census Bureau, found that in 2016 Americans in the top tenth of the income distribution earned 8.7 times as much as Americans in the bottom tenth ($109,578 versus $12,523). In 1970, when the analysis period began, the top tenth earned 6.9 times as much as the bottom tenth ($63,512 versus $9,212).
The question being asked these is “why is the rupee falling against the dollar”. The answer is very simple. The demand for American dollars was more than that of the Indian rupee leading to the rupee rapidly losing value against the dollar.
This situation is likely to continue in the days to come with the demand for dollars in India being more than their supply. And this will have a huge impact on the dollar-rupee exchange rate, which almost crossed 70 rupees to a dollar in recent weeks.
Collapse of Indian rupee to a lifetime low of 69.10 against the U.S. dollar will not give an extra edge to domestic exporters, but provide a level-playing field in global market, FIEO said.
The US dollar has appreciated against almost all the major currencies of the world in this year so far. The Dollar Index, which measures the greenback’s strength against major currencies of the world has appreciated over 3% this year to 95.25 level, compared to 92.25 level at the beginning of this year.
Concerns of a trade-war like situation between the US and other major economies such as China and the European Union also kept sentiments weak across markets. Foreign investors have been net sellers of Indian equities and debts this year so far putting pressure on the rupee.
India being a net importer of crude oil, rising crude oil price is not good for the country. Analysts believe this will increase India’s trade gap with other countries and deplete the country’s forex reserves resulting in further weakness in rupee.
A study showed that after currency depreciation people are grappling with inflated prices of the commodities which they use in their day to day life and the change in their spending and savings trends, a falling rupee will pinch students who are planning to go abroad or are presently studying outside India.
Federation of Indian Export Organizations (FIEO) director general Ajay Sahai said that the development will not provide any additional support to exporters as currencies of other emerging economies, including China, too are depreciating. “It will provide a level playing field to our exporters. It will not provide the much needed support as India is not singled out,” he said.
India’s exports grew 20.18% to $28.86 billion in May — the highest in six months — even though trade deficit widened to a four- month high of $14.62 billion. The rupee had touched a lifetime low of 69.10 against the U.S. dollar as rising crude oil prices deepened concerns about India’s current account deficit and inflation dynamics.
Indian Americans enjoy the highest levels of income among various Asian ethnic groups in the U.S., but wide economic disparities exist within the community, noted the Pew Research Center in a report released last month.
The report, titled “Income Inequality in the U.S. Is Rising Most Rapidly Among Asians,” surveyed income levels of several Asian American ethnicities and found that Asians at the top 10 percent of incomes earned 10.7 times more than those at the bottom 10 percent.
The Pew report is one of a few such papers that disaggregate data for various Asian American communities. “Today, income inequality in the U.S. is greatest among Asians. From 1970 to 2016, the gap in the standard of living between Asians near the top and the bottom of the income ladder nearly doubled, and the distribution of income among Asians transformed from being one of the most equal to being the most unequal among America’s major racial and ethnic groups,” noted the authors of the study, Rakesh Kocchar, associate director of research at Pew Research Center; and Anthony Cilluffo, research assistant at the Pew Center.
Within the Indian American community, median household incomes vary widely, noted the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development, in its response to the report’s findings. For example, the organization noted, the median household income in San Jose, Calif., is $157,036 – where incomes are driven by the tech community – compared to $51,060 in Yuba City, Calif., where agriculture is the driver of the local economy. Education levels are also lower in Yuba City, said the organization, noting that Indian American residents of Yuba City come largely from a previous wave of migration, whereas Indian Americans in San Jose represent a new wave of migrants chosen largely for their technical skills.
Almost four million people of Indian origin live in the U.S., with a median household income of $100,000, noted the survey. About 7.5 percent of the community lives at or below the federal poverty level, defined as $30,750 for a family of four in 2017.
Sri Lankan Americans, with population numbers of about 60,000, have median household incomes at $74,000 with about nine percent of the community living in poverty.
More than half a million Pakistani Americans currently reside in the U.S., with a median household income of $66,000; 15.5 percent live in poverty, according to the report. Around 188,000 Bangladeshi Americans have a median household income of $49,800; almost one-quarter live at or below the federal poverty level. Similarly, Nepali Americans, who have a median household income of $43,900, also have almost a quarter of their community living in poverty.
Burmese Americans have the highest level of poverty among Asian Americans, with one out of three living at or below the federal poverty line. The median household income is $36,000, according to the Pew report. About 72 percent of Indian Americans hold bachelor’s degrees or higher, compared with just nine percent of people from Bhutan.
Seema Agnani, executive director of the nonprofit National CAPACD, said in a press statement: “The Pew Research Center’s report draws attention to the stark economic inequality in the AAPI population. The success of some of us has contributed to the marginalization of many of us.”
“We must challenge the dominant assumptions of our success, and we need to build solidarity within the AAPI community. We need to encourage the idea that successful AAPIs have a social responsibility to learn about, support, and lift up lower-income AAPIs who are unduly set back by the success of their community members,” said Agnani.
“Wealth that is dangerously inequitable is not sustainable and, thus, we all have a shared interest and benefit in lifting AAPIs living in poverty out of the margins,” she said.
It had become an article of investor faith on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley: Quarter after quarter, year after year, the world’s biggest technology companies would keep raking in new users and ever-higher revenue. And with that, their share prices would continue to march upward, sloughing off any stumbles.
Last month, that myth was shattered. And investors responded by hammering the stock of Facebook, one of the world’s most valuable companies. Shares of the social media giant fell 19 percent, wiping out roughly $120 billion of shareholder wealth, among the largest one-day destruction of market value that a company has ever suffered.
Investors dumped Facebook shares after the company reported disappointing second-quarter earnings, in which the company warned of a sharp slowdown in sales growth in coming quarters along with rising spending on security and privacy enhancements.
The sudden drop also amounted to a test of the giant, technology-focused stocks that have carried the market for much of the year. Before Facebook’s tumble, more than half the returns in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index this year had been provided by just a handful of technology-related stocks, said Savita Subramanian, an equity strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
In recent years, investors — from individual traders to the world’s largest hedge funds — have snapped up shares in these companies, which include Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google’s parent company, Alphabet. These tech giants were viewed as having nearly unassailable revenue streams that could deliver profit growth regardless of economic conditions.
As a result, their share prices soared. This year alone Apple is up some 15 percent; Alphabet has gained more than 20 percent; Amazon has surged more than 50 percent; and Netflix is up nearly 90 percent.
Facebook’s stumble suggests that some of these stocks — as well as the broader market — could be particularly vulnerable if their financial results don’t live up to investor expectations.
Until Thursday, Facebook was enjoying enormous gains. The stock was up more than 23 percent for the year, before it reported earnings after Wednesday’s close. By Thursday afternoon, all of its gains for the year had vanished.
It was the details of Facebook’s report that seemed to spook investors. The company’s quarterly revenue fell slightly short of meeting the expectations of Wall Street analysts. And executives warned that the company would invest heavily in privacy and security, and that revenue growth would most likely slow in coming quarters.
Still, Facebook’s sharp drop seems to have had a limited effect on the broader market, which has shown signs of gaining traction in recent weeks as companies largely reported strong second-quarter earnings.
It’s quite possible that Facebook’s shares could recover and continue to climb. In March, the company’s handling of user data in the Cambridge Analytica scandal contributed to a backlash against the size and reach of the biggest tech businesses and raised concerns that regulators may soon crack down on these firms. Shares of Facebook fell 17 percent in the days after news broke. By May, the company had erased those losses.
Still, the sheer size of Facebook’s fall on Thursday became a focus for investors. The decline in Facebook’s market value was roughly equivalent to the entire value of some of the country’s best-known companies, including McDonald’s, Nike and the industrial conglomerate 3M.
There are few examples of single-day losses so large. In September 2000, as the tech stock boom turned to bust, the chip maker Intel warned that its sales could slow, sending its stock price down by more than 20 percent. The rout knocked $91 billion off its market value in a day. Adjusted for inflation, that loss would be more than $130 billion in 2018 dollars, greater than the value Facebook lost on a single day last month. But given the vast market value of today’s tech giants, and the fact that 20 percent declines in share prices are not unheard-of, the size of the losses shouldn’t be surprising.
Apple has become the first US company with a market cap of over $1 trillion. This follows a jump in its stock after reporting strong Q3 earnings that saw the iPhone maker surpass both its own projections and analysts’ estimates, while also making a strong forecast for its upcoming Q4 earnings.
Apple hit the $1 trillion mark early morning on August 2nd when its stock crossed $207.05 per share at 11:48am ET (the stock has since dropped back down slightly). Given the volatile nature of the market, however, it’s possible Apple may not stay a $1 trillion company for very long, or it could bounce back and forth over the $1 trillion mark in the coming days. It technically also isn’t the first to hit $1 trillion, either — PetroChina briefly reached $1 trillion back in 2007, although the stock soon fell below that mark.
“Apple’s $1 trillion cap is equal to about 5 percent of the total gross domestic product of the United States in 2018,” said David Kass, professor of finance at the University of Maryland. “That puts this company in perspective.”
Apple closed Thursday above the $1 trillion mark, finishing the day up 2.92 percent at a share price of $207.39. The price gave the stock a market value of $1,001,678,000,000 — or $1.002 trillion rounded up
But for all intents and purposes, Apple is the first US-based (and, for now, the only) trillion-dollar company on the market. It likely won’t be there alone for long, though: Amazon is also on the verge of hitting the $1 trillion mark after its own positive Q3 results.
Of course, all of this is an arbitrary milestone based on humans’ general tendency to put more weight on nice-looking round numbers as some kind of goal. There’s really no practical difference between Apple’s worth of $999 billion and $1 trillion since it’s still an almost impossibly wealthy and influential company beyond the comprehension of individual people.
Apple is among the most widely held stocks in the world. It makes more money and pays its owners — the shareholders — more than any other public enterprise on the planet.
Because of its size and value, the health of Apple ripples through the U.S. economy and its markets. It pays dividends to tens of millions of investors who own Apple stock directly or indirectly, from pension funds to individuals.
“It’s probably the most popular equity investment anywhere,” Kass said, “and as it reaches new heights, it is taking consumers, investors and others along with it.”
If you invested $10,000 in Apple when it first sold publicly traded stock at its initial public offering price of $22 in December 1980, it would now be worth around $6.3 million, including reinvested dividends.
A global trade war has broken out. The United States fired the first salvo and there has been retaliation by the European Union, Canada, China and even India. Tariffs on certain imported goods have been increased in a tit-for-tat reaction.
Analysts see it as a limited war in the understanding that Donald Trump is all for “free-trade”. But this view denies the fact that a tectonic shift is taking place in the world. It is a war for ascendency to global leadership; a contest between the US and China.
China is heaving its might on the world. President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative is an open call for its global influence. In July 2017, China launched the ambitious plan to invest in the technology of the future—artificial intelligence.
There are dark (unconfirmed) whispers about how it is going about acquiring many new-age technologies by rolling over western companies operating in vast markets.
The last century belonged to the US and Europe with Russia as the communist outlier. China became mighty all because of the emergence of the free trade regime in the world. Just some 35-odd years ago, it was behind the iron curtain.
But then the World Trade Organization (WTO) was born in January 1995. China’s trade boomed. It took over the world’s manufacturing jobs. India, too, found its place by servicing outsourced businesses like telemarketing. “Shanghaied” and “Bangalored” entered the lexicon—as jobs (and pollution) moved continents. This way, globalization fulfilled its purpose to usher in a new era of world prosperity. Or so, we thought.
Instead, globalization has made the world more complicated and convoluted. In early 1990s, when the discussions on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) were at its peak, there was a clear North-South divide.
The then-developed world pushed for opening up of trade. It wanted markets and protection through rules on “fair” trade and intellectual property. The then developing world was worried what the free trade regime would do to its nascent and weak industrial economies.
More importantly, there were fears of what these new open trade rules would do to its farmers, who would have to compete with the disproportionately subsidised farmers of the developed world.
In 1999 tensions flared up at the WTO ministerial meet in Seattle. By this time, reality of globalisation had dawned and so it was citizens of the rich world who protested for labour rights, worried about outsourcing of their jobs and environmental abuses.
But these violent protests were crushed. The next decade was lost in the financial crisis. The new winners told the old losers that “all was well”.
Today Trump has joined the ranks of the Leftist Seattle protesters, while India and China are the new defenders of free trade. The latter in fact want more, much more of it.
But again, is it so straightforward? All these arrangements are built on the refusal to acknowledge the crisis of employment. The first phase of globalisation led to some displacement of labour and this is what Trump is griping about.
But the fact is that this phase of globalisation has only meant war between the old elite (middle-classes in the world of trade and consumerism) and the new elite. It has not been long enough or deep enough to destroy the foundations of the livelihoods of the vast majority of the poor engaged in farming. But it is getting there.
But this is where the real impact of globalisation will be felt. Global agricultural trade remains distorted and deeply contentious. The trade agreements targeted basics like procurement of foodgrains by governments to withstand scarcity and the offer of minimum support price to farmers.
Right now, the Indian government is making the right noises that it will stand by its farmers. But we will not be able to balance this highly imbalanced trade regime if we don’t recognise that employment is the real crisis.
It is time that this round of trade war should be on the need for livelihood opportunities. Global trade talks must discuss employment not just industry. It must value labour and not goods.
This is what is at the core of the insecurity in the world. It is not about trade or finance. It is about the biggest losers: us, the people and the planet. The link to the original article follows: https://www.downtoearth.org.in/
Unchecked climate change will dent India’s GDP by 2.8 per cent and depress the living standards of nearly half the population by 2050, with people living in the severe “hotspot” districts of central India, particularly Vidarbha, staring at the prospect of an over 10 per cent dip in economic consumption.
These are the findings of a first-of-its-kind World Bank study that quantifies the economic impacts of rising temperatures and changes in rainfall in different parts of the country due to global warming.
The study, South Asia’s Hotspots, released on Thursday, projects a 2 per cent fall in the country’s GDP — in terms of per capita consumption expenditures — even if the 2015 Paris Agreement goals of containing global warming to 2 degrees C is achieved.
A 2.8 per cent drop in GDP, as projected in the business-as-usual scenario, will cost India $1.1 trillion by 2050. The loss in the severe hotspot districts, with an average 9.8 per cent drop in consumption, will amount to over $400 billion, the study says. What is a climate hotspot?
It’s a location where gradual changes in average temperature and rainfall patterns will have negative impacts on living standards in future
The report finds that inland regions are at far higher risk of economic losses due to rising temperatures than coastal or hilly areas, with the maximum impact likely to be felt in central and north India. Among states, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh are projected to witness over 9 per cent dip in living standards by 2050 in the “carbon-intensive” or business-as-usual scenario.
The Vidarbha region, a ground-zero of farm distress in the country, is projected to be in the centre of climate-related misery as well. Seven of the 10 major “hotspot” districts mentioned in the report, are in Vidarbha. In each of these districts, unchecked climate change could led to over 11 per cent dip in living standards by 2050.
“Temperature rise is a slow-moving disaster that’s not talked about much,” said economist Muthukumara Mani, the lead author of the study. “A lot of focus of climate change studies is on extreme events so people tend to ignore these gradual changes happening for the last 50-60 years.”
The effects of temperature rise could be substantial, with implications for agricultural productivity, health, migration and other factors, says the report. By 2050, annual average temperatures in India are estimated to increase 1-2 degrees C under the climate-sensitive scenario (where action is taken to curb emissions) and 1.5-3 degrees C under the carbon-intensive scenario. The study analysed climate data in combination with household surveys to arrive at how changes in average weather are likely to affect living standards. It found that nearly 600 million people in India today live at places that will become moderate or severe hotspots by 2050 under the unchecked climate-change scenario.
“Our methodology has been extensively peer-reviewed, both inside and outside the World Bank. We are very confident of the robustness of the analysis,” Mani said.
The study has drawn up hotspot maps of India, 2050, based on both the carbon-intensive and climate-sensitive scenarios. The carbon-intensive scenario shows far more severe hotspots, places likely to see an over 8 per cent dip in living standards, underlining the huge economic losses India stands to avoid if the world takes action on GHGs.
“Our work points the way for policymakers. They can choose to invest in areas that are more impacted by warming and make best use of their resources for climate change,” explained Mani.
Indra Nooyi is stepping down as chief executive officer of food and beverage giant PepsiCo Inc., handing the reins to a top lieutenant in a transition that will draw attention to the dearth of prominent female CEOs in corporate America.
Nooyi, 62, will leave the role in October and remain chairman until early 2019. Ramon Laguarta, 54, who has been a candidate to take over since a promotion last year to president, will be just the sixth CEO in the 53-year history of the company.
Nooyi, who is from India, is the first foreign-born CEO of Pepsi and the first woman to lead the chips-and-soda behemoth, whose revenue topped $63 billion last year. Her departure thins the ranks of female CEOs running S&P 500 companies and comes at a time when Pepsi’s North American beverage unit is stagnating amid a general decline in soda consumption. In 24 years at Pepsi, including 12 as chief executive, she has helped the Frito-Lay unit grow in a challenging industry and added healthier drinks and snacks to a portfolio that includes Cheetos and Mountain Dew.
Nooyi attended graduate school at Yale University and joined Purchase, New York-based Pepsi in 1994 as head of corporate strategy, rising to the CEO job in 2006. At the time only a handful of women ran major U.S. companies, and there are still fewer than 30 female CEOs in the S&P Nooyi faced down activist investor Nelson Peltz, repelling a bid to break up the company, and has guided Pepsi through a tricky stretch as shifts in how U.S. consumers eat and shop have bedeviled the largest food and beverage companies in the world.
“Indra’s legacy is that she’s figured out in a difficult environment that she could run a great company and drive great results and do good at the same time, while having long-lasting impact as a leader and global icon,” said Blair Effron, co-founder of Centerview Partners, an investment bank and advisory firm that’s worked with a range of consumer giants including Pepsi.
As she ponders her next chapter, Nooyi said she’ll possibly take a vacation, in addition to watching the New York Yankees baseball team, and, she quipped, “listen to some music, take a walk in the woods.” She hasn’t thought through potential next steps, but at a time when global progress on promoting more women to CEO positions appears to have stalled, she plans to help develop more talent to ensure that women are represented in the top ranks of corporate America.
“I think people like me, after we leave privileged CEO jobs, I don’t think we can go silent,” she said. “We have to keep fighting the good fight to develop women, to mentor them, to support them, so that we can get more highly qualified women — and there’s plenty of them — into the boardroom, into C suites and into the ultimate CEO job. My job is in fact just beginning once I leave PepsiCo because I can do things now that I was constrained to do when I was CEO of the company.”
Like many CEOs in a divisive political era, Nooyi has found herself a part of political discussions. She described herself at a conference as a supporter of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election but congratulated Donald Trump for his victory and was part of his short-lived business advisory council.
During an era when a businessman occupies the White House and corporate leaders including Mark Cuban and Howard Schultz are mentioned as potential presidential candidates, Nooyi said she doesn’t see a future for herself in politics.
“I think there are business leaders who like politics and there are business leaders who’d be lousy at politics,” she said. “I happen to be in the second group, and so I just want to make sure that whatever I can do behind the scenes to help any cause, I will — that makes sense for me. But politics no, not for me.”
“I’ve had a wonderful time being CEO, but at some point you sit back and say, look, it’s a responsible move to effect an orderly transition and to have somebody else take over the leadership of this company,” she said in an interview. “Being a CEO requires strong legs and I feel like I ran two legs of a relay race and I want somebody else with nice strong legs and sharp eyes to come and lead this company.”
Indian Americans enjoy the highest levels of income among various Asian ethnic groups in the U.S., but wide economic disparities exist within the community, noted the Pew Research Center in a report released July 12.
The report, titled “Income Inequality in the U.S. Is Rising Most Rapidly Among Asians,” surveyed income levels of several Asian American ethnicities and found that Asians at the top 10 percent of incomes earned 10.7 times more than those at the bottom 10 percent.
The Pew report is one of a few such papers that disaggregate data for various Asian American communities. “Today, income inequality in the U.S. is greatest among Asians. From 1970 to 2016, the gap in the standard of living between Asians near the top and the bottom of the income ladder nearly doubled, and the distribution of income among Asians transformed from being one of the most equal to being the most unequal among America’s major racial and ethnic groups,” noted the authors of the study, Rakesh Kocchar, associate director of research at Pew Research Center; and Anthony Cilluffo, research assistant at the Pew Center.
Within the Indian American community, median household incomes vary widely, noted the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development, in its response to the report’s findings. For example, the organization noted, the median household income in San Jose, Calif., is $157,036 – where incomes are driven by the tech community – compared to $51,060 in Yuba City, Calif., where agriculture is the driver of the local economy. Education levels are also lower in Yuba City, said the organization, noting that Indian American residents of Yuba City come largely from a previous wave of migration, whereas Indian Americans in San Jose represent a new wave of migrants chosen largely for their technical skills.
Almost four million people of Indian origin live in the U.S., with a median household income of $100,000, noted the survey. About 7.5 percent of the community lives at or below the federal poverty level, defined as $30,750 for a family of four in 2017.
Sri Lankan Americans, with population numbers of about 60,000, have median household incomes at $74,000 with about nine percent of the community living in poverty.
More than half a million Pakistani Americans currently reside in the U.S., with a median household income of $66,000; 15.5 percent live in poverty, according to the report. Around 188,000 Bangladeshi Americans have a median household income of $49,800; almost one-quarter live at or below the federal poverty level. Similarly, Nepali Americans, who have a median household income of $43,900, also have almost a quarter of their community living in poverty.
Burmese Americans have the highest level of poverty among Asian Americans, with one out of three living at or below the federal poverty line. The median household income is $36,000, according to the Pew report. About 72 percent of Indian Americans hold bachelor’s degrees or higher, compared with just nine percent of people from Bhutan.
Seema Agnani, executive director of the nonprofit National CAPACD, said in a press statement: “The Pew Research Center’s report draws attention to the stark economic inequality in the AAPI population. The success of some of us has contributed to the marginalization of many of us.”
“We must challenge the dominant assumptions of our success, and we need to build solidarity within the AAPI community. We need to encourage the idea that successful AAPIs have a social responsibility to learn about, support, and lift up lower-income AAPIs who are unduly set back by the success of their community members,” said Agnani.
“Wealth that is dangerously inequitable is not sustainable and, thus, we all have a shared interest and benefit in lifting AAPIs living in poverty out of the margins,” she said.
It had become an article of investor faith on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley: Quarter after quarter, year after year, the world’s biggest technology companies would keep raking in new users and ever-higher revenue. And with that, their share prices would continue to march upward, sloughing off any stumbles.
This week, that myth was shattered. And investors responded Thursday by hammering the stock of Facebook, one of the world’s most valuable companies. Shares of the social media giant fell 19 percent, wiping out roughly $120 billion of shareholder wealth, among the largest one-day destruction of market value that a company has ever suffered.
Investors dumped Facebook shares after the company reported disappointing second-quarter earnings, in which the company warned of a sharp slowdown in sales growth in coming quarters along with rising spending on security and privacy enhancements.
The sudden drop also amounted to a test of the giant, technology-focused stocks that have carried the market for much of the year. Before Facebook’s tumble, more than half the returns in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index this year had been provided by just a handful of technology-related stocks, said Savita Subramanian, an equity strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
In recent years, investors — from individual traders to the world’s largest hedge funds — have snapped up shares in these companies, which include Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google’s parent company, Alphabet. These tech giants were viewed as having nearly unassailable revenue streams that could deliver profit growth regardless of economic conditions.
As a result, their share prices soared. This year alone Apple is up some 15 percent; Alphabet has gained more than 20 percent; Amazon has surged more than 50 percent; and Netflix is up nearly 90 percent.
Facebook’s stumble suggests that some of these stocks — as well as the broader market — could be particularly vulnerable if their financial results don’t live up to investor expectations.
Until Thursday, Facebook was enjoying enormous gains. The stock was up more than 23 percent for the year, before it reported earnings after Wednesday’s close. By Thursday afternoon, all of its gains for the year had vanished.
It was the details of Facebook’s report that seemed to spook investors. The company’s quarterly revenue fell slightly short of meeting the expectations of Wall Street analysts. And executives warned that the company would invest heavily in privacy and security, and that revenue growth would most likely slow in coming quarters.
Still, Facebook’s sharp drop seems to have had a limited effect on the broader market, which has shown signs of gaining traction in recent weeks as companies largely reported strong second-quarter earnings.
It’s quite possible that Facebook’s shares could recover and continue to climb. In March, the company’s handling of user data in the Cambridge Analytica scandal contributed to a backlash against the size and reach of the biggest tech businesses and raised concerns that regulators may soon crack down on these firms. Shares of Facebook fell 17 percent in the days after news broke. By May, the company had erased those losses.
Still, the sheer size of Facebook’s fall on Thursday became a focus for investors. The decline in Facebook’s market value was roughly equivalent to the entire value of some of the country’s best-known companies, including McDonald’s, Nike and the industrial conglomerate 3M.
There are few examples of single-day losses so large. In September 2000, as the tech stock boom turned to bust, the chip maker Intel warned that its sales could slow, sending its stock price down by more than 20 percent. The rout knocked $91 billion off its market value in a day. Adjusted for inflation, that loss would be more than $130 billion in 2018 dollars, greater than the value Facebook lost on Thursday.
But given the vast market value of today’s tech giants, and the fact that 20 percent declines in share prices are not unheard-of, the size of the losses shouldn’t be surprising.
Apple is now worth more than $950 billion. Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft are not far behind, with market values of more than $800 billion. Even after the drop Thursday, Facebook is the fifth-largest publicly traded company, by market value, at more than $500 billion.
State-owned carrier Air India has sought Rs 2121 crore ($309 million) of additional equity from the government for the fiscal year 2018-19 to make pending payments to its vendors, a source at the airline told Reuters on Monday.
Air India owes about Rs 1800 crore to its vendors, including lessors and banks that have demanded payment from the beleaguered airline, after the government’s unsuccessful efforts to find a buyer for its 76% stake.
The airline expects to receive the additional equity within the next 7 to 10 days after which it will be able to clear all dues, the source said, adding that this is above the 6.5 billion rupees it has already received for the year.
India last month shelved a plan to sell a majority stake in Air India due to lack of interest from bidders, in the latest setback in its ambitious efforts to rescue the ailing airline that has survived for years using taxpayer funds.
The government will continue to support the loss-making airline’s financial requirements while it works on alternatives, Junior Civil Aviation Minister Jayant Sinha had said, without giving a specific timeline for a new plan.
Three banks and two aircraft leasing firms have served default notices on Air India over the last few weeks, the Business Standard newspaper reported earlier on Monday, raising concerns about the state-owned carrier’s finances and credit-worthiness.
San Francisco, United States-based Wells Fargo Trust Services and UAE’s state-owned Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE) have sent letters of demand for pending rental payments, the newspaper said, citing sources
A DAE spokesman told Reuters that they were not owed $10 million by Alliance Air, and that they had not issued a notice of default to Alliance. Alliance Air is a unit of Air India that operates regional flights to smaller towns and cities in India. Wells Fargo could not be reached outside usual US business hours.
Three lenders from a 22-bank consortium have also written to Air India raising concerns that the company is turning into a non-performing asset, Business Standard said. The three banks are Standard Chartered Bank, Dena Bank and Bank of India Ltd.
The airline has received a notice from banks for non-payment of dues that is being looked into by the government, the source confirmed. A Standard Chartered spokesman in India declined to comment. Bank of India and Dena Bank did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
According to the late cliometrician Angus Madison and other economic historians, the great divergence between the global North and South, between developed and developing countries, began around five centuries ago, from the beginning of the European, particularly Iberian colonial conquests.
From about two centuries ago, around the time of the Industrial Revolution, divergence accelerated with uneven productivity advances. During the 20th century, national level inequalities went down in many developed countries in the period after the First World War until around the 1970s with the rise of labour, peasant and other popular mobilizations.
Inequality, not only at the national level, but also at the international level, seems to affect the pattern of aggregate demand, particularly in developing countries, which in turn influences future investment and growth prospects and patterns.
Thus, the immediate post-Second World War period saw relatively high growth during what some Anglophone economists call the ‘Golden Age’, due to a combination of Keynesian policies at the national level in developed economies, and partially successful development policies in many newly-independent countries of Asia and Africa. However, this eventually came to an end in the 1970s for a variety of reasons.
Recent trends
Since then, inequalities have begun to grow again at the national level in many countries, but international divergence has declined in more recent decades. This recent convergence is due to significantly accelerated growth in some developing countries as expansion in some developed countries slowed. Among developing countries, growth was initially largely confined to East Asia and, to a lesser extent, South Asia, bypassing much of the rest of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Africa suffered a quarter-century of stagnation from the late 1970s until the beginning of this century when commodity prices rose once again and China began investing in the continent. There was at least one lost decade in Latin America in the 1980s, and arguably, a second one for many on the continent in the following decade.
Such variation needs to be recognized. The recent convergence overall obscures very mixed phenomena of greater national-level inequalities in many economies, but also some international convergence due to more rapid growth in some major developing economies.
However, this convergence has begun to slow again, following the collapse of commodity prices since late 2014. This initially began with petroleum, but eventually affected almost all other commodities, especially mineral prices, slowing the decade of growth in Africa.
Divergence
The recent phenomena which many term globalization are often linked to international economic liberalization, but the strengthening of property rights has also been important. This has not only consolidated traditional property rights, but also extended property rights in novel ways, e.g., ostensibly to clarify supposedly ambiguous entitlements.
These have involved not only national legislation, but also free trade agreements and investment treaties at the international level, e.g., to consolidate ostensible asset-related entitlements, including so called intellectual property rights.
While few economic commentators may openly advocate increasing inequality, or blatantly espouse divergence, the consequences of many policies and positions associated with the conventional wisdom tend to increase divergence. For example, agricultural trade liberalization has undermined productive potential as only rich countries can afford subsidies, which most developing countries cannot afford.
For a long time, Africa used to be a net food exporter until the 1980s. Since then, it has become a net food importer. With trade liberalization, Africa was supposed to realize its true potential. Instead, Africa has lost much of its existing productive potential, not only in manufacturing, but also in agriculture.
To make matters worse, African farmers cannot compete with subsidized food imports from the EU and the USA. For example, as US consumers have a strong preference for chicken breasts, wings and legs from the US are not only flooding the Americas, but increasingly, Africa and Asia.
It is also important to consider the prospects for possible convergence in the long term due to the increased availability and affordability of capital. Besides recent Chinese international financing initiatives, quantitative easing, other unconventional monetary policies, recycling of petrodollars and private East Asian capital, as well as novel, and often illicit international financial flows may transform the horizon of possibilities.
Not unlike the Cold War and the aftermath of 9/11, the resurgence of European ethno-populism in reaction to growing economically and politically driven immigration into developed Western economies has reminded the world of the squalid conditions still prevailing in much of the global South, especially in Africa.
Perhaps more importantly, geography, rather than class, is increasingly viewed by many as the major determinant of income and welfare levels, with vastly different living standards associated with location rather than educational qualifications, occupation or productivity.
Thus, without the prospect of rapid convergence, not only nationally between wealth classes, but also internationally between rich and poor nations, the failure of economic globalization to deliver on its implicit promise of liberalizing cross-border human migration will haunt international relations, human rights and political liberalism for some time to come.
A global trade war has broken out. The United States fired the first salvo and there has been retaliation by the European Union, Canada, China and even India. Tariffs on certain imported goods have been increased in a tit-for-tat reaction.
Analysts see it as a limited war in the understanding that Donald Trump is all for “free-trade”. But this view denies the fact that a tectonic shift is taking place in the world. It is a war for ascendency to global leadership; a contest between the US and China.
China is heaving its might on the world. President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative is an open call for its global influence. In July 2017, China launched the ambitious plan to invest in the technology of the future—artificial intelligence.
There are dark (unconfirmed) whispers about how it is going about acquiring many new-age technologies by rolling over western companies operating in vast markets.
The last century belonged to the US and Europe with Russia as the communist outlier. China became mighty all because of the emergence of the free trade regime in the world. Just some 35-odd years ago, it was behind the iron curtain.
But then the World Trade Organization (WTO) was born in January 1995. China’s trade boomed. It took over the world’s manufacturing jobs. India, too, found its place by servicing outsourced businesses like telemarketing. “Shanghaied” and “Bangalored” entered the lexicon—as jobs (and pollution) moved continents. This way, globalization fulfilled its purpose to usher in a new era of world prosperity. Or so, we thought.
Instead, globalization has made the world more complicated and convoluted. In early 1990s, when the discussions on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) were at its peak, there was a clear North-South divide.
The then-developed world pushed for opening up of trade. It wanted markets and protection through rules on “fair” trade and intellectual property. The then developing world was worried what the free trade regime would do to its nascent and weak industrial economies.
More importantly, there were fears of what these new open trade rules would do to its farmers, who would have to compete with the disproportionately subsidised farmers of the developed world.
In 1999 tensions flared up at the WTO ministerial meet in Seattle. By this time, reality of globalisation had dawned and so it was citizens of the rich world who protested for labour rights, worried about outsourcing of their jobs and environmental abuses.
But these violent protests were crushed. The next decade was lost in the financial crisis. The new winners told the old losers that “all was well”.
Today Trump has joined the ranks of the Leftist Seattle protesters, while India and China are the new defenders of free trade. The latter in fact want more, much more of it.
But again, is it so straightforward? All these arrangements are built on the refusal to acknowledge the crisis of employment. The first phase of globalisation led to some displacement of labour and this is what Trump is griping about.
But the fact is that this phase of globalisation has only meant war between the old elite (middle-classes in the world of trade and consumerism) and the new elite. It has not been long enough or deep enough to destroy the foundations of the livelihoods of the vast majority of the poor engaged in farming. But it is getting there.
But this is where the real impact of globalisation will be felt. Global agricultural trade remains distorted and deeply contentious. The trade agreements targeted basics like procurement of foodgrains by governments to withstand scarcity and the offer of minimum support price to farmers.
Right now, the Indian government is making the right noises that it will stand by its farmers. But we will not be able to balance this highly imbalanced trade regime if we don’t recognise that employment is the real crisis.
It is time that this round of trade war should be on the need for livelihood opportunities. Global trade talks must discuss employment not just industry. It must value labour and not goods.
This is what is at the core of the insecurity in the world. It is not about trade or finance. It is about the biggest losers: us, the people and the planet. The link to the original article follows: https://www.downtoearth.org.in/
There are four Indian American-led companies that are among the World Economic Forum’s 2018 cohort of Technology Pioneers, that have been chosen among the group of 61 early-stage companies from around the world, including Cohesity, CognitiveScale, ThoughtSpot and Drive.ai.
The cohort of companies, according to WEF, are pioneering new technologies and innovations ranging from the use of artificial intelligence in drug discovery, the development of autonomous vehicles, advancing cybersecurity and reducing food waste, to applying blockchain to a decentralized engagement platform.
“Innovation comes from all corners of the earth and from a very diverse group of entrepreneurs, and with this selection we recognize that,” said Cheryl Martin, head of the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and member of the managing board at the World Economic Forum. “The next step is to help these pioneers bring their solutions to complex world-critical problems to global markets and to take action for the public good.”
In joining this community and the two-year journey where they become part of the forum’s initiatives, activities and events, they bring cutting-edge insights and novel perspectives to world-critical discussions, WEF said.
“Technology and start-ups are not just about computer software, consumer apps and social networks,” said Fulvia Montresor, head of Technology Pioneers at the World Economic Forum. “Technology Pioneers 2018 are tackling complex challenges such as environmental sustainability, efficient energy use and access to healthcare.”
Cohesity, founded in 2013 in San Jose, Calif., is led by founder and chief executive officer Mohit Aron. The company is an industry-leading platform for hyperconverged secondary storage solutions. Cohesity offers native copy data management on intelligent web-scale storage, end-to-end data protection, and in-place analytics, all on one data platform, WEF said.
“Cohesity is transforming the way organizations manage and extract value from their secondary applications and data by revolutionizing modern data center and cloud operations with a hyperconverged, web-scale, data platform,” Aron said in the company’s bio.
Aron was recently named a finalist in Ernst & Young’s U.S. Entrepreneur of the Year competition. The 2014-founded Austin, Texas-based CognitiveScale, led by chief executive Akshay Sabhikhi, is developing a new generation of augmented intelligence cloud software powered by artificial intelligence and blockchain technology.
“CognitiveScale pairs humans and machines to augment and extend human ingenuity. AI has the potential to transform the economy and society by unlocking human potential and creating new opportunities, and we are on a mission to make it happen,” Sabhikhi said in the company bio page on the WEF website.
It makes sense of unstructured data by emulating cognitive functions like perception, abstraction, reasoning and learning. It finds hidden meaning within all available data to ensure enterprises and their customers have the right answers to and advice for problems they want to solve, WEF said.
Drive.ai develops AI software for autonomous vehicles using deep learning. The Calif.-based company, founded in 2015 and led by CEO Sameep Tandon, designs retrofit kits that are integrated software and hardware solutions, which includes sensors such as radar, high-definition cameras and light detection and ranging, its bio said.
It has developed custom sensor locations enabling a vehicle to gain a full 360 degree understanding of its environment and enabling sensor redundancy to ensure safety.
Drive.ai’s custom sensor locations maintain high fidelity in all data collected as the vehicle drives autonomously and optimizes the performance in Drive.ai’s proprietary deep learning algorithms.
“Drive.ai uses artificial intelligence to create self-driving systems that improve the state of mobility today. We work with public and private partners to solve transportation challenges quickly and safely, with geofenced self-driving solutions,” Tandon said in the bio.
Founded in 2012, ThoughtSpot, a search and artificial intelligence-driven analytics platform, is based in Palo Alto, Calif. It was co-founded by Ajeet Singh, who serves as the company’s CEO.
ThoughtSpot is helping companies succeed in the digital era by putting the power of a thousand analysts in every business person’s hands, its bio said.
Businesses can take advantage of Google-like search to automatically analyze billions of rows of data and gain insights based on this data – all with a single click. The platform connects with any on-premise, cloud, big data or desktop data source, deploying 85 percent faster than legacy technologies.
“With ThoughtSpot’s search and AI-driven analytics, the world’s one billion knowledge workers each have the power of 1000 analysts in the palm of their hands, allowing them to search data in the same way they use Google to search the internet,” Singh said.
The newly selected Technology Pioneers will meet at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2018 in Tianjin, People’s Republic of China, on Sept. 18 to Sept. 20.
Some of them will also participate in the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2019 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, in January. As leaders of innovation, they will be supported by the Forum’s new Centre of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and contribute to fostering the innovation ecosystem and delivering critical mass to solve global challenges, WEF said.
Amazon.com’s stock market value reached $900 billion on Wednesday for the first time, marking a major milestone in its 21-year trajectory as a publicly listed company and threatening to dislodge Apple as Wall Street’s most valuable jewel.
After Jeff Bezos founded the online book-selling company in his garage in 1994, Amazon survived the dot-com crisis and then expanded across the retail industry, altering how consumers buy products and setting off a Darwinian struggle among brick-and-mortar stores.
After announcing on Wednesday that it sold more than $100 million products during its annual Prime Day sale, the Seattle, Washington company’s stock briefly touched $1,858.88, giving Amazon a stock market value of $902 billion. It later reversed, trading down 0.16% for the session.
Amazon’s stock has surged more than 57% in 2018, bringing its increase to over 123,000% since it listed on the Nasdaq in 1997. An investor who bought 1 share of Amazon for $18 in the IPO would now have an investment worth more than $22,200, including three stock splits in the 1990s.
Amazon, video streaming service Netflix and a handful of heavyweight technology companies have fueled Wall Street’s rally in recent years and they remain key parts of portfolio managers’ portfolios.
Apple replaced Exxon Mobil in late 2011 as the US company with the largest stock market value. The Silicon Valley company’s shares have risen 12 percent in 2018, bringing its stock market value to $935 billion.
The calculations for Apple and Amazon’s market capitalizations are based on the number of shares outstanding in their March-quarter reports. Amazon has increased its share count by over 1 million shares per quarter in recent years, and if it continued that in the June quarter, its stock market value may already have exceeded $900 billion.
Amazon reports its results on July 26 and Apple, which has been reducing its share count through buybacks, reports its June-quarter results on July 31.
As Amazon expands into grocery retail through its acquisition of Whole Foods Market last year, and as more businesses move their IT departments onto the cloud, its stock price has been red hot, recently trading at 111 times expected earnings, compared to more-profitable – but slower growing – Apple’s valuation of 15 times earnings.
Amazon dislodged Microsoft Corp as the No. 3 US company by market capitalization in February. Since then, Microsoft has been overtaken by Google-owner Alphabet.
New Delhi’s Connaught Place has moved one position higher to become ninth most expensive office location in the world with an annual rent of $153 (Rs 10, 512 approx) per sq ft, according to property consultant CBRE.
Mumbai’s Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) slipped to 26th position with an annual prime rent of $96.51 per sq ft (Rs 6, 600 approx) from 16th rank. The central business district (CBD) of Nariman Point also moved down to 37th position commanding an annual prime rent of $72.80 per sq ft (Rs 5,000 approx) from 30th rank last year.
BKC and Nariman Point were at 16th and 30th positions, respectively, last year. “Delhi’s Connaught Place moved one notch up to be the ninth most expensive office location with an annual prime rent of USD 153.26 per sq ft from last year’s 10th most expensive office location,” CBRE said.
The consultant released its annual Global Prime Office Occupancy Costs survey. The cost reflect rent, plus local taxes and service charges for the highest-quality prime office properties. CBRE’s Chairman – India & South-East Asia – Anshuman Magazine said, “Delhi, being a prime market, continues to witness significant activity and has moved one step ahead to the 9th position owing to stable vacancy, rents and absorption.” He expressed optimism about the Mumbai market and expected an upswing in the coming months.
According to the report, Hong Kong (Central) is at the first position with an annual rent of $306.57 per sq ft, followed by London (West End), Beijing (Finance Street) in China, Hong Kong (Kowloon) and Beijing (CBD) in China.
New York (Midtown- Manhattan) ranked sixth with an annual rent of $183.78 per sq ft, while New York (Midtown-South Manhattan) is at 7th position commanding rent of $171.56 per sq ft.
In the top 10 list, Tokyo (Marunouchi/Otemachi), Japan is at the eighth position and London (City), UK, is at the 10th rank. Global prime office occupancy costs rose 2.4% year-over-year. The cost in America was up 3.2%, Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) 2% and Asia Pacific 1.7%.
The survey highlighted that prime office occupancy cost growth was consistent across all regions in the past 12 months. On the Indian commercial real estate market, Magazine said, “Strong demand from finance, technology and the e-commerce sectors has fueled the growth momentum in prime occupancy costs from last year and commercial office market remains a strong growth propeller for the real estate sector.”
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., June 28 announced that attorney Jay Khosla will join his office as chief economic policy counsel. Khosla, who was to begin his new position July 9, will oversee tax, trade, banking and other economic policy issues, a press release issued by Sen. McConnell said. Khosla previously served as staff director for the Senate Finance Committee.
Khosla currently serves as staff director for the Senate Finance Committee. Prior to serving as staff director, the Indian American attorney held multiple senior roles at the Finance Committee including policy director and chief health counsel.
“Jay is an all-star and I’m thrilled to have him join our team,” McConnell said in a statement. “Jay was a driving force helping deliver historic tax reform and I know he is eager to help deliver more wins for the American people. He is one of the brightest minds we have in the tax, trade, and banking fields and his expertise will be an asset to the entire Republican Conference.”
Senate Finance Committee chair Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chimed in on the addition of Khosla, saying the new chief economic policy counsel is an “indispensable asset.” “Jay hasn’t just been an indispensable asset to me and every member of this committee, he’s been a trusted adviser and friend. His instincts and ability to solve complex issues are second to none,” said Hatch. “And, I frankly don’t know how we would’ve tackled tax reform without him. Every member of this committee will miss him – I know I will, but I’m glad he’s not going too far – Leader McConnell is fortunate to have someone like Jay joining his team.”
Khosla began his Senate career with former Majority Leader Bill Frist and later served in senior policy roles for the Senate Budget Committee and Hatch. During the 2008 presidential campaign, he was Arizona Senator John McCain’s senior policy adviser for health care, labor and entitlement reform.
A Virginia native, Khosla earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University and his law degree from the University of Richmond Law School.
Khosla will start in the leader’s office July 9. He will oversee tax, trade, banking and other economic policy issues.
The question being asked yesterday was “why is the rupee falling against the dollar”. The answer is very simple. The demand for American dollars was more than that of the Indian rupee leading to the rupee rapidly losing value against the dollar.
This situation is likely to continue in the days to come with the demand for dollars in India being more than their supply. And this will have a huge impact on the dollar-rupee exchange rate, which crossed 60 rupees to a dollar for the first time yesterday.
Collapse of Indian rupee to a lifetime low of 69.10 against the U.S. dollar will not give an extra edge to domestic exporters, but provide a level-playing field in global market, FIEO said.
Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) director general Ajay Sahai said that the development will not provide any additional support to exporters as currencies of other emerging economies, including China, too are depreciating. “It will provide a level playing field to our exporters. It will not provide the much needed support as India is not singled out,” he said.
India’s exports grew 20.18% to $28.86 billion in May — the highest in six months — even though trade deficit widened to a four- month high of $14.62 billion. The rupee had touched a lifetime low of 69.10 against the U.S. dollar as rising crude oil prices deepened concerns about India’s current account deficit and inflation dynamics.
According to government data released on Friday, Indians have deposited 44 per cent higher advance personal income tax in the first quarter of 2018-19 (April-June) than they did in the same period last year. In the corporate tax front too, companies have paid 17 per cent higher advance tax this quarter than last year.
What has cheered the government is the over 40 per cent growth for the second year in a row on the personal tax front, while there are signs that the corporate sector is performing better with the growth rate more than doubling from 8 per cent in June 2017, despite the weak show put up by banks.
Increase in collection of personal income tax indicates more people are in the tax net than earlier. Finance minister Arun Jaitley seconded this view in a blog post published on Friday. “Increase in the amount of collections in category of personal income tax is also due to more people coming within the tax net,” he wrote. On the other hand, increase in corporate tax payment means India Inc is seeing increase in sales and expects profits to improve in the days to come.
While the Modi government in India had promised to bring back Black Money hoarded abroad and within the country, the money parked by Indians in Swiss banks rose over 50 per cent to CHF (Swiss franc) 1.01 billion (Rs 7,000 crore) in 2017, reversing a three-year downward trend amid India’s clampdown on suspected black money stashed there.
In comparison, the total funds held by all foreign clients of Swiss banks rose about 3 per cent to CHF 1.46 trillion or about Rs 100 lakh crore in 2017, according to the official annual data released today by Swiss National Bank (SNB), the central banking authority of the Alpine nation.
The surge in Indian money held with Swiss banks comes as a surprise given India’s continuing clampdown on suspected black money, stashed abroad, including in banks of Switzerland that used to be known for their famed secrecy walls for years.
The Indian money in Swiss banks had fallen by 45 per cent in 2016, marking their biggest ever yearly plunge, to CHF 676 million (about Rs 4,500 crore) — the lowest ever since the European nation began making the data public in 1987.
According to the SNB data, the total funds held by Indians directly with Swiss banks rose to 999 million Swiss franc (Rs 6,891 crore) in 2017, while the same held through fiduciaries or wealth managers increased to CHF 16.2 million (Rs 112 crore). These figures stood at CHF 664.8 million and CHF 11 million, respectively, at the end of 2016.
As per the latest data, the Indian money in Swiss banks included CHF 464 million (Rs 3,200 crore) in the form of customer deposits, CHF 152 million (Rs 1,050 crore) through other banks and CHF 383 million (Rs 2,640 crore) as ‘other liabilities’ such as securities at the end of 2017.
The funds under all three heads have risen sharply, as against a huge plunge across all categories in the previous year, the SNB data showed.
The funds held through fiduciaries alone used to be in billions till 2007 but began falling after that amid fears of regulatory crackdown.
The total funds held by Indians with Swiss banks stood at a record high of CHF 6.5 billion (Rs 23,000 crore) at 2006-end, but came down to nearly one-tenth of that level in about a decade.
Since those record levels, this is only the third time when there has been a rise in Indians’ money in Swiss banks — in 2011 (12 per cent), 2013 (43 per cent) and now in 2017 by 50.2 per cent — the maximum increase since 56 per cent way back in 2004.
The latest data from Zurich-based SNB comes months after a new framework having been put in place for automatic exchange of information between Switzerland and India to help check the black money menace.
While Switzerland has already begun sharing foreign client details on evidence of wrongdoing provided by India and some other countries, it has agreed to further expand its cooperation on India’s fight against black money with a new pact for automatic information exchange.
There were several rounds of discussions between Indian and Swiss government officials on the new framework and also for expediting the pending information requests about suspected illicit accounts of Indians in Swiss banks.
The funds, described by SNB as ‘liabilities’ of Swiss banks or ‘amounts due to’ their clients, are the official figures disclosed by the Swiss authorities and do not indicate to the quantum of the much-debated alleged black money held by Indians there.
SNB’s official figures also do not include the money that Indians, NRIs or others might have in Swiss banks in the names of entities from different countries.
Amid a decline seen in Indian money over the previous three years, there was a view that Indians who had allegedly parked their illicit money in Swiss banks in the past may have shifted the funds to other locations after a global crackdown began on the mighty banking secrecy practices in Switzerland.
Swiss banks have earlier said Indians have “few deposits” in Swiss banks compared to other global financial hubs like Singapore and Hong Kong amid stepped-up efforts to check the black money menace.
On directions of the Supreme Court, India had constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe cases of alleged black money of Indians, including funds stashed abroad in places like Switzerland.
A number of strategies were deployed by the government to combat the stash-funds menace, in both overseas and domestic domain, which included enactment of a new law, amendments in the Anti-Money Laundering Act and compliance windows for people to declare their hidden assets.
The Tax department had detected suspected black money running into thousands of crores of rupees post investigations on global leaks about Indians stashing funds abroad + and has launched prosecution against hundreds of them, including those with accounts in the Geneva branch of HSBC.
The issue of black money has always been a matter of big debate in India and Switzerland has been long perceived as one of the safest havens for such funds.
Earlier in 2015, the money held by Indians in Swiss banks had fallen by nearly one-third to CHF 1,217.6 million (over Rs 8,000 crore). Prior to that, these funds fell by 10 per cent to CHF 1.8 billion in 2014, after a rise of 43 per cent in 2013 to CHF 2.03 billion.
The total assets of Swiss banks in India, however, fell by about 18 per cent in 2017 to CHF 3.2 billion in second consecutive year of decline. This does not include any tangible assets like real estate and properties. The amount owed by Indian clients to Swiss banks fell by 48 per cent in 2017 to CHF 210 million.
When I first became governor, state debt was climbing, families and job creators were overtaxed, and Florida’s economy was hurting. Even in the face of these dismal realities, state leaders were hesitant to reel back their wasteful spending and take real steps to protect taxpayer dollars. Thankfully, unlike in Washington, Florida’s budget process includes the line item veto – an important tool that encourages responsible spending by allowing the executive branch to remove any project that wastes taxpayer dollars.
Every year we saw hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of unreasonable projects slip into the state budget – at the expense of Florida taxpayers. And every year, I carefully and deliberately reviewed the budget line by line to eliminate reckless spending. It was important to me that state leaders, communities and Floridians understood why each project was removed, which is why I explained the reason for each veto, such as no return on investment, having federal or local funding already available, or funding never even being requested. Ultimately, the only way to make government function is to say no to some spending requests. The federal government currently tries to do too much, but by vetoing more than 1,800 pet projects here in Florida over the past seven and half years, we saved Florida taxpayers more than $2.4 billion.
This new focus on responsible spending in Florida meant more funding was available to pay down state debt, cut taxes and invest in what matters most to our families, like securing historic funding to support our education system and protect our environment. Florida’s economy has experienced an incredible economic turnaround and families and businesses from all across the country are coming to Florida to succeed. But while Florida has set an example for wise spending, Washington continues to fall farther and farther behind.
That’s why the third proposal of my ‘Make Washington Work Plan’ will help hold Congress accountable for wasteful spending by providing the executive branch with the constitutional ability to remove individual budget projects through a line item veto. Washington should be creating budgets that serve Americans, not the political ambitions of career politicians. And when politicians in D.C. slip pet projects in the budget in an attempt to score political points – with no regard for the taxpayers who pay for it – the president should have the authority to eliminate this waste, just as the governor does in Florida.
I know there will be politicians who say this cannot be done, or that it has been tried and failed before – but that’s no reason to not fight for what is clearly best for American families. That’s why it’s time to elect new leaders with new ideas, and why my “Make Washington Work” Plan is meant to reform the tired old ways of thinking in Washington and make sure Congress actually works for families across the nation – not just for career politicians. My first two proposals were implementing term limits in Congress and requiring a supermajority vote of two-thirds of each house of Congress to approve any tax or fee increase before it can become law.
Politicians in Washington love to tell you about all the common sense, smart things that cannot be done. We need to get rid of the politicians who always tell us what we cannot do. There is no excuse to not bring Florida’s way of thinking to Washington. Career politicians from both parties have one thing in common – they love spending taxpayer money. But now is the time to put a stop to Congress’ enthusiasm for wasteful spending. After all, it’s not the government’s money – it’s the money of hardworking American families and job creators, and a line item veto makes certain Americans are getting the most value for their investment.
(TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Rick Scott, Governor of Florida, released the above op-ed highlighting the third proposal of his “Make Washington Work” plan to end wasteful spending in Washington by providing the executive branch with the constitutional ability to remove individual budget projects through a line item veto.)
The Maharashtra government and a U.S.-India panel have announced three new projects in the state, an official said June 18. The state will sign an agreement with the Network for Global Innovation to develop a clean tech incubator ecosystem in Maharashtra to accelerate adoption of sustainable technologies and encourage trade and investment in these sectors.
The announcements were made during Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’ visit to Washington D.C. last week at a public forum co-hosted by the CSIS Wadhwani Chair and India Initiative at Georgetown University, which he addressed.
Fadnavis spoke about his goals to make Maharashtra the first trillion-dollar economy across India, which he will do by leveraging foreign investments in various sectors, the news release added. “We have focused on building infrastructure, which has subsequently opened up lot of opportunities for international investors in the state,” the chief minister said at the forum.
Along with the U.S.-India State and Urban Initiative, it will collaborate on the development and implementation of a ‘High Performance Innovation Ecosystem’ including planning, funding, build-out and ongoing operations, with plans to invite a state-based nominee organization to become a member of the NGIN.
The Georgia Institute of Technology will launch a new pilot research project to understand the consumer dynamics and responsiveness to adoption of new technologies in the state electricity sector. The project, “The Impact of Consumer Behavior on Efficiency and Sustainability in India’s Power Sector,” will be led by Georgia Tech Indian American professors — assistant professor Anjali Thomas Bohlken and associate professor Usha Nair-Reichert — with support from the Strategic Energy Initiative.
Finally, the Pune Municipal Corporation will host an Urban Mobility Lab in August as part of the Lighthouse City initiative launched after a competition last year, jointly with NITI Aayog and Rocky Mountain Institute, Colorado.
The Urban Mobility Lab will advance the design, integration and implementation of new solutions for complex transportation challenges and how these ideas can be replicated and scaled. The goal would be to upgrade transportation services to cater to the needs of rapidly growing cities, with operational efficiency, and simultaneous reduction of pollution, congestion and petroleum demands.
Funded by the Department of State, the U.S.-India State and Urban Initiative promotes energy security and energy sector reform through direct engagement between Washington and Indian sub-national entities.
It builds productive partnerships that can help India achieve its energy goals; and establish close, sustainable working relationships among Indian sub-national officials with their US counterparts and other civil society organizations working in the areas of governance and energy, besides roping in the private sector.
The U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum hosted Fadnavis during his trip to the United States, the forum announced in a June 15 news release. The Forum kicked off the chief minister’s roadshow with U.S. investors at a roundtable in New York City, and hosted him the next day at an event with member companies in Washington, D.C., it said.
The state of Maharashtra, with its progressive measures to facilitate investments and investors, has worked towards the goals it had announced during the “Make in India” initiative in 2014, USISFP said.
To continue to be the preferred business destination for foreign investors, Fadnavis has supported private-public partnerships to promote growth through foreign investments across all sectors. He asked USISPF and Friends of Maharashtra in the U.S. to serve as one nodal point for all U.S. investments into Maharashtra. Both organizations will coordinate and liaise with the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation, the USISPF added.
With an emphasis on further development of Mumbai and other townships, Fadnavis has supported private-public partnerships to promote this growth, and insisted that his state’s objective of job growth, along with economic development, will be fulfilled through investments across sectors, according to USISPF.
“Maharashtra is growing at a rapid pace and the state is the first choice for many of our U.S companies that manufacture in India,” USISPF president and CEO Mukesh Aghi said.
Despite adverse impact on GST implementation, India saw a 20 per cent increase in both the number of dollar millionaires and their wealth in 2017 to emerge as the fastest growing market for high net population, a report said today.
The report, which comes amid growing concerns over social ramifications of asymmetry in wealth distribution, said the number of high net worth individuals grew 20.4 per cent to 2.63 lakh people, while their collective wealth grew 21 per cent to over $1 trillion.
“India was the fastest-growing market globally,” the report by French tech firm Capgemini said. The country’s growth on both the number of HNIs and wealth is faster than the global average of 11.2 per cent and 12 per cent, respectively, the report by French tech firm Capgemini said.
The US, Japan, Germany and China are the biggest HNI markets in the world, it said, adding that the show in 2017 has increased India’s ranking to 11th. A HNI is defined as one who has investable assets of over $1 million, it said.
One of the major reasons for the growth was an over 50 per cent surge in market capitalisation during the year, along with an average 4.8 per cent increase in realty prices and the 6.7 per cent GDP expansion, which is faster than the world.
Indians appear gung-ho about Canada’s Express Entry programme which invites topranked candidates — under the country’s point-based immigration system — to take up permanent residency. Express Entry is Canada’s flagship programme for key economic migration.
Under the scheme, out of the 86,022 invitations sent in 2017, nearly 42% (or 36,310) were to those holding Indian citizenship. The total number of invitations sent in 2017 was more than double the previous year — 33,782.
In 2016, the number of invites sent to those having Indian citizenship in Canada was merely 11,037, showing an increase by more than 200% a year later.
According to the Express Entry Year-end Report, 2017, issued recently by the Canadian government’s immigration division, a little over one lakh applications were received for permanent residency under the Express Entry programme in 2017, 86,022 invitations were sent and 65,401 permanent residents and their families were admitted into Canada.
Nearly 40% of this total or 26,000-plus Indians became permanent residents in Canada. Among those applicants who had job offers and were admitted as permanent residents, occupations like information system analysts, software engineers and designers, computer programmers and university lecturers topped the charts.
These statistics, showing an increase in number of Indians opting for Canadian permanent residency, strengthen the belief that many holders, tired of the backlog and infinite wait for a green card in the US—a green card grants permanent residency on American soil—are now heading towards Canada. Currently, more than three lakh Indians in the US are waiting for a green card, CATO Institute, a Washington-based think tank, states that given the green card backlog, the waiting period for Indians with an advanced degree (those in the EB-2 category) could be as much as 151 years.
Vikram Rangnekar, now an entrepreneur in Toronto, is among those who made the move. “I lived in the US for six years on H-1B visa. I had a great life in California, lots of friends, an awesome job, and enjoyed the outdoors. Then, I realised that I didn’t want to continue living my life on a restrictive visa. I wanted more freedom, I wanted to work on my own ideas and that was just not possible under the H-1B visa.”
Also with the ever extending green card wait, permanent residency in the US was out of question, for Rangnekar. He and his family moved to Toronto in 2016. “We love the accepting Canadian culture, the diversity, high quality of life, great support and education system for kids,” he said. Today, Rangnekar hosts a platform which helps a significant number of Indians currently on H-1B to find jobs in Canada.
Canada has a point-based immigration system. Under the Express Entry programme, candidates complete an online profile and are given a comprehensive ranking system (CRS) score. They are then placed in the Express Entry pool and ranked relative to each other based on their CRS scores. The pool is dynamic and a candidate’s rank can change as others join and leave the pool, or when the ranking criteria are adjusted according to ministerial instructions. A candidate’s CRS score can also be revised on various grounds, for example if he or she obtains more qualifications or skills. Only top-ranked candidates are invited to apply for permanent residence.
The CRS score is divided into two portions. The core score can reach a maximum of 600 points and is based on the candidate’s age, education, official language proficiency, work experience among other criteria. Second, a maximum of 600 points are awarded to the candidates if they meet policy or other objectives like having a provincial nomination, a qualifying offer of arranged employment, Canadian educational credentials, French-language proficiency and a sibling in Canada. The maximum score a person can get is 1,200.
Express Entry draws are held periodically. The most recent was this month, which had a CRS cut-off threshold of 451 points and will result in 3,750 candidates being invited for permanent residency. In 2017, of the 86,022 invitations to apply for permanent residency, 38,932 (or 45%) were sent to candidates with a CRS score between 451 and 500, and 33,252 (or 39%) were sent to candidates with a score between 401 and 450. This relatively low cut-off is good news for those aspiring to move to Canada.
Indians account for more than three-fourths of those highly-skilled professionals waiting in queue to obtain legal permanent residence status in the US, popularly known as Green Card, according to latest official figures.
As of May 2018, there were 395,025 foreign nationals waiting for Green Card under the employment-based preference category. Of these 306,601 were Indians, according to the latest figures released by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). This does not include counts of dependent beneficiaries associated with the approved immigrant petitions, it said.
India is followed by a distant second China, which currently has 67,031 Chinese waiting for the Green Card. Thereafter none of the other countries have more than 10,000 people waiting for Green Card. Other countries are El Salvador (7252), Guatemala (6,027), Honduras (5,402), Philippines (1,491), Mexico (700) and Vietnam (521).
Under the existing law, no more than seven per cent of the Green cards may be issued to natives of any one independent country in a fiscal year. As such Indians have the longest waiting period for Green Card.
Indian-Americans, most of whom are highly skilled and come to the US mainly on H-1B work visas, are the worst sufferers of the current immigration system which imposes a seven per cent per country quota on allotment of green cards or permanent legal residency. As a result, the current wait period for Indian skilled immigrants for green card can be as long as 70 years.
According to a newly-launched group, GCReforms.org, under the current regulation, skilled immigrants from India need to wait anywhere between 25-92 years for a Green Card due to per-country limits.
The US Green Card, also known as the permanent resident card, gives the holder permanent residence in the United States. Green Card holders can legally live and work in the US. The Green Card is the first step toward US citizenship.
PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi is the world’s highest-paid female CEO, with a compensation of $25.9 million, the Associated Press reports. Although women make up only 5 percent of the CEO ranks at S&P 500 companies, median compensation for a female CEO was valued at $13.5 million for the 2017 fiscal year, versus $11.5 million for their male counterparts, according to an analysis by executive data firm Equilar done for the AP.
The AP’s compensation study covered 339 executives at S&P 500 companies who have served at least two full consecutive fiscal years at their respective companies, which filed proxy statements between Jan. 1 and April 30. Some companies with highly paid CEOs do not fit these criteria, such as Oracle. Debra Cafaro, CEO of real estate investment trust Ventas came in second at $25.3 million. And Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors, wrapped up third.
Nooyi was named president and CEO on Oct.1, 2006 and assumed the role of chairman on May 2, 2007. She has directed the company’s global strategy for more than a decade and led its restructuring, including the divestiture of its restaurants into the successful YUM! Brands, Inc. She also led the acquisition of Tropicana and the merger with Quaker Oats that brought the vital Quaker and Gatorade businesses to PepsiCo, the merger with PepsiCo’s anchor bottlers, and the acquisition of Wimm-Bill-Dann, the largest international acquisition in PepsiCo’s history.
Actor Kal Penn will star in a new documentary, as yet untitled, about the global economy for Amazon, to be produced by Adam McKay, Will Ferrell and Adam Davidson (co-founder of NPR’s “Planet Money”), according to Variety. The docuseries will offer viewers insight into the global economy.
“Look, I’m terrible at math and really good at sophomoric humor, so the idea that we can explore economics around the world by visiting places like a dildo factory in California piqued my interest,” Variety quoted the Indian American actor as saying. “To have an opportunity to explore the world while we combine the serious with the bizarre with Adam and Will is super exciting.”
The untitled show will offer insight into the global economy and its “comedic eccentricities.” Amazon Studios is ready to explore the global economy with Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and Kal Penn.
The retailer/streamer has handed out a straight-to-series order for an untitled docuseries examining the world’s finances. Penn will host the series, which is exec produced by Ferrell and McKay (The Big Short) as well as Adam Davidson (the co-founder of NPR’s Planet Money).
Amazon says the docuseries will offer “extraordinary insight into the global economy and its comedic eccentricities, all through a sardonic lens unique to McKay.”
“Adam Davidson is one of the more brilliant and funny minds out there. After collaborating with him on The Big Short, I jumped at the chance to continue trying to make economics and finance accessible to a wide audience,” McKay said.
Penn, the former White House associate director of public engagement, will invite viewers to meet the “geniuses, madmen and huskers” who make the decisions and investments that impact society. Topics to be explored include cryptocurrency, money laundering, death and corruption as the show sets out to explore how money, greed and power affect the hyper-connected world.
“Adam McKay is well known for finding the humor and absurdity in mind-blowing true stories, and we’re excited to bring that to Prime members with this series,” said Heather Schuster, head of unscripted at Amazon. “As with all of our unscripted series, we are committed to providing our customers with unprecedented access — this time to the fascinating and often illusive back rooms of global wealth and industry.”
Ferrell, McKay, Kevin Messick, Eli Holzman, Aaron Saidman and Aliyah Silverstein exec produce the docuseries from Intellectual Property Corp. and Gary Sanchez Productions. Davidson will be credited as a co-EP, while Penn will consult.
Penn will take viewers around the world to meet the “geniuses, madmen and hucksters” who make the decisions—and investments—that change people’s lives. The series will reportedly cover a range of topics, including cryptocurrency, money laundering, death and corruption, to explore how money, greed and power affect the hyper-connected world.
Penn was last seen on ABC’s “Designated Survivor.” Previously, he served as the host of Fox’s one-hour unscripted competition series, “Superhuman,” that tested the abilities of ordinary people to use their extraordinary skills – in fields such as memory, hearing, taste, touch, smell and sight.
Anil D. Ambani owned Reliance Entertainment and one of India’s most celebrated filmmakers, Imtiaz Ali, today announced the formation of Window Seat Films, LLP, a 50:50 Joint Venture for production of movies. This is Reliance Entertainment’s 5th creative partnership with leading Indian filmmakers to form a production company.
An incredibly talented and successful writer, director, Imtiaz has received wide appreciation and acclaim from audiences and critics alike, in addition to blockbuster success at the box office. He has won several awards over the years since the release of his first film in 2005.
Starting with “Socha Na Tha” Imtiaz has made several films with newcomers and superstars alike. His filmography includes “Jab We Met”, “Love Aaj Kal”, “Rockstar”, “Tamasha”, “Highway” and “Jab Harry met Sejal”. Some of his films have achieved a sort of cult status with the youth in India and abroad.
This creative & business mix will benefit from the artistic abilities of Imtiaz, and the global marketing and distribution capabilities of Reliance Entertainment.
Amitabh Jhunjhunwala, Vice Chairman, Reliance Entertainment, said, “We are proud to have Imtiaz as our partner. He is a person of deep simplicity and humility despite his enormous successes, and we are looking forward to making great movies together.”
Commenting on the partnership, Imtiaz Ali said: “There is a common vision that Window Seat Films & Reliance Entertainment share in terms of the content that we’d like to make, the kind of stories we’d like to tell and the way we’d like to collaborate in running this partnership. Working under this partnership is like working for myself. ”
Reliance Entertainment has produced, distributed and released more than 300 films in multiple Indian languages, including Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, etc.
Reliance Entertainment already has creative partnerships with Phantom Films (Anurag Kashyap, Madhu Mantena, Vikas Bahl and Vikramaditya Motwane), Rohit Shetty Picturez, Plan C Studios (Neeraj Pandey) and Y NOT Studios (S. Sashikanth).
Reliance Entertainment is the media and entertainment arm of Reliance Group and is engaged in the creation and distribution of content across film, television, digital and gaming platforms. Internationally, Reliance Entertainment has partnered since 2009 with iconic film producer and director, Steven Spielberg, in the formation of DreamWorks Studios, and thereafter, Amblin Partners.
This relationship has produced several highly successful films such as The Help, War Horse, Lincoln, The Hundred Foot Journey, The Girl on the Train, A Dog’s Purpose, Bridge of Spies, and The Post.
India’s growth recovery strengthened last quarter but doubts remain over whether it can sustain that pace amid surging oil prices and a rout in emerging markets. Gross domestic product (GDP) in the fourth quarter of the fiscal year that ended in March 2018 rose 7.7 percent led by agriculture and manufacturing, according to a statement on the Ministry of Statistics website. That compares with a median estimate of 7.4 percent in a Bloomberg survey of 38 economists. While that makes it one of the fastest-expanding major economies, risks are rising because of a currency slump and faster inflation.
To add to that, India’s nearly $1.7 trillion formal banking sector is coping with $210 billion of soured or problem loans and fraud scandals have erupted at some regional banks. That’s set to curb lending and limit growth even more, and makes the central bank’s job even more complicated ahead of next week’s policy meeting.
“A sustained rise in oil prices to $100 a barrel could even lead to a re-emergence of some of the external and currency risks that existed pre-2014,” said Priyanka Kishore, head of India and South East Asia economics at Oxford Economics Ltd. “The banking sector remains in a fragile state, and such problems have the potential to derail the ongoing growth recovery.”
The economy expanded at 6.7 percent in the fiscal year through March, the slowest pace since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took power in 2014. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. cut its growth projection for the year ending March 2019 to 7.6 percent from 8 percent, amid concerns that the banking system’s woes are more widespread.
Moody’s Investors Servicecut India’s 2018 GDP growth outlook to 7.3 percent from 7.5 percent, citing higher oil prices and tighter financial conditions.
New risks have emerged just as the economic disruption caused by a cash ban late in 2016 and the chaotic roll-out of a national sales tax fade. India has been swept up in the maelstrom that’s hit emerging markets as rising U.S. interest rates and a stronger dollar prompt investors to pull money out of stocks and bonds. The rupee has been the hardest hit in Asia, dropping more than 5 percent against the dollar this year.
For oil-importing India, the combination of a weaker currency and surging oil prices is a threat not only for the current-account deficit, but also inflation. Consumer-price growth is already picking up — reaching 4.6 percent in April — and for a central bank that aims to keep inflation around the 4 percent midpoint of its target band, an interest-rate hike can’t be far away.
Viral Acharya, the deputy governor in charge of monetary policy, said last month he’ll vote for a withdrawal in monetary accommodation in June. There’s also limited room for a fiscal boost to support growth. India’s budget gap is one of the widest in Asia, and Modi has to walk a fine line to keep the deficit in check while trying to woo voters ahead of next year’s election.
Nevertheless, green shoots are emerging in Asia’s third-largest economy. The industrial sector is expected to pick up while services, which contributes over 50 percent to gross domestic product, is set to remain robust. Even farming, which has been a laggard, is recovering.
The number of women leading the largest companies has always been small. This year, it got 25 percent smaller, according to Fortune magazine. The reversal is leading to a search beyond the usual explanations for why women don’t become chief executives — things like not being competitive enough, failing to chase opportunities for promotion and choosing work-life balance over high-powered jobs.
That’s because evidence shows that the obstacles for female executives aren’t just because of their individual choices. There are larger forces at work, experts say, rooted in biases against women in power, mothers who work or leaders who don’t fit the mold of the people who led before them.
The 25 percent decline is so large in part because women’s numbers are so small to start with. There’s also a phenomenon known as the glass cliff, in which women are more likely to be put in charge of failing companies. But in many ways, the reasons the number of female chief executives is falling are the same reasons there aren’t more of them in the first place.
For many years, it seemed as if the share of women at the top of corporate America would slowly increase over time. The number of women leading companies in the Fortune 500 had grown to 6.4 percent last year, a record high, from 2.6 percent a decade earlier.
After reaching an all-time high of 32 in 2017, the number of female Fortune 500 chiefs has slid back down to 24. That’s a one-year decline of 25%. The drop is due primarily to a number of powerful women leaving their corner offices. In the past year alone, more than a third of those women (12) have left their CEO jobs, including a few long-time veterans of the ranking.
As the Fortune 500 list went to print last week, Campbell Soup Co. CEO Denise Morrison announced she was retiring, effective immediately (thus, while Morrison appears on the June 2018 ranking, she is no longer in office). The company did not explain her abrupt departure and did not take questions from analysts on the matter. The 64-year-old had been at the helm since 2011; she was with the company for 15 years.
There were also some newcomers to the—far too exclusive—club this year: Ulta Beauty’s Mary Dillon, Kohl’s Michelle Gass, Yum China’s Joey Wat, and Anthem’s Gail Boudreaux. Dillon, who appeared on Fortune‘s list of Most Powerful Women for the first time last year at No. 48, has been running the cosmetics company since July 2013, though this is the first time that Ulta has appeared on the Fortune 500. The other three CEOs have been appointed in the past year.
Women in business start out equal to men in terms of jobs and pay. But at each level, they disappear. Only 22 percent of senior vice presidents are women. And of those, just 21 percent have roles related to generating revenue, which generally lead to C-level jobs, according to the annual Women in the Workplace study by Lean In and McKinsey. The drop-off starts with the first promotion to management: Women are 18 percent less likely to be promoted to manager than their male peers.
“Men and women are all going into high-powered jobs,” said Robin Ely, a professor at Harvard Business School and chairwoman of its gender initiative. “The question is what happens to them down the road, and that’s a messy story. People say they’re opting out, they want work-life balance, but we know from a lot of research that it’s not as simple as that. They’re not given opportunities.”
For 2018, the basic structure of Social Security is the same in terms of how workers are taxed and how benefits are calculated and paid. However, there are a few notable changes to be aware of, such as the gradually increasing full retirement age and several thresholds and other Social Security figures that adjust over time with inflation. With that in mind, here’s a rundown of eight 2018 Social Security changes that are set to go into effect.
Image source: Getty Images.
The full retirement age is increasing for some eligible seniors
The full or normal retirement age for Social Security benefits has been 66 years of age for some time now but is set to gradually increase to 67 for Americans born after 1954.
If you were born in…
Your full retirement age is…
1954 or earlier
66 years
1955
66 years, 2 months
1956
66 years, 4 months
1957
66 years, 6 months
1958
66 years, 8 months
1959
66 years, 10 months
1960 or later
67 years
Data source: Social Security Administration.
The reason this is important now is that the change has begun to affect people who are reaching the age of eligibility for Social Security benefits. Specifically, Americans who will turn 62 in 2018 (born in 1956) have a full retirement age of 66 years and four months, and those who will turn 63 in 2018 have a full retirement age of 66 years and two months.
Here’s why this is important. Since most Americans claim Social Security before they reach full retirement age, this means that early retirement will have a more dramatic reduction. For example, if a worker with a full retirement age of 66 claims at 62, he or she would face a 25% reduction. If their full retirement age is 66 years and four months, the reduction percentage would be 25.8%.
Finally, a decent cost-of-living adjustment for retirees
The Social Security Administration announced a 2% cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, for beneficiaries, starting with the Dec. 2017 payment. This is the highest COLA in six years and is due to higher inflation — specifically, the rise in the CPI. However, this is still historically low. Social Security COLAs have averaged roughly 3.8% since the current method was implemented in 1975. Furthermore, for many retirees, this year’s increase could be consumed by rising Medicare Part B premiums.
Higher payments for beneficiaries
While many retirees will see some or all of their increase swallowed up by rising Medicare premiums, the COLA should produce higher checks for beneficiaries. The SSA estimates that the average retired worker will get a $27 raise to $1,404, and that the average couple receiving benefits will see their combined payments rise by $46 to $2,340.
Additionally, because of the higher taxable earnings cap from 2017, the maximum benefit is increasing significantly. The highest possible benefit payable to a worker retiring at their full retirement age is rising by more than $100 to $2,788 per month in 2018.
A slightly higher taxable earnings cap
Speaking of the taxable earnings cap, this is rising for 2018 as well. Each year, there is a maximum amount of wage income that is subject to Social Security tax. For 2017, this maximum was set at $127,200 — meaning that any amount of earned income above this threshold was not taxable for Social Security. In 2018, the maximum taxable earnings amount is rising by $1,500 to $128,700, meaning that high-income individuals will end up paying more in Social Security tax than they did in 2017.
Disability thresholds are rising
Social Security pays disability benefits to more than 10 million people, and there are maximum amounts of income that people can still earn while collecting disability benefits. For 2018, these monthly thresholds are rising slightly.
Type of Disability
2017 Threshold
2018 Threshold
Non-blind
$1,170
$1,180
Blind
$1,950
$1,970
Data source: Social Security Administration.
So are SSI payments
There are two Social Security disability programs — Social Security Disability Income (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). SSDI payments are based on a beneficiary’s work record, just like retirement benefits.
On the other hand, SSI payments are based on a standard payment amount. For 2018, the SSI federal monthly payment standard is increasing.
Status
2017
2018
Individual
$735
$750
Couple
$1,103
$1,125
Data source: Social Security Administration. Table by author.
The earnings test limits are going up
If you claim Social Security before reaching full retirement age and are still working, the amount of money you earn could potentially reduce your Social Security benefits. This is known as the Social Security earnings test, and there are two different versions of the test, depending on your age.
If you will reach full retirement age after 2018, $17,040 in earnings ($1,420 per month) will be excluded from consideration. Beyond this threshold, your retirement benefits can be reduced by $1 for every $2 in excess earnings.
If you will reach full retirement age during 2018, $45,360 in annualized earnings ($3,780 per month) are excluded. Beyond this threshold, your retirement benefits can be reduced by $1 for every $3 in excess earnings. For this test, only the months before you reach full retirement age are considered. If your benefits are withheld because of the earnings test, it could permanently increase your benefit once you reach full retirement age, so this money isn’t necessarily lost.
Social Security “credits” represent more earnings
As a final Social Security change for 2018, the “credits” workers need to earn to qualify for benefits are getting a little more expensive.
Specifically, in order to be eligible for a retirement benefit, you need to earn 40 Social Security credits, up to a maximum of four per year. In 2018, each credit represents $1,320 in earnings, so you’ll need to earn at least $5,280 in order to earn the four possible credits for the year.
India’s macroeconomic threats lie exposed as it grapples with the rupee’s slide. The currency sunk to a closing low of 68.07 against the U.S. dollar on Tuesday, its lowest level in 16 months, before recovering slightly the next day. The rupee, already one of the worst performing Asian currencies, has now weakened 6.2% in 2018.
The rise in crude oil prices through this year, amidst rising geopolitical tensions in West Asia and dwindling global supply, have obviously hurt the rupee and the trade balance. Meanwhile, despite a depreciating currency, India’s merchandise exports are stumbling instead of gaining from the opportunity. April clocked a sharp decline in exports from employment-intensive sectors such as readymade garments and gems and jewelery, according to official data.
The trade deficit has consequently widened to $13.7 billion in April, compared to $13.25 billion in the same month in 2017. The value of oil and petroleum product imports increased by 41.5% from last year to hit $10.4 billion. U.S. sanctions following Washington’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and a June 22 meeting of OPEC should drive oil price trends hereon. Oil prices apart, the tightening of U.S. monetary policy has almost always spelled trouble for emerging market economies hooked to Western capital inflows. This time it is no different; capital outflows are scuppering the currencies of many emerging market economies.
The Simon Business School at the University of Rochester announced the establishment of the Rajesh Wadhawan Chair for Development Economics, according to a report in BusinessWire. The investiture is in commemoration of the WGC Group’s Indian American founder and his vision of economic equitability.
Over the last three decades, the WGC Group has been at the forefront of developing solutions for financial inclusion of the marginalized sections. The Chair is a part of its social investments to enable opportunities for the transformative progress of these communities. It is aimed to be a critical driver of new insights and enabling wisdom in the understanding of development economics. The WGC Group will continue to support the Chair’s curriculum by offering internships and other associations to students across its Group companies’ offices in India and the UK.
“Through the investiture of the Rajesh Wadhawan Chair, the Wadhawan family and the WGC Group reinforce their commitment towards creating a more equitable society. Their generosity will enable us to channelize analytical research towards solutions for inclusive growth. Through this partnership, we are hopeful of deepening our participation in the global dialogue for financial inclusivity,” remarked Dean Andrew Ainslie of Simon Business School.
Kapil Wadhawan, chairman of the WGC Group, said, “The Rajesh Wadhawan Chair reinstates our founder’s legacy of doing business with purpose. As we take our partnership with the Simon Business School to the next level, we aim to shape a future of equitable progress and create a larger impact globally.”
The Wadhawan family, represented by Mrs. Aruna Wadhawan, wife of late Rajesh Wadhawan, and son Kapil Wadhawan, his wife Vanita and daughter Tiana and son Kartik, were present at the plaque ceremony at the campus.
Prof. Gregory H. Bauer, Associate Dean of Full-Time Programs, Simon Business School, has been nominated as the permanent faculty for the Chair. He was associated with the Bank of Canada as the Senior Research Director for Financial Markets. Bauer has taught at the Simon School for 22 years. He is a four-time winner of the Superior Teaching Award from the Simon MBA program and a multiple winner of awards from the Executive MBA program. His research concerns international capital flows and the origins of financial crises.
Simon Business School is the business school of the University of Rochester and one of the world’s top graduate business institutions. It offers an education that attracts students who value analytic bias. The school believes strongly in the value of economics and statistics in the analysis of all business problems, and it is reflected in its ranking as a top five school for economics and finance.
University of Rochester is one of the top-tier research universities in the US. The private, non-profit university was founded in June 1850. It offers undergraduate, graduate, doctoral and professional degree programs. University of Rochester Medical Center Rochester’s Headquarters are located at 601 Elmwood Avenue, Rochester, New York, USA 14642.
Wadhawan Global Capital is a leading financial services group head-quartered in India. The group manages $22 billion of assets through its lending, asset management and insurance businesses. WGC Group has partnered with leading financial institutions such as the International Finance Corporation, Washington, and Prudential Financial Inc., in transforming the lives of millions of customers.
WGC is the parent company for some of the top brands in India such as DHFL, Aadhar Housing Finance Company, Avanse Financial Services Ltd., DHFL Pramerica Life Insurance Company Ltd., Arthveda Finance, Wadhawan Wealth Managers, DHFL General Insurance and DHFL Pramerica Asset Managers Private Ltd. The company has a London-based wholly-owned subsidiary Wadhawan Global Capital (UK) Ltd.
The US Treasury added India to its watch list of countries with potentially questionable foreign exchange policies, joining China and four others, according to a report issued here. US Treasury said the “monitoring list” includes those “major trading partners that merit close attention to their currency practices.” In addition to India, the semi-annual report to Congress names five countries that continue on the list from October: China, Germany, Japan, Korea and Switzerland. Countries remain on the list for two report cycles “to help ensure that any improvement in performance versus the criteria is durable and is not due to temporary factors”
The report said India, which has a USD 23 billion trade surplus with the United States, “increased its purchases of foreign exchange over the first three quarters of 2017,” although the rupee still rose in value. And while China — which is at the centre of a brewing trade dispute with Washington — remained on the watch list, Treasury said “the Chinese currency generally moved against the dollar in a direction that should” help reduce China’s trade surplus with the United States.
Treasury said the “monitoring list” includes those “major trading partners that merit close attention to their currency practices.” In addition to India, the semi-annual report to Congress names five countries that continue on the list from October: China, Germany, Japan, Korea and Switzerland. Countries remain on the list for two report cycles “to help ensure that any improvement in performance versus the criteria is durable and is not due to temporary factors.”
While no major trading partner was found to be manipulating its currency, five of those on the list meet two of the three criteria, while China is included because “it constitutes a disproportionate share of the overall US trade deficit.” The US has a deficit of USD 337 billion with China of a total global trade deficit of USD 566 billion, according to government data.
“We will continue to monitor and combat unfair currency practices, while encouraging policies and reforms to address large trade imbalances,” US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. The Treasury report is required by Congress to identify countries that are trying to artificially manage the value of their currency to gain a trade advantage, for example by keeping the exchange rate low to promote cheaper exports.
Germany also remained on the watch list, even though it is part of the European currency union, which means it cannot independently control the exchange rate for the euro. Even so, the report notes that Germany “has the world’s largest current account surplus” and has made “little to no progress in reducing this massive surplus the past three years.” Treasury called for all the countries on the list to implement economic reforms to address their surpluses.
The mPower student team at Duke University led by Indian Americans Saheel Chodavadia and Harshvardhan Sanghi has advanced to compete for the $1 million Hult Prize with their project that aims to address cold storage in India.
Hult Prize, a global competition, advertises itself as “a benchmark program for social entrepreneurs.” Each year, aspiring social entrepreneurs at Duke get the chance to participate by first competing in Hult Prize @ Duke, which is co-hosted by the Duke Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative and the NET Impact Club at The Fuqua School of Business.
Hult Prize hopefuls are given a different challenge each year, and they must create a social enterprise addressing the challenge. This year, teams were tasked with harnessing the power of energy to transform the lives of 10 million people by 2025. There’s a lot at stake: The final prize is $1 million to fund the winning social venture.
At Duke, five teams were chosen from the semi-finals round to advance to the finals round, held on a recent evening at Fuqua. After each team completed a six-minute pitch and a round of questioning from the judges, a winner was announced.
That winner was mPower, a team of four sophomores that aims to fill India’s shortage of agricultural cold storage solutions by offering a novel product and distribution network that compensates farmers and simplifies the supply chain.
The team, also comprising Sherry Feng and Jason Wang, initially won the university competition and pitched the idea of their business in Mexico City at the regional competition, winning there to advance to the final in London. By winning the regional, the team will take part in an eight-week summer start-up accelerator alongside 50 other teams at Ashridge Castle in London.
Traditionally, Indian farmers must sell their produce to middle men for a much lower price than its actual market value — around 25 percent lower, by some estimates, a Duke University report said.
mPower plans to change this by purchasing produce directly from farmers, storing the produce with its cold storage technology, and distributing it to markets, it said. This can create new jobs and empower existing communities, the team explained during its pitch, the report added.
The team’s cold storage technology is a custom solar-powered modular refrigeration unit. Their units’ design focuses on passive cooling, reducing energy consumption and differentiating their product from others on the market, the university said.
mPower was especially equipped to answer this year’s challenge on energy because of their involvement in the energy space at Duke. Sanghi and Wang both live in the Duke Smart Home, and Sanghi regularly takes part in Duke University Energy Initiative programs, is a member of Duke’s Energy Club for undergraduates, and is working on energy access research through a Bass Connections project, the university said.
Sanghi, who is from India, and Chodavadia, who has family living there, knew firsthand of energy access challenges and inefficient agricultural processes in that country. They decided to target this population with their Hult Prize project, it said.
“Energy access is broader than just giving people energy,” Sanghi said in the report, pointing out that their solution also addresses poverty and agriculture. “Energy affects all aspects of a person’s life.”
Team mPower’s approach has evolved throughout the course of the competition. After winning at Duke, they made adjustments to achieve greater scalability and a more impactful approach. They branched out from a traditional business model scalability and added the modular refrigeration strategy, the report said.
“Our network of mentors helped us flesh out minute details within our business model, clarify logistics, and improve the viability of our proposed technology,” Sanghi added. The experience of competing at regionals was also instructive, the report noted.
“At regionals, we were exposed to different perspectives and made friends from 17 other countries who were gathered to solve similar challenges and make an impact on the world,” said Chodavadia. “It was also extremely encouraging to hear from the CEO of Hult Prize, Ahmad Ashkar, that our idea could be the next big thing,” he added.
The team, according to the report, is eagerly anticipating the accelerator program, where global experts will lead them through an eight-week MBA course covering topics like risk assessment, partnerships, marketing, sustainability and launch strategy. After this accelerator, the top six teams are invited to pitch at the United Nations for the chance to win $1 million.
The United States and India are natural allies and the two countries need to take full potential of the relation by further expanding economic and military cooperation, former US Ambassador to India Richard Verma said Ambassador Richard Verma, while delivering the 3rd New India Lecture at Consulate General of India in New York on April 23, 2018. Ambassador Verma spoke on “US- India: Natural Allies-Absent the Alliance.”
Verma emphasized that there is need for an international system that reflects India’s role in the world today. He lamented that India is not on the UN Security Council, is not a member of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and doesn’t play the kind of role that it probably should on the G-20 bloc of nations or in other international Institutions.
“The US needs to pave the way forward for India so that it actually has the seat at the table in this century, a seat that is appropriate for a country of the size and stature of India. We have to be working very hard for that,” he said.
While commenting on Pakistan, the US has made it clear to Pakistani leaders that their “continuing support and facilitation” of terror groups along the border to create a “perpetual state of conflict” with India is “not sustainable”, former American Ambassador to India Richard Verma has said. He stressed that the US can’t lose the connections to all the people and moderate voices in Pakistan that want peace with India and a better future for their children.
During the course of the lecture, he walked the audience through the history, present and future of US-India relationship. Verma, who is currently the Vice Chairman and Partner of The Asia Group, said that both countries should engage each other amidst the “Make in India” and “America First” rhetoric.
P Vaidyanathan Iyer, a Edward Mason Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and a journalist with The Indian Express, moderated the lecture. Iyer said Verma was “brilliant in summing up 71 years of India-US ties in two minutes. A rapid fast forward till 2018!”
While the Trump and his administration has been anti-immigrants, falsely accusing them of taking away the jobs in the United States, in yet another example of how immaigrants build and create jobs here in the US, the India-based Infosys, a consulting, technology and next-generation services firm, has announced the launching of a technology and innovation hub in Indianapolis, Indiana, on April 26, declaring that it plans to establish a U.S. education center in the city as well as expand its hiring by 1,000 more jobs.
According to reports, Infosys has reached a deal to build a technology hub at the former Indianapolis International Airport terminal site, according to sources familiar with the plan. The development will include more than 120 acres and is expected to result in 3,000 new jobs — 1,000 more than previously announced. The Indianapolis Airport Authority, the city and the Indiana Economic Development Corp. reached terms on an agreement with the India-based technology company last week.
The center intends to train American workers and arm them with skills for the digital future. Additionally, the firm said in a news release it has expanded its hiring plans for the state from 2,000 to 3,000 new jobs by the end of 2023.
Infosys will provide an initial investment of $35 million to create the first 125,000 sq. ft. of development to transform the 70.5-acre site at the old Indianapolis airport terminal into its U.S. Education Center. Infosys will break ground on this initial phase before the end of 2018 and anticipates its completion by the end of 2020, it said.
The initial phase will comprise of a training center and will accommodate a 250-person residential facility. The center will also serve as a hub for development of next-generation digital technologies, according to the news release.
“We are excited to partner with Indiana to grow our U.S. presence by building our U.S. Education Center here, which is dedicated to continuous learning and incubating the skills of the future,” said Infosys president Ravi Kumar in a statement.
“At Infosys, we have always invested in advanced technology and skills and bring deep experience from running the largest corporate training facility in the world. Our new Indianapolis facility will prepare our American employees-and those of our clients-to master the kinds of advanced skills that are now required to succeed in our digital future,” Kumar said.
The state and Indianapolis are offering up to $101.8 million in incentives for the project, according to an IndyStar report. Infosys ultimately plans to build the $245 million, 141-acre campus in phases over several years, the report said.
Specifically, the state will offer Infosys up to $56.5 million in conditional tax credits and up to $1.5 million in training grants based on the company’s job-creation plans. The state also will offer up to $6 million in conditional tax credits for the company’s capital investment plans, the report noted.
Indianapolis is contributing $17.8 million in infrastructure improvements and real estate. The state is contributing an additional $20 million for infrastructure improvements, the publication said. The project far exceeds Infosys’ previous plans, both in real estate ambition and hiring, IndyStar added.
The company’s grander plan attracted the attention of Vice President Mike Pence, who changed his schedule to appear at the whirlwind announcement that came together so quickly it caught some state and city officials off guard. Mayor Joe Hogsett also attended the announcement, which culminates a year of negotiations with Infosys, the report said.
Infosys’ initial plan already stood as the second-largest jobs announcement in Indiana, after Honda’s decision more than a decade ago to build a $578 million plant in Greensburg and hire 2,064 workers, it added.
Infosys’ vision for the finished site includes regeneration of the area to feature walkways, green spaces and recreational facilities, the news release added.
Using best practices from Infosys’ Global Education Center in Mysore, India, and partnerships with academia and education providers, the initial training programs at the U.S. Education Center will combine classroom-based and immersive, real-world learning focused on key competencies such as user experience, cloud, big data and core technology and computer science skills, it said.
“Today’s announcement with Infosys is a big win-not just for Indiana but for the nation as a whole, which is why I’m glad Vice President Pence was able to join us,” Indiana Gov. Eric J. Holcomb said in a statement.
“Infosys’ state-of-the-art training facility will teach thousands of folks across America right here on Indiana soil. And, it will help prepare more current and future Hoosiers for success in our rapidly evolving, global economy,” he added.
This announcement is part of Infosys’ commitment to hire 10,000 American workers over the next two years and invest in training to ensure that the U.S. workforce has the essential skills required for the digital economy, the company said.
“In the Western imagination, India conjures up everything from saris and spices to turbans and, temples—and the pulsating energy of Bollywood movies,” the prestigious Smithsonian Institute stated recently. “But in America, India’s contributions stretch far beyond these stereotypes. From the builders of some of America’s earliest railroads and farms to Civil Rights pioneers to digital technology entrepreneurs, Indian Americans have long been an inextricable part of American life. Today, one out of every 100 Americans, from Silicon Valley to Small town, USA, traces his or her roots to India. Breakthroughs in business, the arts, medicine, science, and technology, and the flavorful food, flamboyant fashion and yoga of India have become a central part of our national culture.”
In 1997, when I had landed in Milwaukee, WI to pursue my journalism degree, it was rare to find Indian Americans in the city. Today, everywhere I go, at work, shopping malls, sports arena, theaters, churches, schools where my 3 daughters attend, and in my neighborhood where I live, there is a growing number of Indian Americans. There has been an influx of Indian Americans across the nation, especially in the past couple of decades.
According to The Economist, “Three-quarters of the Indian-born population in America today arrived in the last 25 years.” The present Indian population can be explained from the nearly 147,000 immigrants that India provides to the country on a yearly basis, reported Huffington Post.
In the early 20th century just a few hundred people emigrated from India to America each year and there were only about 5,000 people of Indian heritage living in the United States. Today Indian-born Americans number over 3.8 million and they are probably the most successful minority group in the country. Compared with all other big foreign-born groups, they are younger, richer and more likely to be married and supremely well educated.
The modern immigration wave from Asia is nearly a half century old and has pushed the total population of Asian Americans—foreign born and U.S born, adults and children—to a record 18.2 million in 2011, or 5.8% of the total U.S. population, up from less than 1% in 1965.
Pew Research study has found, “Asian Americans are the highest-income, best-educated and fastest-growing racial group in the United States. They are more satisfied than the general public with their lives, finances and the direction of the country, and they place more value than other Americans do on marriage, parenthood, hard work and career success.”
Indians have always been rising in America. As James Crabtree of Financial Times suggests, “More than any other group of outsiders, it was the Indians who figured out that, to make it in startup land, it helps to have a social network of your own.”
The less than four million Indian Americans appear to be gaining prominence and have come to be recognized as a force to reckon with in this land of opportunities that they have come to call as their adopted homeland. They are the most educated population in the United States, with more than 80 percent holding college or advanced degrees, as per a report by Pew Research Center. They have the highest income levels, earning $65,000 per year with a median household income of $88,000, far higher than the U.S. household average of 49,000, according to the survey.
Although disparities persist with nearly nine percent of Indian Americans live in poverty, they have made a mark in almost every field in the United States through their hard work, dedication and brilliance. Notching successes in fields as diverse as poetry and politics, the fast growing strong Indian American community packed more power and influence far beyond their numbers in the year gone by.
“While the Indian-American community has been the wealthiest, most-educated minority in the U.S. for some time now, they’re only more recently experiencing wide-scale recognition in public life,” Forbes magazine stated.
Indian Americans are just one percent of the American population, but 3 percent of its engineers, 7 percent of its IT force, and 8 percent of its physicians and surgeons. Some 10-20 percent of all tech start-ups have Indian founders. Indeed, a joint Duke University-UC Berkeley study revealed that between 1995-2005, Indian immigrants founded more engineering and technology companies than immigrants from countries like UK, China, Taiwan and Japan combined. They have risen to the top ranks in major companies like Satya Nadella in Microsoft, Sundar Pichai in Google and Indra Nooyi in Pepsico.
Indians for decades have been playing an important role in global technology landscape. Indians, especially in Silicon Valley, are growing in prominence, influence, and sheer population. The fact that Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, and Nikesh Arora lead some of the most prominent tech world giants is an example of their importance to the larger world and the significant contributions they continue to make.
Rajeev Suri is leading Nokia. Hyderabad-born Shantanu Narayen is the leader of Adobe, while Sanjay Jha ids the CEO of Global Foundries. George Kurian became the CEO and president of storage and data management company NetApp in June 2015. Francisco D’Souza is the CEO, Cognizant, and Dinesh Paliwal is the president and CEO of Harman International, and Ashok Vemuri is the CEO, Conduent Inc, the Xerox’s sibling business services. These are only a few of the success stories of Indians in the US, leading the tech industry in the US.
The surge in Indians moving to America was intimately linked to the rise of the technology industry. In the 1980s India loosened its rules on private colleges, leading to a large expansion in the pool of engineering and science graduates. Fear of the “Y2K” bug in the late 1990s served as a catalyst for them to engage with the global economy, with armies of Indian engineers working remotely from the subcontinent, or travelling to America on workers’ visas.
Today a quarter or more of the Indian-born workforce is employed in the tech industry. In the Silicon Valley neighborhoods such as Fremont and Cupertino, people of Indian origin make up a fifth of the population. Some 10-20% of all tech start-ups have Indian founders; Indians have ascended to the heights of the biggest firms, too.
If Indians are a powerful force in the tech sector, they have also begun to show their power in the political arena. There have been several Indian Americans who have been elected and appointed to important positions at national, state and local level offices.
A record five Indian-Americans serve in the US Congress, scripting history for the minority ethnic community that comprises just one per cent of America’s population. Congressmen Ami Bera, Raja
Photo by: Dennis Van Tine/STAR MAX/IPx 4/14/16 Dr. Vivek Murthy (U.S. Surgeon General) at The National Action Network Conference. (NYC)
Krishnamoorthy, Ro Khanna and Pramila Jayapal have been elected to the US Congress while Kamla Harris represents California in the US Senate.
Kamala Harris, a rising star, the first Indian American and first black senator from California, the Huffington Post has suggested Harris could be “the next best hope for shattering that glass ceiling=,” by becoming the first female President of the greatest democracy in the world. Pundits have compared her rise to that of former President Obama.
Indian-American Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, a fast-rising Democratic star, has featured in the Politico magazine’s “Power List for the year 2018” for having assumed the mantle of a House “leader of the resistance.”
Over the past several months, there have been a number of articles in the national press, speculating whether former South Carolina Governor and the current US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley might consider a presidential run in 2020. Some say her efforts and clear leadership as governor and ambassador to the United Nations have put her in a strong position to possibly become this nation’s first female president.
In the most recent elections, Indian Americans made huge victories across the nation. Last November, Indian American politician Ravinder Bhalla made news by being the first Sikh mayor of the New Jersey city of Hoboken, as well as one of the first public officials in the US to wear a turban. The occupational profile presented by the Asian Indian community today is one of increasing diversity. Although a large number of Asian Indians are professionals, others own small businesses or are employed as semi- or nonskilled workers.
Forbes wrote recently about the new additions to the Trump administration: “two Indian Americans, Raj Shah and Manisha Singh, the latest instance of a relatively new, larger trend: the growing participation — and success — of Indian Americans in public service.”
Trump appointed Raj Shah principal deputy press secretary — who also continues to hold his post as deputy assistant to the president. US assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs, Manisha Singh, 45, is a noted lawyer from Florida.
As the chairman of the United States Federal Communications Commission, accomplished attorney Ajit Pai works on a wide variety of regulatory and transactional matters involving the cable, internet, TV, radio and satellite industries.
A respected legal scholar, Neomi Rao is the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the White House. Seema Verma is the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Vishal Amin is Trump’s intellectual property enforcement coordinator. Neil Chatterjee is chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
While several Indian Americans are now key players in pushing the Trump White House’s conservative agenda, the Indian-American community in general has long leaned left. Politically, they are more Democratic leaning than any other group as a whole in the nation. A whopping 84 per cent Indian-Americans voted for President Barack Obama in the general election in 2012. Compared with other US Asian groups, Indian Americans are the most likely to identify with the Democratic Party; 65 percent are Democrats or lean to the Democrats, 18 percent are Republicans.
In the Obama era, they were recognized by the Democratic Party with important jobs in Washington, DC as never been before. “It is very exciting to serve in an Administration that has so many great Indian-Americans serving,” said Raj Shah, former Administrator of USIAD, the highest ranking Indian-American in the Obama Administration.
In 2012, a record 30 Indian Americans fought to win electoral battle with Republican Nikki Haley and Democrat Kamala Harris handily winning back their jobs as South Carolina governor and California’s attorney general respectively. Amiresh ‘Ami’ Bera, the lone Indian American in the US House of Representatives, repeated history by winning a tight California House race.
Dr. Vivek Verma won an uphill battle against the powerful Gun Lobby and won the majority support at the US Senate. President Barack Obama appointed Richard Rahul Verma as the first envoy from the NRI community to India. Nisha Desai Biswal was heading the State Department’s South Asia bureau. Puneet Talwar took over as assistant secretary for political-military affairs to serve as a bridge between the State and Defense departments, while Arun Madhavan Kumar became assistant secretary of commerce and director general of the US and Foreign Commercial Service.
Subra Suresh was inducted into the Institute of Medicine (IOM), making him the only university president to be elected to all three national academies, while Sujit Choudhry, a noted expert in comparative constitutional law, became the first Indian American dean of the University of California-Berkeley, School of Law, a top US law school. Sriram Hathwar and Ansun Sujoe won the Scripps National Spelling Bee contest after 52 years and for just the fourth time in the contest’s history. Indira Nooyi, another person of Indian origin has been leading as the CEO of Pepsi, one of the largest corporations.
Former US attorney Preet Bharara made history by going after small and big law breakers in the nation. Among many judges of Indian origin, Sri Srinivasan stole the headlines with his unanimous support from the US Senate to the US Federal Court in DC.
In the glamor world of the nation, Indian Americans are not far behind. Aziz Ansari, the Master of None star won the Golden Globe this year for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy. Several others have found leading roles in the highly competitive Hollywood movies and on TV.
Priyanka Chopra has been voted the “Sexiest Asian Woman” in the world in an annual UK poll released in London last week. From splashes of red and black to purple velvet, with models that defied tradition both in size and age, Indian-American fashion designers showed their metal at the New York Fashion Week that was held in New York City in February this year. They included Bibhu Mohapatra, Prabal Gurung, Misha Kaura, Naeem Khan, Sachin & Babi, and the MacDuggal brand.
Like all immigrant groups, Indians have found niches in America’s vast economy. Half of all motels are owned by Indians, mainly Gujaratis. Punjabis dominate the franchises for 7-Eleven stores and Subway sandwiches.
Ten richest of all Indian Americans have made it to the Forbes List 2018, The World’s Billionaires on March 6th. The richest Indian American on the list is Rakesh Gangwal, the co-founder of the airline Indigo and is worth $3.3 billion, after he made an extra $1.2 billion in the past year. Romesh T. Wadhwani, an IT entrepreneur and philanthropist, closely follows him, with a net worth of $3.1 billion, who ended up topping the list last year. Forbes list this year has a record of 2,208 members including two new Indian Americans, Niraj Shah who is worth $1.6 billion and Jayshree Ullal who is worth $1.3 billion. Shah is the CEO and co-founder of Wayfair while Ullal is the CEO of Arista Networks.
Again, quoting Pew Research, Indian Americans are the highest-income and best-educated people in the United States and the third largest among Asian Americans who have surpassed Latinos as the fastest-growing racial group, according to a new survey. Seven-in-ten (70 percent) Indian Americans ages 25 and older, have obtained at least a bachelor’s degree; this is higher than the Asian-American share (49 percent) and much higher than the national share (28 percent), the survey found.
Indian Americans generally are well-off. Median annual household income for Indian Americans in 2010 was $88,000, much higher than for all Asian Americans ($66,000) and all U.S. households ($49,800). In 2010, 28% of Indian American worked in science and engineering fields; according to the 2013 American Community Survey, more than two-thirds (69.3%) of Indian Americans 16 and older were in management, business, science and arts occupations.
They are the largest segment of any group that entered the country under the H1-B visa program, which allow highly skilled foreign workers in designated “specialty occupations” to work in the U.S. In 2011, for example, 72,438 Indians received H1-B visas, 56% of all such visas granted that year.
Indian Americans have quietly permeated many segments of the American economy and society while still retaining their Indian culture. Most Asian Indian families strive to preserve traditional Indian values and transmit these to their children. Offsprings are encouraged to marry within the community and maintain their Indian heritage.
Indian Americans stand out from most other US Asian groups in the personal importance they place on parenting; 78 percent of Indian Americans say being a good parent is one of the most important things to them personally. Indian Americans are among the most likely to say that the strength of family ties is better in their country of origin (69 percent) than in the US (8 percent).
Nearly nine-in-ten (87 percent) adult Indian Americans in the United States are foreign born, compared with about 74 percent of adult Asian Americans and 16 percent of the adult US population overall. More than half of Indian-American adults are US citizens (56 percent), lower than the share among overall adult Asian population (70 percent) as well as the national share (91 percent).
More than three-quarters of Indian Americans (76 percent) speak English proficiently, compared with 63 percent of all Asian Americans and 90 percent of the US population overall. The median age of adult Indian Americans is 37, lower than for adult Asian Americans (41) and the national median (45).
Although over four fifths of Indians belong to Hindu religion in India, only about half (51%) of Indian Americans are Hindu, while nearly all Asian-American Hindus (93%) trace their heritage to India. 18% of Indian Americans identified themselves as Christians; 10% said they were Muslim.
More than seven-in-ten (71 percent) adult Indian Americans are married, a share significantly higher than for all Asian Americans (59 percent) and for the nation (51 percent). The share of unmarried mothers was much lower among Indian Americans (2.3 percent) than among all Asian Americans (15 percent) and the population overall (37 percent).
The first Asian Indians or Indian Americans, as they are also known, arrived in America as early as the middle of the nineteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century, about 2,000 Indians, most of them Sikhs (a religious minority from India’s Punjab region), settled on the west coast of the United States, having come in search of economic opportunity. Other Asian Indians came as merchants and traders; many worked in lumber mills and logging camps in the western states of Oregon, Washington, and California, where they rented bunkhouses, acquired knowledge of English, and assumed Western dress.
Between 1910 and 1920, as agricultural work in California began to become more abundant and better paying, many Indian immigrants turned to the fields and orchards for employment. For many of the immigrants who had come from villages in rural India, farming was both familiar and preferable. Some Indians eventually settled permanently in the California valleys where they worked. Because there was virtually no immigration by Indian women during this time, it was not unheard of for Indian males to marry Mexican women and raise families.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, about 100 Indian students also studied in universities across America. A small group of Indian immigrants also came to America as political refugees from British rule. The immigration of Indians to America was tightly controlled by the American government during this time, and Indians applying for visas to travel to the United States were often rejected by U.S. diplomats in major Indian cities like Bombay and Calcutta. The Asiatic Exclusion League (AEL) was organized in 1907 to encourage the expulsion of Asian workers, including Indians.
In July 1946, Congress passed a bill allowing naturalization for Indians and, in 1957, the first Asian Indian Congressman, Dalip Saund, was elected to Congress. Like many early Indian immigrants, Saund came to the United States from Punjab and had worked in the fields and farms of California. He had also earned a doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. While more educated and professional Indians began to enter America, immigration restrictions and tight quotas ensured that only small numbers of Indians entered the country prior to 1965. Overall, approximately 6,000 Asian Indians immigrated to the United States between 1947 and 1965.
From 1965 onward, a wave of Indian immigration began, spurred by a change in U.S. immigration law that lifted prior quotas and restrictions and allowed significant numbers of Asians to immigrate. Between 1965 and 1974, Indian immigration to the United States increased at a rate greater than that from almost any other country.
This wave of immigrants was very different from the earliest Indian immigrants—Indians that emigrated after 1965 were overwhelmingly urban, professional, and highly educated and quickly engaged in gainful employment in many U.S. cities. Many had prior exposure to Western society and education and their transition to the United States was therefore relatively smooth. More than 100,000 such professionals and their families entered the U.S. in the decade after 1965.
Almost 40 percent of all Indian immigrants who entered the United States in the decades after 1965 arrived on student or exchange visitor visas, in some cases with their spouses and dependents. Most of the students pursued graduate degrees in a variety of disciplines. They were often able to find promising jobs and prosper economically, and many became permanent residents and then citizens.
The 1990 U.S. census reported 570,000 Asian Indians in America. In general, the Asian Indian community has preferred to settle in the larger American cities rather than smaller towns, especially in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago. This appears to be a reflection of both the availability of jobs in larger cities, and the personal preference of being a part of an urban, ethnically diverse environment, one which is evocative of the Indian cities that many of the post-1965 immigrants came from.
Indian Americans are more evenly spread out than other Asian Americans. About 24 percent of adult Indian Americans live in the West, compared with 47 percent of Asian Americans and 23 percent of the US population overall. More than three-in-ten (31 percent) Indian Americans live in the Northeast, 29 percent live in the South, and the rest (17 percent) live in the Midwest.
Despite their successes, they have been also subjected to discrimination and racist attacks. According to a recent report called “Communities on Fire” by the Washington, DC-based group South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), hate crimes against Indian Americans and other South Asian Americans surged 45% from November 8, 2016, to November 7, 2017. The group recorded 302 incidents during that period, 213 of them being direct physical or verbal assaults
The Indian American community continues to play an important role in shaping the relationship between India, the largest democracy and the US, the greatest democracy in the world. “The model minority stereotype stems from the “non-threatening nature” of the Indian immigrant — a label bestowed by the white counterpart. The Indian American community is seen as “successful” – a prototype to be followed by fellow minorities,” Huffington Post wrote.
“Indian-Americans are tremendously important and we hope they would be increasingly visible not only in the government, but also in all parts of American life,” said Maya Kassandra Soetoro-Ng, maternal half-sister of Obama, adding that the President was very proud of the community. “It is certainly a reflection of how important India is and how important Indian-Americans are to the fabric of the nation. I would just like to celebrate all of the contribution artistic, political and so much more of the community. It is time we come to recognize fully the contribution of the Indian-American community here,” said Maya.
Reliance Industries (RIL) Chairman Mukesh Ambani, Architect Balkrishna Doshi, and human rights lawyer Indira Jaising have been featured in Fortune magazine’s 50 Greatest Leaders of 2018.
Fortune’s list “of the thinkers, speakers, and doers who are stepping up to meet today’s challenges” also includes Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron.
Ranking Ambani at 24th place, Fortune said that he had “in less than two years, brought mobile data to the masses and completely upended the country’s telecom market”. “Since Ambani, chief of the $47 billion conglomerate Reliance Industries, launched Jio — the first mobile network in the world to be entirely IP-based — in September 2016, the company has signed up a staggering 168 million subscribers.
“The secret? Offering dirt-cheap data and free calls (and plowing billions of dollars into the infrastructure that transmits them). The effect, dubbed ‘Jio-fication’, has driven India’s higher-price carriers to drop costs (if not run them out of business), and it fueled a 1,100 per cent rise in India’s monthly data consumption,” it said.
Lawyers Collective Founder Indira Jaising has been ranked 20. “When the poorest in India need a voice, they find one in Jaising, a lawyer who has dedicated her life to battling injustice,” Fortune said. “She has fought on behalf of victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster, helped Syrian Christian women in India win property rights equal to their male counterparts’, and helped draft India’s first domestic violence law. “Her work has recently led her to Myanmar, where she was appointed by the UN to lead an investigation into the persecution of Rohingya Muslims,” it added.
Ranking Doshi at 43, Fortune said he is the winner of architecture’s highest honour this year – the Pritzker Prize – and has spent the bulk of his 70-year career championing accessible housing, earning the nickname of “the architect for the poor”.
“His designs include the Aranya low-cost housing project in Indore, a labyrinth of homes and courtyards that provide around 80,000 residents with a balance of open spaces and communal living, and the mixed-income Life Insurance Corporation Housing in Ahmedabad, where several generations of a family can occupy levels of the same building.
“Underlying all his work is the ideal that all economic classes deserve good housing,” it said. The first rank in this year’s list goes to “The Students” of Marjory Stoneman Douglas and other schools in the US that suffered from gun violence.
This year’s list includes Bill and Melinda Gates, tennis star Serena Williams, General Motors CEO Mary Barra, Tencent CEO Huateng ‘Pony’ Ma, Chinese environmentalist Ma Jun, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian and Hollywood actor-producer Reese Witherspoon.
India will claim the top spot among the world’s fastest-growing major economies this year, but rising trade tensions between the United States and China may restrain that growth, a Reuters poll of economists showed.
The recent tit-for-tat import tariffs imposed by the U.S. and China have raised concerns about a full-fledged global trade war which could throw an otherwise-strong world economy off-course.
Twenty of 29 economists who answered an extra question said India‘s economy will be hurt by the ongoing trade dispute.
“India runs the risk of being caught in the middle of the trade spat between the U.S. and China,” said Hugo Erken, senior economist at Rabobank.
Erken said growth will take a hit if India takes sides as the side not chosen may retaliate by imposing duties.
“The damage would especially be large if India retaliated with an import duty on either U.S. or Chinese imports,” said Erken, adding that such a scenario was unlikely.
However, not all economists shared that view. Nine respondents said India‘s economy would benefit from the dispute.
“Though in the short-term a trade war between U.S. and China may impact global trade includingIndia, in the long-term, India is likely to benefit as China will be forced to devaluate its currency to remain a dominant player in the world market,” wrote RK Gupta, managing director at Taurus Asset Management.
“In that scenario, India‘s exports will be more competitive with China.” The latest poll, taken April 11-18, predicted India‘s economy will expand 7.4 percent in the fiscal year that began this month. That is in line with the International Monetary Fund’s projection, and is a slight upgrade from the January poll.
For the next fiscal year, growth is expected to average 7.5 percent, a touch lower than the IMF’s forecast of 7.8 percent. After growth slowed sharply for much of last year, India regained its status as the world’s fastest-growing major economy in the quarter ending December 2017.
The slowdown was mainly driven by the government’s sudden decision in November 2016 to scrap high-value currency notes and a botched implementation of a goods and services tax (GST) in July last year.
But the impact of those moves has now faded. “The investment cycle is recovering, and there is steady improvement in consumption,” noted Sonal Verma and Aurodeep Nandi at Nomura.
While India‘s retail inflation has eased this year and hit a five-month low in March, it remained above the Reserve Bank of India‘s medium-term target of 4 percent.
But increased government spending ahead of national elections next year is yet to kick in and that is expected to be inflationary.
Inflation is forecast to average 4.7 percent in the fiscal year ending next March, and 4.9 percent the following year, the poll showed.
The state-run India Meteorological Department has forecast a normal monsoon in 2018 – a boon for the farm sector that accounts for about 15 percent of India‘s $2 trillion economy and employs more than half its 1.3 billion people.
A normal monsoon would boost grain production and keep a lid on food price inflation, which tends to be volatile, but especially in India.
The Reserve Bank of India has kept interest rates steady after a 25 basis-point cut to the repo rate in August last year. It is forecast to keep rates on hold until the second half of next year, according to the poll of almost 50 economists. But economists have shifted their expectation for a repo rate hike to the quarter ending September next year from a move in the first three months of 2019.
The ongoing trade dispute between the United States and China has led both countries to announce billions of dollars’ worth of tariffs on each other’s products. China is the largest single exporter to the U.S. – more than $500 billion worth of Chinese goods entered the U.S. last year – and American tariffs on Chinese products were on the high side even before the latest round of tit-for-tat increases.
Last week, President Trump ordered his chief trade negotiator to consider imposing tariffs on an additional $ 100 billion in Chinese exports to the US, after his punitive measures on the first $ 50 billion elicited a retaliatory smackdown from Beijing on US exports to China. The Chinese response, accompanied by a ‘we are ready for a showdown’ challenge, sent the US market, lawmakers, and the country’s farmers (who export massive amounts of farm produce to China) into a panic, but he US President was unfazed.
Targeted for tariffs by the US are some 1300 items ranging from Chinese steel and aluminum to huge amounts of consumer goods that Americans buy on the cheap at superstores such as WalMart. China in turn had threatened to impose punitive duties on everything from American automobiles and jet planes to grains, soy, nuts, and wines, all of which will pinch the American farmers and industry.
Trump meanwhile continued to focus on China. “We are not in a trade war with China, that war was lost many years ago by the foolish, or incompetent, people who represented the US. Now we have a Trade Deficit of $500 Billion a year, with Intellectual Property Theft of another $300 Billion. We cannot let this continue!” he tweeted last week as the rhetoric overheated.
Beijing retaliation against the US farm sector had the desired effect, with lawmakers representing parts of the country that voted heavily for Trump, panicking as their constituents worried about the future with a constricted Chinese market. Tweeting that the president is “threatening to light American agriculture on fire,” Nebraska’s senator Ben Sasse fumed, “Hopefully the President is just blowing off steam again but, if he’s even half-serious, this is nuts.”
US President Donald Trump has instructed officials to consider a further $100bn of tariffs against China, in an escalation of a tense trade stand-off. These would be in addition to the $50bn worth of US tariffs already proposed on hundreds of Chinese imports.
China’s Ministry of Commerce responded, saying China would “not hesitate to pay any price” to defend its interests. Tit-for-tat trade moves have unsettled global markets in recent weeks. The latest US proposal came after China threatened tariffs on 106 key US products.
In response to Mr Trump’s latest announcement, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said: “China and the US as two world powers should treat each other on a basis of equality and with respect. “By waving a big stick of trade sanctions against China, the US has picked a wrong target.” Ministry of Commerce Spokesman Gao Feng said: “We do not want to fight, but we are not afraid to fight a trade war.”
Earlier this year, the US announced it would impose import taxes of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminium. The tariffs were to be wide-ranging and would include China. China responded last month with retaliatory tariffs worth $3bn of its own against the US on a range of goods, including pork and wine. Beijing said the move was intended to safeguard its interests and balance losses caused by the new tariffs.
In a statement, Trump branded that retaliation by Beijing as “unfair”. “Rather than remedy its misconduct, China has chosen to harm our farmers and manufacturers,” he said. “In light of China’s unfair retaliation, I have instructed the USTR (United States Trade Representative) to consider whether $100bn of additional tariffs would be appropriate… and, if so, to identify the products upon which to impose such tariffs.”
However, analysts say, the tariffs being considered by the US on China are by no means the highest import duties the U.S. charges. According to then, the imports from several developing South Asian nations whose exports to the U.S. are heavily weighted toward clothing and other products that the U.S. generally taxes highly.
Bangladesh, for example, exported about $5.7 billion worth of goods to the U.S. last year, 95% of which were apparel, footwear, headgear and related items, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from the U.S. International Trade Commission. Nearly all Bangladeshi imports were subject to U.S. duty, and the tariffs on them were equivalent to 15.2% of the total value of that country’s shipments to the U.S. – the highest such average rate among the 232 countries, territories and other jurisdictions in the ITC database.
Other countries with similar profiles are Cambodia (duties equal to 14.1% of the total value of imports from there), Sri Lanka (11.9%), Pakistan (8.9%) and Vietnam (7.2%). By contrast, the duties on Chinese imports totaled $13.5 billion last year, or 2.7% of their total value. For all imports worldwide, the U.S. imposed tariffs equal to about 1.4% of total value.
The average tariff rates the U.S. imposes on its other major trading partners are much lower than those on China. Mexico and Canada, the second- and third-highest sources of U.S. imports, had average duties last year of just 0.12% and 0.08% of the value of their imports, respectively. (The three countries are linked in the North American Free Trade Agreement.) The average rates for Japan and Germany were both less than 2%; South Korea, with which the U.S. also has a free trade agreement, had duties equal to just 0.25% on its $70.5 billion in total exports to the U.S.
Average tariff rates on U.S. imports from a given country, as defined above, depend on two things: the share of total imports that are subject to duty, and the average rate the U.S. places on that share.
In general, U.S. tariffs are lower today (relative to the total value of imports) than they were two decades ago, mainly because more imported goods are fully exempted from duties. In 1996, for example, three-quarters (75.5%) of Chinese imports were subject to duty, at an average rate of 7.2%. Last year, only about two-fifths (41.3%) of imports from China were dutiable, with the rest entering the country duty-free; the average rate on the dutiable portion of Chinese imports was 6.5%.
With the new tariff war, the United States is opening a two-front economic and geo-political war with China and Russia. After decades of relative peace with the two Asian giants, Washington, citing separate underhand economic and political subversion of America by Beijing and Moscow, has embarked on a warpath against the two nations, even as they confront the United States in hotspots across the world. The US face-off with China and Russia comes at a time Beijing and Moscow say they are in the best phase of their own bilateral relationship.
With a minimum net worth of $27 million, freshman lawmaker Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) is the fourth-richest Californian in Congress. That’s according to a new list compiled by Roll Call, which analyzed federal financial disclosure forms to determine that the total net worth of the Golden State’s 55-member delegation came to $439 million in 2016—a 14 percent drop from the year before—while Congress as a whole got richer.
In all, the Capitol Hill newspaper found in partnership with the Los Angeles Times, there are 20 millionaires in Congress from California with fortunes from real estate holdings, investment portfolios and their spouses. The state is home to both the richest and the poorest members of Congress, both of them SoCal Republicans: Darrell Issa tops the list with a net worth of $283.3 million while dairy farmer David Valadao comes dead last from a negative net worth of $17 million in business credit lines.
Khanna, an economist and intellectual property lawyer, reported that his wife Ritu Khanna—the multimillionaire daughter of Monte Ahuja, an executive of investment firm Mura Holdings and car parts company Transtar—holds 99 percent of his assets.
The first-term congressman, who proposed a $1 trillion tax credit and other policies to benefit the working class, spent none of his family’s money on his last race, according to Roll Call. His wealth includes more than 500 different investments and a few trusts. He also reported more than $500,000 in tech stocks and $50,000 in student loans.
Elsewhere in Silicon Valley and the Peninsula, Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Menlo Park) lands 12th on the list for California, citing a $2 million net worth in 2016, while Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) a district away comes in 17th place with $1.6 million.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-San Francisco) is the second-richest member of the state delegation and the wealthiest woman in Congress with a reported worth of $61.5 million. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, another San Francisco Democrat, comes No. 5 on the ranking with stocks from Apple and Facebook and a net worth of $16 million, even after she and her husband reported losing $11 million in assets since the year prior.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Oakland), is No. 29 with a reported net worth of $391,100. Fellow Oakland Democrat Barbara Lee comes in at No. 45 in the state due to a $225,000 negative net worth from two mortgages.
Roll Call and the LA Times noted that the accuracy of the financial disclosure forms is a little iffy. Some are penned by hand and hard to decipher, and mistakes earn only warning letters from an ethics panel.
With his base in wealthy Fairfield County in the state of Connecticut, Rep. Jim Himes is a top campaign fundraiser, but the Democrat has a new Republican challenger who says he plans to rival the incumbent in raising political money. With his announcement, Harry Arora, 48, an Indian American investment firm founder is looking to make waves in public service, running for Congress in Connecticut’s 4th Congressional District.
Arora of Greenwich, Conn., filed his paperwork to run for the seat in late December, seeking the Republican Party nomination. With no other opponent filing for the race, he will bypass the Aug. 14 primary and head directly to the Nov. 6 general against Democratic incumbent Rep. Jim Himes.
The candidate, who fought and survived cancer, has also helped with other campaigns in the past. It was his battle with cancer that led him to shift his focus from business to public service, Arora said. With his background in investing, and as an analyst and investment manager, he believes he is well suited to utilize his skill set in public office.
“Connecticut has never recovered fully from the great recession. Businesses and talent are fleeing the state because of the hostile policy environment – we are in a vicious cycle and our elected officials are oblivious to it,” he said.
“I am running for the U.S. Congress to propose and advocate policies which will help my state get back on track. I want to bring back honest discussion in our national debate,” the candidate added.
A release from Arora’s campaign said, “Like Himes, Arora is also from the investment industry and has the ability to raise money to match Himes.”
“He is the first investment manager in Fairfield County to run for Congress, which gives him access to capable donors,” the release said. “It is the combination of intellect, passion and genuine desire to serve, which people see and feel when they meet me. That is what is going to win this race for me,” he asserted to India-West.
Arora, if elected, would likely join a growing group of Indian American members of Congress — Ro Khanna and Ami Bera of California, Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois — but would be the first hailing from the East Coast.
“A large number of Indian Americans are first generation and have become American citizens in recent years. They have been busy in their personal fights – to raise their families, to do well at their jobs, build businesses and careers. Indian Americans are highly educated, hardworking and entrepreneurial,” he said.
“I am glad to see that so many other Indians are running for office. It is not easy. Perhaps the time has come. Indian Americans are well represented in banking, legal, technology and so many other professions. It is now time they step up to the challenge of public office.”
The candidate added that if 2 percent of the country is of Indian ethnicity, the government should have nine Indian origin representatives and two senators. By those standards, the community is halfway there, with four representatives in the House and one — Kamala Harris of California — in the Senate.
Ten richest of all Indian Americans have made it to the Forbes List 2018< The World’s Billionaires on March 6th. The richest Indian American on the list is Rakesh Gangwal, the co-founder of the airline Indigo and is worth $3.3 billion, after he made an extra $1.2 billion in the past year. Romesh T. Wadhwani, an IT entrepreneur and philanthropist, closely follows him, with a net worth of $3.1 billion, who ended up topping the list last year.
Forbes list this year has a record of 2,208 members including two new Indian Americans, Niraj Shah who is worth $1.6 billion and Jayshree Ullal who is worth $1.3 billion. Shah is the CEO and co-founder of Wayfair while Ullal is the CEO of Arista Networks.
Other Indian American billionaires who are on the list include Vinod Khosla ($2.3 billion), Google investor Kavitark Ram Shriram ($2.1 billion), Vista Equity Partners cofounder Brian Sheth ($2 billion), pharmaceutical executive John Kapoor ($1.8 billion), software executive and investor Aneel Bhusri ($1.6 billion) and Syntel co-founder Bharat Desai ($1.1 billion).
Sheth is the youngest Indian American billionaire on the list whose wealth went up by $900 million, while Khosla’s net worth increased by $700 million. The combined net worth of Indian American billionaires is $20.2 billion.
Pakistani American engineer and owner of the National Football League’s Jacksonville Jaguars Shahid Khan was the first South Asian American to appear on the billionaires’ list. Khan, 67, appeared at No. 217 on the list with a net worth of $7.2 billion. He bought auto parts supplier Flex-N-Gate in 1980. His design for a one-piece truck bumper was the basis for his success, Forbes said. The company now has 62 plants and more than 24,000 employees worldwide. Shahid Khan’s net worth in the current year is $7.2 billion.
HAB BANK, nation’s oldest and largest South Asian American bank, hosted a dinner on Friday, February 16, for its Iselin Branch valued customers at The Marigold, Somerset, New Jersey. The event was organized by the Bank’s Iselin Branch to thank and pay tribute to the community that the Bank serve. Over 300 guests included successful entrepreneurs and professionals who attended the gala dinner. Mr. Girish Vazirani, Vice President & Branch Manager, Iselin Branch welcomed the guests and expressed HAB’s gratitude for their presence at the dinner.
In his welcome speech, HAB’s President & CEO Saleem Iqbal thanked the invited guests for taking time out from their busy schedule to be at the HAB’s Customer Appreciation Gala Dinner. The dinner coincided with HAB’s yearlong celebration of its 35 Years of service to the community. Mr. Iqbal devoted much of his speech highlighting the history of South Asian Community and presence in the United States, which dates back to 1820.
The origin was not without struggles and challenges. He pointed out that early migrants from South Asia paved the way to whole new generation of successful South Asians playing pivotal roles in a number of disciplines and industries. From software pioneers in Silicone Valley, mainstream politics, academia and to successful artists in TV and Films, South Asian community has made its mark. Mr. Iqbal highlighted some of the business leaders of South Asian origin that have become an integral part of American landscape and are contributing to our adopted home USA.
Since its charter in 1983, HAB has made great strides and is now the largest South Asian American bank in the United States. Mr. Iqbal highlighted that HAB’s success and progress is primarily because of its dedicated employees and customers at each and every branch.
Besides a large number of clients, HAB’s Imran Habib, Rizwan Qureshi, Zilay Wahidy, Girish Vazirani and several staff members and senior executives attended the event. Multiple media outlets such as ARY Digital, TV Asia, TV 9 and India Life & Times, and Desi Talk extensively covered HAB’s Gala Dinner.
HAB BANK was founded in 1983 and since its inception, it has played a key role in nurturing and strengthening the South Asian community with branch network located in New York, New Jersey and California. Through the years, the Bank has evolved in response to needs of its customers and maintains a close relationship with the community it serves.
The Bank’s core products are Commercial Real Estate Mortgages, International Trade Services, US Small Business Loans and a well-designed commercial banking products and services for small to medium sized businesses. The Bank also has a wide range of consumer products and services including personal checking, savings, CDs, and full-service online banking. The Bank is fully committed to remain engaged and pro-active in meeting the banking requirements of its customer and, above all, continues to work towards “Building Relationships”.
Abandoning her run to be the Governor of Connecticut, Indian American Dita Bhargava has announced that she will run for State Treasurer instead, according to an official statement. Her reason for switching from gubernatorial to treasurer candidate is because she believes her financial background is better suited to the state’s treasurer post, she told the publication. Bhargava had called a press conference for Monday morning, Feb. 26, in Hartford to formally launch her revamped campaign for the treasurer’s position.
“This fall and winter, as I explored running for statewide office, I visited more than 60 towns across Connecticut to learn about the challenges facing our state. I heard the concerns you voiced over rising living costs and college tuition, escalating taxes, increasing budget deficits, our exodus of young workers, and the future of our pension system, among many other issues,” Bhargava said in the statement.
“Hearing these stories has emboldened my commitment to public service and helped strengthen the fiscal and economic foundations of our state. It’s also led me to reconsider how I can best harness my strengths, knowledge, and experiences in ways that best serve our citizens,” she added.
Bhargava said that the state will need to be steered in a new direction as Denise Nappier completes her 20-year tenure as state Treasurer. “During her tenure, Denise has expanded the discussion on corporate governance to include an awareness of businesses’ social and environmental impact. She has been a tireless advocate for better financial literacy in our state, where we lag behind our peers. The next Treasurer should have an appreciation for these issues, as well as a comprehensive knowledge of finance, investing, and the economy,” Bhargava stated, adding that her upbringing, professional experience in the financial sector and her progressive vision “are what Connecticut needs in our next Treasurer.”
Bhargava also mentioned in the statement that she wants to find solutions for the middle- and working-class families of Connecticut and she believes she can do so since she has that financial experience on Wall Street as well as in the nonprofit area where she “spent many years helping underserved communities and advocating for family-friendly policies such as paid family leave and equal pay for equal work.”
“I’m fully prepared to steer Connecticut’s financial future in these challenging times. We’re already in a prolonged budgetary crisis, and Donald Trump’s federal tax plan—and the large deficits it will incur—may threaten Connecticut’s fiscal stability and its pension portfolio, already hard-pressed to match liabilities. The people of our state – retirees, workers, students, and the most vulnerable—need and deserve protection. I feel confident that with my experience, vision, and dedication, I’m the candidate most qualified and best equipped to lead our state back to fiscal and economic stability,” Bhargava stated.
Her fundraising haul puts her well ahead of the $75,000 small contribution threshold qualifying for public campaign financing for treasurer if she gets onto the primary ballot.
Former Hartford City Council President Shawn Wooden and Hartford lawyer Arunan Arulampalam, both Democrats, are running for treasurer. On the Republican side, state Sen. Art Linares, R-Westbrook, and former investment executive Thad Gray, of Lakeville, are candidates.
A record number of people are competing to be governor, including the mayors of Hartford and Bridgeport, Luke Bronin and Joe Ganim; former Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz; Ned Lamont, the 2010 primary runner-up and cable television entrepreneur; and the former consumer protection and veterans affairs commissioners Jonathan Harris and Sean Connolly.
“I think we have some real talent in the gubernatorial race,” Bhargava said. “I want to make sure that we have the strongest Democratic ticket possible. It’s very important that we keep our state blue.”
Bhargava is an active volunteer and supporter of the Clinton Foundation, Robin Hood Foundation and Inspirica Women’s Shelter and in January of 2017, she was unanimously elected Vice Chair of the Connecticut State Democratic Party, according to her website.
The Indian American Impact Fund, a recently launched political action committee, announced Feb. 8, that it has endorsed two candidates for the U.S. Congress, whose races will be watched closely in the run-up to the November elections, as well as an Indian-American running for the state senate.
Maryland State Delegate Aruna Miller is running from Maryland’s 6th Congressional District, currently represented by Rep. John Delaney, a Democrat, who declared he will not run for re-election. Miller, who has the most cash-on-hand of the five Democratic candidates vying for their party’s endorsement in teh June 26 primary. An engineer by trade, Miller has served in the Maryland State House since 2010 where her focus has been in STEM education, streamlining the regulatory process for small businesses, and bringing 21st century jobs to Maryland. Miller has been endorsed by EMILY’s List, 314 Action, all four sitting Indian American members of the House of Representatives, and a number of state and local elected officials. If elected, Miller will be the second Indian-American woman to serve in the United States House of Representatives.
The second candidate Impact is endorsing is Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Aftab Pureval in Ohio, who recently announced his run for the U.S. Congress from the 1st District, currently represented by Republican Rep. Steve Chabot. Pureval will have to defeat Laura Ann Weaver, in the May 8 Democratic primary, before going on to challenge Chabot. Ballotpedia lists this as a ‘safe Republican’ seat. Democrats are banking of Pureval’s past performance. In 2016, Pureval won an upset victory, defeating an incumbent who had a storied family name. The seat had been held by Republicans for a 100 years, Impact noted. A former federal prosecutor and attorney for Procter & Gamble, Pureval, is credited with overhauling the Hamilton County Courts website, expanding its hours, opening a legal help center, and streamlining operations in order to return over $800,000 to the county’s general fund, Impact said.
Ram Villivalam is making his bid for Illinois 8th State Senate District. The open primary is on March 20. Villivalam takes on incumbent State Senator Ira Silverstein, a Democrat. The 8th State Senate District has the highest percentage of Asian Americans in the state of Illinois, according to Impact. According to Ballotpedia, another Indian-American, Zehra Quadri, is running for the same seat. Villivalam has earned the endorsements of several members Congress, Impact says, including U.S. Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Illinois, and U.S. Congressman Ro Khanna, D-California, as well as constituency groups such as the Sierra Club and Equality Illinois PAC. If elected, Villivalam would be the first Indian-American ever elected to the Illinois state legislature.
“Not only do these individuals showcase the talent and patriotism of the Indian American community, they also represent the next generation of American political leadership,” Deepak Raj, co-founder of Impact and chair of the Impact Fund is quoted saying in the press release. “Voters are hungry for fresh faces and new ideas. These candidates are well-positioned to be part of a new wave of national and state leaders who will help fight back against xenophobic rhetoric and regressive policies and fight for economic opportunity and a stronger, fairer economy.”
In addition, Impact Fund has endorsed for re-election all four Indian American Members of the U.S. House of Representatives: Ami Bera, D-California; Pramila Jayapal, D-Washington; Krishnamoorthi; and Khanna, who are due for re-lection this November.
Nirav Modi’s name is a stamp of corporate India’s growing global prestige. On Hollywood red carpets, his diamonds have sparkled on the necklines and dangled from the earlobes of actors and models like Kate Winslet, Dakota Johnson and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.
Back in India, billboards above the traffic jams of New Delhi bear the image of Priyanka Chopra, a Bollywood star and former Miss World who is fast becoming a household name in the United States, also draped in Modi’s jewels.
Actress Priyanka Chopra, the global brand ambassador for Nirav Modi, is seeking legal opinion to terminate her contract now that the jeweler has been accused of committing a major banking fraud, her spokesperson said on Feb. 15.
Officials at the nation’s federal investigative agency announced it was looking for Modi as law enforcement officials fanned out to raid his jewelry stores and other businesses in Mumbai and New Delhi.
Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officials told reporters the agency had on Feb. 4 issued a lookout circular in the country for Modi, who they say had left four weeks earlier.
Modi has not yet responded to the allegations and could not be reached for comment. His flagship company, Firestar Diamond, has said it had no involvement in the case. The setback in Modi’s climb to fame and fortune was abrupt, even by the rough-and-tumble standards of one of the world’s fastest growing major economies.
Amid revelations that Nirav Modi was the prime accused in a Rs 11,515 crore fraud involving the Punjab National Bank, there was speculation that Chopra would sue the brand for non-payment of dues.
“There are speculative reports that Priyanka Chopra has sued Nirav Modi. This is not true. However, she is currently seeking legal opinion with respect to terminating her contract with the brand in light of allegations of financial fraud against Nirav Modi,” the spokesperson said in a statement. Nirav Modi’s name is a stamp of corporate India’s growing global prestige. On Hollywood red carpets, his diamonds have sparkled on the necklines and dangled from the earlobes of actors and models like Kate Winslet, Dakota Johnson and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.
The news was a shock for the circles in which Modi moved. As recently as last month, he was at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Indian media carried a group photograph with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the foreground and Nirav Modi, who is no relation, grinning between rows of Indian business leaders behind him.
“Top industrialists invited him home to display his collections,” said a Mumbai investment banker at a U.S.-based firm who has worked directly with Modi’s company. “There was a personal touch in everything he sold. Nirav Modi is a brand.”
Firestar Group, the parent company Modi controls as a majority shareholder, saw its revenue grow over three years from 103 billion rupees (about $1.6 billion at current rates) to some 147 billion rupees ($2.3 billion) by the 2016-17 fiscal year, according to figures previously provided by the company.
In 2010, Modi launched an eponymous jewellery business branded NIRAV MODI, in capitals, with the tagline “Haut Diamantaire”. New boutiques in Las Vegas and Hawaii have since been added to a stable that stretches from New York to London to Beijing.
He became a man whose diamond necklaces were sold, with his name attached, by Sotheby’s: “pure feminine elegance,” says a Hong Kong auction catalogue note of one 85.33 carat diamond necklace.
The auction house posted an online slideshow of jewellery-on-stars at the 2017 Oscars and highlighted supermodel Karlie Kloss having “a major Nirav Modi moment with her diamond ‘Mughal’ choker.”
It takes a lot of hard work to get into places like Yale and Stanford. But once students make it to the Ivy League, many find that while they’re ready to tackle Shakespeare and comparative political systems, they’re lost when it comes to building emotionally rich, and balanced lives.
To that end, a growing number of top universities are offering courses that aim to put students on the happiness track. A week after Yale opened registration for its debut course “Psychology and the Good Life” this January, a quarter of the undergraduate population—more than 1,180 students—had signed up, making it the most popular course ever at the university. Meanwhile, one in six undergraduates at Stanford take a course that teaches students to apply design thinking to the “wicked problem” of creating fulfilling lives and careers. And at McGill University, in Montreal, Quebec, students have flocked to “Lessons of Community and Compassion,” a course on social connectedness and belonging—precisely the things they may have sacrificed to get into one of Canada’s top institutions.
“I think students are looking for meaning,” Peter Salovey, president of Yale, told Quartz at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Salovey, an early pioneer in research on emotional intelligence, says that while students today are more sophisticated and worldly than previous generations, they seem to be much less resilient. Their sense of vulnerability is driving them to search for purpose, in academic courses and beyond.
Laurie Santos, the psychology professor teaching the Yale class, says the message behind her course—helping students figure out what it means to live happier, more satisfying lives, and teaching them scientifically-tested strategies to achieve that goal—resonates with kids who are only now realizing the toll that academic rigor has taken on their sleep, mental health, and sense of social connectedness.
“Our intuitions about what to do to be happy are wrong.” “Our intuitions about what to do to be happy are wrong,” she says. We think we want to achieve high-powered positions or make a lot of money, even if that means sacrificing the things that make us balanced and sane—human connection, exercise, rest, and activities that allow us to recharge. “This is a great moment when we have rigorous research on positive psychology—what makes us happy, but also on behavioral change,” says Santos. Her course covers practical topicsranging from the psychological benefits of charitable giving to how to pick a meaningful career. And because science shows that grade-seeking can undermine happiness, she encourages the students to take the course pass-fail.
Mental health issues among young adults are on the rise at universities around the world. “I was really surprised at the levels of anxiety and depression students face,” Santos says. A 2013 report by the Yale College Council found that more than half of undergraduates sought mental health services during their time on campus. A 2009 survey of 80,121 students, conducted by the American College Health Association-National College Health Assessment, showed that 39% of college students felt hopeless during the school year, and 25% felt so depressed they found it hard to function. Nearly half (47%) reported feeling overwhelming anxiety, and 84% said they felt generally overwhelmed by all they have to do.
Teaching students how to be happier isn’t just about helping them as individuals—it can also be about helping them be better citizens. In the course “Lessons of Community and Compassion: Overcoming Social Isolation and Building Social Connectedness through Policy and Program Development,” McGill University professor of practice Kim Samuel introduces students to some of the most socially isolated people on the planet—refugees and migrants, indigenous communities, families struggling with food insecurity; the displaced, disabled, and disconnected. One of the goals of her course, she says, is to teach students what it feels like to have a sense of safety and community in their own lives, so that they can help build connectedness in more disadvantaged populations. “All students have experienced some degree of social isolation in their lives,” she says, “and that recognition is the royal road to reciprocity.”
“We’re adding the ‘life’ component explicitly back to the college experience.” Many of her students say it’s a life-altering experience. Jeremy Monk, who took Samuel’s course and is now a graduate student at Columbia University, says, “I think a lot of us down the road, when we look back on where we started … this is going to be the place that we started, and where our ideas started to blossom, and where we really were given the chance to feel like we can make a difference and we are the leaders of change.”
Stanford’s “Designing Your Life” course, meanwhile, is taught by Bill Burnett, head of Stanford’s design program, and Dave Evans, who led the design of Apple’s first mouse and co-founded the gaming company Electronic Arts before becoming a lecturer in the design program.
Evans says everyone is trying to answer the question posed by poet Mary Oliver: “What is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?” “None of us got the manual explaining how to figure out the answer,” he adds. Soon-to-be graduates are facing that question with immediacy, and under pressure. “They’ve been wonderfully trained to get into and attend schools for 22 years—but not how to live in the world and to determine what “a life” means to them,” Evans says. He notes that being good at school is not the same thing as being good at life.
The Stanford courses have been such a success that the university’s Life Design Lab, co-founded by Evans and Burnett, now helps other colleges and universities to develop their own versions of the program. Evans says similar courses are now being taught at Northwestern, University of Vermont, Dartmouth, University of Michigan and MIT. “We’re adding the ‘life’ component explicitly back to the college experience,” Evans says. “It’s attractive because the need is great, the priority is high, and there’s little offered to help.”
The pursuit of happiness is, of course, hardly a new development. “Plato was talking about this,” Santo says. Scores of people have bought best-selling books on achieving happiness, from Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project to Dan Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness. And as the New York Times notes, courses on positive psychology are a popular draw for college students; 900 students enrolled in a Harvard lecture titled Positive Psychology in 2006.
What’s new is the growing body of scientific research on what actually makes people happy—and a sense from universities that today’s undergraduates are particularly in need of guidance.
Parents hold some responsibility for students’ lack of resilience, says Salovey. Parents’ laser-sharp, lifelong focus on getting their kids into top universities means that students are terrified of messing up. “It’s a kind of parenting that’s focused on college admissions and mitigating risks. We have to help students develop their own voice, to pick themselves up after failure.”
“We have to help students develop their own voice, to pick themselves up after failure.” There’s another advantage to offering classes on happiness: They underscore that mental health and emotional balance aren’t things that young people can afford to keep putting off. According to Sonja Lyuboirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside and author of the The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want, 40% of our happiness is conscious, intentional, and under our control. “It takes the work you have to put in to be a great violinist, it takes work every day,” Santos says. Happiness is never a lost cause, but the science does suggests that becoming a happy person is not a quick fix. Taking a college course on the subject may be the best short cut there is.
Santos will only teach one semester of the Yale course. But a five-part seminar-style series, “The Science of Well-Being,” will be available in March, for free, on the online education site Coursera.
So far, Santos has taught five sessions of “Psychology and the Good Life.” She says the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. “They are taking these ideas to heart in a way I did not expect,” she says. Alumni are already writing her to request a copy of the syllabus, as are kindergarten teachers and PTA heads. It’s not just young people who need help with happiness, she notes: “This is a human problem.”
Three men in India were arrested Monday night after police uncovered a huge scheme that targeted more than 11,000 people in the United States. Con men posing as officials from the Internal Revenue Service left thousands of voice messages claiming to have found irregularities in tax records of the targets. The messages instructed them to call back or face legal action. But the phone number they gave connected unsuspecting people in the United States to Indian con men sitting in a second-floor office in an upscale locality called Koregaon Park in the western Indian city of Pune.
India’s in-demand call center industry has contributed to the rapid development of sleepy cities such as Pune in the past three decades, drawing hundreds of thousands of ambitious job seekers to call centers for multinational firms. But in recent years, Indian con artists are using English accents and Americanized names, often utilized in call centers, for a different reason: to cheat unsuspecting foreigners.
Indian police officers have sent thousands of emails to victims in the United States asking for details about how they were cheated. Only three people have replied, said Assistant Police Inspector Sagar Panmand from Pune’s cybercrime branch, who raided the trio’s call center.
Indian investigators said they still don’t know how many people in the United States were affected by the scheme or how much money the scammers took. They also said it is unclear how the computer-savvy con men got the victims to transfer money to India but said it probably involved the use of gift cards from Target, iTunes and Walmart.
Panmand said early investigations suggest there are at least two similar call centers in Delhi and the state of Rajasthan that police are trying to trace.
Authorities learned about the Koregaon Park call center after they discovered another ring of scammers in January, who had targeted users of Apple products in the United States. At least 1,500 people in the United States received pop-up notifications on their iPhones, iPads or Macs saying their systems had crashed. The pop-up message also gave a phone number of an Apple service center – which was the phone number for a fake call center in India. The scammers then asked their targets to pay for the service of “fixing” their systems by buying iTunes credit that could be transferred to the con men and cashed in.
During the raid Monday night, police seized hard drives and laptops with the personal details of 11,000 people in the United States. “They had bank details, bank account numbers, phone numbers, addresses, everything,” Panmand said. “American authorities will need to do their own investigations to find out how all this data got out.”
He said Pune police are in contact with the Federal Trade Commission and will support U.S. authorities in their investigations. The FTC did not immediately respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment.
Richmond Hill, New York. On Wednesday, July 7th, Chhaya CDC launched the expansion of its Free Tax Prep Services in the historically underserved area of Richmond Hill, Queens. Chhaya began to offer these services last year with the support of NYC’s Department of Consumer Affairs and helped nearly 100 families claim the powerful asset building tool of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). This year Chhaya continues to offer the tax preparation services in almost seven additional languages. By working with Queens Public Library at the Lefferts Branch, Chhaya’s program will be one of two NYC Free Tax Prep tax sites serving the communities of Richmond Hill, South Richmond Hill, Ozone Park, and South Ozone Park. One out of every five households in these neighborhoods live in poverty and could benefit from access to free, professional-quality tax preparation services.
Chhaya CDC is the only South Asian and Indo-Caribbean community development organization, whose mission is advocate for and build economically stable, sustainable and thriving communities. Tax preparation is often a daunting and expensive endeavor for low to moderate income individuals, and often not seen as an opportunity. NYC Free Tax Prep increases awareness about tax credits that put money back in the pockets of working New Yorkers. Far too many qualified individuals do not take advantage of the EITC, leaving thousands of dollars on the table that can be put to good use – whether it’s education, paying off a loan, upgrading a household appliance, moving, etc.
“Chhaya’s Free Tax Prep program will be the first of its kind in this community, “said Chhaya CDC’s Executive Director Annetta Seecharran, “Building on our other immigration and housing counseling services in this neighborhood, this is an important next step in expanding Chhaya’s programs to the Richmond Hill community, which is a desert when it comes to social services. Each tax prep client will be provided a list of wrap around services connected to Chhaya’s work in housing, financial capability, and immigration.”
“The reason why Queens Library is able to provide free, high-quality services such as free tax preparation is because of our partnerships with outstanding organizations such as Chhaya CDC and government agencies such as the Department of Consumer Affairs,” said Queens Library President and CEO Dennis M. Walcott. “They make it possible for us to meet our mission to build strong communities and give our customers the information and resources to help them grow personally and intellectually.”
“Since 2015 we have helped New Yorkers file more than 425,000 returns for free and claim refund-boosting tax credits that can be pivotal in helping them pay bills, get out of debt and save for their future,” said DCA Commissioner Lorelei Salas. “We are proud to be working with Chhaya CDC again this year to expand our trusted and professional free tax prep services to previously underserved communities. I encourage all New Yorkers to take advantage of this free program to ensure that their returns are completed accurately and that they are receiving every credit and deduction available to them, including the EITC.”
NYC Free Tax Prep is offered at Lefferts Library on Wednesdays: February 7, 21; March 7, 21; and April 4 at 11 AM. This free service is available for families or individuals who earned below $66,000 in 2017.
Indians are likely to dominate the WEF which will be held in Davos next year. More than 100 Indian CEO along with the hot shots of Indian business diaspora are likely to show up for the event.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be the first Indian PM in 20 years to visit the World Economic Forum in Davos next year. It was in 1997 when the then Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda had attended the event. The annual meeting in Davos is a five-day long event which will begin on January 22, 2018. When Narendra Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat, he had attended the regional summit of the World Economic Forum in China in 2007.
Indians are likely to dominate the WEF which will be held in Davos next year. More than 100 Indian CEOs along with the hot shots of Indian business diaspora, like Mukesh Ambani, Chanda Kochhar and Uday Kotak is expected to show up. Bollywood biggies are also expected to be present at the forum. Actor Shah Rukh Khan and film director Karan Johar are to name a few. As far as the list of Indian ministers is concerned, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley along with Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu, Railways Minister Piyush Goyal, Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari and Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan are some of the big names that are likely to attend the annual event.
If the Prime Minister decides to go, he will address a plenary session on January 23 which will be attended by the world’s business elite. NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant and DIPP Secretary Ramesh Abhishek are also expected to be present. Other big names from India and abroad include former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajanand IMF chief Christine Lagarde.
Davos is a small town located in Swiss Alps, within the canton of Graubünden. Davos is a popular ski resort that has a conference center which hosts the annual World Economic Forum.
The World Economic Forum is a Swiss non-profit foundation, based in Cologny, Geneva.
The agenda for the meeting in 2018 is said to explore the root causes of, and pragmatic solutions for, the manifold political, economic and social fractures facing global society today. WEF’s Founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab said, “Creating a shared future in a fractured world requires addressing issues on the global agenda in a holistic, interconnected and future-oriented way”.
Indian social entrepreneur and activist Chetna Sinha will also be a part of the forum. She will be among the seven all-women co-chairs for the event. This happens to be the first time in five-decade when WEF’s Davos Annual Meeting would have all women co-chairs.
Bitcoin, the red hot digital currency continues to hit new highs week after week — and it’s now got the weight of the world’s biggest exchange operator behind it. Financial market giant CME Group (CME) launched bitcoin futures trading on Sunday evening in the U.S., a week after a similar move by its smaller rival Cboe Global Markets (CBOE).
The involvement of top financial institutions in the bitcoin market underscores its growing mainstream acceptance even as government officials, business leaders and economists continue to warn people against investing in it.
The CME launch “adds considerable legitimacy” to bitcoin trading, said Shane Chanel, an adviser at Australian investment services firm ASR Wealth Advisers. Bitcoin’s price (XBT) hit a record high earlier Sunday before the futures trading started on CME. It climbed to within a few hundred dollars of the $20,000 mark before slipping back. By early Monday, it was trading around $19,000.
Investors were betting it will go higher. The January futures price on CME was about $19,500 last week, down from an earlier high of $20,650. Futures are contracts that let investors buy or sell something at a specific price in the future. But unlike traditional commodities such as oil or agricultural products, bitcoins aren’t physical assets. And unlike traditional currencies, there isn’t a central bank that backs bitcoin. The virtual coins are created on computers using complex algorithms and recorded in a digital ledger.
Bitcoin has had an incredible year. Its price has skyrocketed more than 1,700% since the start of January, partly on the expectation that more and more mainstream investors will begin trading it.
That’s prompted some high-profile figures in finance and economics to sound the alarm, cautioning that the currency’s boom is simply a huge, speculative bubble. But their warnings contrast with moves like those of CME and and Cboe to start bitcoin futures trading.
CME is home to about three times as much trading per day than Cboe. With CME’s futures contracts, investors have to trade bitcoin in blocks of five, versus just one at a time with Cboe.
The two also price their bitcoin contracts in different ways. Cboe bases its price on one exchange, Gemini, whereas CME takes an average from multiple exchanges. SR’s Chanel said that the launch of futures on CME should eventually help iron out some of the wild gyrations in the price of bitcoin.
And more big names in finance are also planning to get involved. New York’s Nasdaq is expected to launch its own bitcoin futures trading sometime next year. “If this market continues charging forward, (more) exchanges will be forced to act in the fear of missing out,” Chanel said.
Based on a recent survey, we’re guessing those goals will probably include paying down debt. NerdWallet released its Household Credit Card Debt Study, revealing that Americans owe an estimated $905 billion in credit card debt. That figure is up 8% from last year, and includes balances from cardholders who pay off their cards every month, as well as those who carry a balance from month to month.
According to the reports, the average household owes $15,654 in credit card debt. This data is alarming, but not record-breaking. According to NerdWallet, Americans owe $8.74 trillion in mortgage debt, $1.21 trillion in auto loans, and $1.36 trillion in student loans.
For starters, more and more Americans are putting medical expenses on their credit cards. In the survey, 17% of respondents said they’re in debt because they spent money on an emergency medical expense. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, health care costs have increased 34% over the past decade, while income has only grown 20%. To keep up with bills, a whopping 27 million adults are putting medical expenses on a credit card.
A 2016 survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation echoed the same problem: 37% of respondents increased credit card debt to pay medical bills. Spending has also climbed in other categories, including food (22%) and housing (20%).
The increase in debt can also be attributed to interest rates. In the survey, 41% of respondents admit to spending more than they should on unnecessary purchases. Spending more can lead to carrying a balance, which leads to more money spent paying interest. For instance, if you keep a balance of $6,081, with an interest rate of 14.87%, you’ll end up paying $904 in interest per year.
First and foremost, Americans need to get honest about their spending. If you’re charging purchases that you cannot afford to pay off right away, or if you are living above your means, it’s time to rein it in. Only then can you start to address your growing debt.
In a perfect world, you would pay off your credit card balance in full every month. Still — sadly — only 1 in 5 (about 18%) of Americans actually do this. In reality, about one-quarter of cardholders say they pay whatever they can afford at the end of the month, and 23% say they only pay the minimum amount due.
If you can’t pay off your full balance every month, that’s OK. Focus on keeping interest payments as low as possible. “To reduce the amount of interest you’re paying, consider making payments more frequently than once a month to keep your average daily balance down,” said Kimberly Palmer, NerdWallet’s credit card expert.
Palmer also suggests consolidating your debt onto a card with 0% introductory APR. This way, you can work on paying down debt during the interest-free 12- to 18-month introductory period.
The online survey was conducted by Harris Poll, and surveyed 2,089 adults ages 18 and older. NerdWallet also used data from the US Census Bureau and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
In the early hours of Saturday morning, December 2nd, Senate Republicans passed their version of a sweeping tax overhaul. Roughly five hours earlier, the Senate Finance Committee publicly released their final proposal of the Bill after weeks of closed door consultations and few days of public scrutiny of the important Tax Bill that will leave over a over a Trillion Dollars to the US deficit.
The Senate passed its tax plan in a 51-49 vote early on Saturday morning, with Vice-President Mike Pence presiding over the chamber and after a frantic rewrite. Bob Corker was the sole Republican to vote against the bill, which would bestow huge benefits on US corporations and the wealthiest Americans. “We think this is a great day for the country,” the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said at a celebratory press conference.
Democrats remained united in their opposition, attacking the legislation as a giveaway to corporate America and the wealthy. “In the waning hours, this bill is tilting further towards businesses and away from families,” said Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, in a floor speech on Friday. “Every time the choice is between corporations and families, the Republicans choose corporations.”
The bill, among other things will continue to create inequality in the nation. The rich bnenfitting from the tax-cuts, while the poor and the middle income groups to be marginally benefitting from the plan, and that to for a period of 10 years only. The richest 20 percent of households reap 90 percent of the benefit of the tax cuts over that time period, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
The main focus of the tax bill is business. Republicans’ stated goal is to boost the economy. They argue that the best way to do this is to cut the taxes that businesses pay on profits, allowing companies to reinvest the money in new equipment and workers. In fact, the Senate bill centers on provisions to permanently cut the corporate tax rate — the rate paid directly by companies like Apple or Ford Motor — to 20% (from a top rate of 35%) starting in 2019, while also allowing a new deduction for individual taxpayers who own their own businesses.
Business owners tend to be wealthy — whether their assets take the form of stock holdings or privately owned ventures. The upshot is that the Senate tax plan’s benefits skew dramatically toward top earners.
According to the preliminary Tax Policy Center analysis, the top 1% of earners — those taking home more than about $900,000 a year — were set to reap about 60% of the total tax cut, for an average of more than $32,000 annually apiece. The top 0.1% — those earning $5 million or more — were to get an extra $200,000.
The GOP’s Senate tax bill, which passed in a close party-line vote, could give President Donald Trump his first legislative victory after Congress failed to overhaul the nation’s health system earlier this year.
It’s too early to tell precisely how the GOP tax plan would affect individual taxpayers. That’s because, in an effort to muster votes, Republicans continued tinkering with the tax bill behind closed doors up until a few hours before it actually passed, and the economists who typically crunch the numbers on new legislation haven’t had time to examine the tax bill’s results.
Like the House tax bill, passed earlier this month, the Senate version is largely built around reorganizing and lowering what corporations and other businesses pay in taxes in hopes of spurring economic growth. That said, middle-class Americans could be able to count on a tax cut too, at least during the next few years — assuming, that is, that the Senate bill can be reconciled with the House version and become law. You’ll probably see a tax cut, but maybe only in the short term.
Senate Republicans initially repealed the Alternative Minimum Tax, but have brought it back now in order to pay for some other additions. The AMT is intended to be a minimum tax on the wealthy. In this version, the GOP raises the income levels where it hits so it will affect fewer people. For individuals, the minimum threshold goes from $50,600 to $70,600. For those filing jointly, the threshold rises from $78,750 to $109,400.
Trump campaigned on a promise to cut middle-class taxes. And the Senate is delivering — sort of. One analysis of the tax plan, by the Tax Policy Center, a centrist think tank, found the average middle earner (someone taking home about $50,000 to $90,000) would reap an $850 tax break in 2019, benefiting in part from a standard deduction that would double to $12,000 for singles and $24,000 four couples.
Another preliminary analysis, this one by The New York Times, defined middle-class earners as those making $40,000 to $140,000 — and found that many of those, particularly the people that rely on the state and local tax deduction, could actually see a tax increase next year. However, the last minute, at the instance of Maine’s Sen. Susan Collins, would allow taxpayers to continue to deduct up to $10,000 in property taxes, would likely soften the blow for at least some of these middle-income taxpayers.
For most of the Americans, the benefits of the tax cuts are also likely to be temporary, as the tax breaks for them will expire in 2026, while the huge tax cuts for the corporations are made permanent. The bill also uses a new way to account for inflation, which could push some taxpayers into higher brackets. By 2027, savings for the average taxpayer earning roughly $50,000 to $90,000 will have shrunk to just $50, the Tax Policy Center found.
During the campaign Trump promised a tax cut that would be “revenue neutral.” The idea was that, while government receipts might initially fall when rates were cut, economic growth would boost American’s incomes enough to replace the lost revenue despite the lower rates. Howver, even accounting for economic growth, the Senate plan will add about $1 trillion to the debt over the next decade, according a report from non-partisan Joint Committee On Taxation.
Many economist believe that piling still more debt on top of what the government already owes — currently $14 trillion — could eventually lead investors to sour on U.S. bonds. The result would be higher interest rates, which would push up borrowing costs for everyone from the government itself to most U.S. businesses. That in turn could choke off whatever extra growth the tax cuts spurred in the first place.
The stated goal of tax reform is improving the economy, and the right-leaning Tax Foundation predicted in November that the bill (as it stood at the time) could ultimately help the U.S. add almost a million new jobs over the next decade. But economists are divided about whether that growth will in fact play out as hoped.
The Tax Foundation tends to see rates remaining low, even as the deficit increases — hence its rosy job forecast. But many economists disagree. Earlier this month, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania estimated the tax cut could add as little as 0.03 to 0.08 percentage points to annual GDP growth over the next decade, which would presumably bring far fewer jobs.
the big winners in the GOP bill that the Senate passed early Saturday morning are corporations and the wealthy. Trump himself ― a billionaire ― stands to gain millions through the elimination of certain taxes. Far from being a middle-class tax cut, the measure is a massive corporate giveaway, a bill that recycles decades of Republican ideology on trickle-down economics and trusts that executives will hand over their new gains to average-income workers. “If my friends here want to give a tax cut to the middle class,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) asked on the Senate floor Thursday, “why don’t we give a tax cut to the middle class?”
And the bill makes other changes that reach far beyond the tax code itself. It repeals the individual mandate from the Affordable Care Act, a major change that was added in recent weeks as part of a broader GOP effort to dismantle the Obama-era law. The measure is expected to leave 13 million more people uninsured. It authorizes oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. And by curtailing deductions for state and local taxes, it will put pressure on some state and local spending on education, transportation and public health programs.
The tax package still must clear a couple more hurdles before it can become law. There are numerous differences between the House and Senate versions, ranging from when certain tax cuts expire to how the estate tax is handled, and though none are seen as showstoppers, complications could arise.
“The bill is investing heavily in the wealthy and their children — by boosting the value of their stock portfolios, creating new loopholes for them to avoid tax on their labor income, and cutting taxes on massive inheritances,” Lily Batchelder, a New York University professor who worked as an economist under President Barack Obama, said. “At the same time, it leaves low- and middle-income workers with even fewer resources to invest in their children, and increases the number of Americans without health insurance.”
America’s rich have gotten richer for decades, while the middle class and poor have seen meager gains. Since the mid-20th century, the top 1 percent have more than doubled their share of the nation’s income, from less than 10 percent to more than 20 percent. The tax overhaul the Republican Party passed through the Senate would make America’s income inequality worse. Maybe a lot worse, economists say. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said on the Senate floor that this day would be remembered as one of the “great robberies in U.S. history.”
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, on his first visit to India as a cabinet member, discussed expanding and solidifying U.S.-India security and strategic cooperation in various regions of the world, including North Korea, as well as in trade, economic development, innovation and entrepreneurship.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his meeting with Tillerson, praised Washington for the upward trajectory of bilateral relations between the two democracies and shared the resolve “on taking further steps in the direction of accelerating and strengthening the content, pace and scope of the bilateral engagement,” the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said in a statement reported by Indo Asian News Service.
While in New Delhi, Tillerson continued exhorting Pakistan for harboring terrorist groups within its borders. “There are too many terrorist organizations that find a safe place in Pakistan from which to conduct their operations and attacks against other countries,” Tillerson said at a joint press conference with Swaraj, according to the video available on the MEA website. These terrorist groups threatened Pakistan’s own stability, he added, reiterating what he had said in a major foreign policy speech before embarking on his tour to several countries including India and Pakistan.
Rohit Chopra, a senior fellow at the Consumer Federation of America, is expected to be nominated by President Trump as the commissioner of the US Federal Trade Commission, according to an announcement by the White House on October 19th.
Interestingly, the Indian American resident of Brooklyn, N.Y., was part of Hillary Clinton’s transition team. A financial services expert, currently, Chopra is currently a Senior Fellow at the Consumer Federation of America, where he focuses on consumer protection issues facing young people and military families, the White House said in a press release. If confirmed, he would serve the remainder of a seven-year term that expires Sept. 25, 2019, according to the White House.
According to a report in Politico, Chopra was hired at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau early in Elizabeth Warren’s tenure when she headed that agency during the Obama administration. In an Aug. 30, 2016 report, the news outlet said, “Politico has learned that Hillary Clinton has named a progressive with close ties to Elizabeth Warren to her transition team in a move that seems aimed at mollifying liberals unhappy with earlier choices.”
The Secretary of the Treasury also appointed him as the agency’s student loan ombudsman. In 2016, Chopra served as special adviser to the Secretary of Education. Chopra it said, “battled for-profit colleges and loan servicers as the student loan ombudsman at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau…”
The FTC works with the Justice Department to enforce antitrust law and pursues companies accused of deceptive advertising. It is an independent agency that is headed by a chairman and four commissioners. No more than three commissioners can come from any one party.
The agency is currently headed by Acting Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen, a Republican, with Democrat Terrell McSweeny the only other commissioner. The president has long been expected to name a permanent chair and fill the three empty commission seats, two Republican and one Democrat or independent, according to a zeebiz.com report.
Before he joined government service, Chopra was an associate at McKinsey & Company, where he served clients in the financial services and consumer technology sectors. Chopra holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a master’s in business administration from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He was also the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship.
India has a long history of migration. More than a century ago, large numbers of Indian migrants – many of them involuntary ones – moved to Africa, the Caribbean and within the Indian subcontinent itself. Some of the top destinations of Indian migrants in more recent decades include Persian Gulf countries, North America and Europe.
Most recently, Indians have looked towards the West with US as the top-most destination. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, considered a “low immigration” think tank based in Washington, D.C., India has sent the largest number of immigrants to the U.S. over the past six years – more than 654,000. The report released on October 16th stated that the overall immigrant population in the U.S. is currently 43.7 million, and will reach 72 million by the year 2050. The report did not distinguish between documented and undocumented residents.
As per a Pew Research report, as of 2015, 15.6 million people born in India were living in other countries. India has been among the world’s top origin countries of migrants since the United Nations started tracking migrant origins in 1990. The number of international Indian migrants has more than doubled over the past 25 years, growing about twice as fast as the world’s total migrant population.
Nearly half of India’s migrants are in just three countries: the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan and the United States. About 3.5 million Indians live in the UAE, the top destination country for Indian migrants. Over the past two decades, millions of Indians have migrated there to find employment as laborers. Pakistan has the second-largest number of migrants, with 2 million.
Almost 2 million more live in the U.S., making up the country’s third-largest immigrant group. Among Indian Americans, nearly nine-in-ten were born in India. As a whole, Indian Americans are among the highest educated and have some of the highest income among racial and ethnic groups in the U.S.
Parsing data from the federally-mandated 2016 American Community Survey and the national census, CIS noted that immigration from India has grown by 37 percent from 2010 to 2016. Currently, more than 2.4 million Indian immigrants reside in the U.S., up from approximately 1 million in 2000. The Indian immigrant population is almost equivalent to the Chinese immigrant population, which is estimated at approximately 2.7 million in 2016.
The biggest jumps in immigration percentages were primarily from South Asian countries. Immigration from Nepal jumped a whopping 86 percent; currently, more than 129,000 immigrants from Nepal reside in the U.S., a huge leap from 1990, when only 2,000 Nepalis immigrated to the country.
Bangladesh also had a substantial increase in immigration over the past six years – 56 percent – with a total population of almost 235,000 Bangladeshi immigrants in the U.S. in 2016. The population of Pakistanis in the U.S. increased by 28 percent over the last six years to almost 383,000.
By contrast, immigration from Mexico – traditionally thought of as the greatest contributor of immigrants to the U.S. – has just about stopped, to a negative 1 percent last year. Latin American countries – excluding Mexico – collectively had an immigration growth rate of 13 percent over the past six years.
California is home to the largest number of immigrants – more than 10 million – of any state in the nation, but Texas and Florida had the biggest numbers of immigrants moving to the states.
CIS is headed by Mark Krikorian, described by The Washington Post as “the provocateur standing in the way of immigration reform.” The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled CIS a “hate group.”
In an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, Steven Camarota, one of the authors of the report, decried the growth in the immigrant population, and noted that there were no policy discussions to potentially stem the growth of legal immigration.
Both Carlson and Camarota said they had not met an immigrant they didn’t like, but Camarota also noted that the influx of immigrants uses up the nation’s resources, contributes to heavy road traffic, and the housing crisis. “One-third of all children in poverty live in immigrant households,” he said, adding that the U.S. must exercise its capacity to control the influx of new immigrants.
In addition to immigrants, there were slightly more than 16.6 million U.S.-born minor children with an immigrant parent in 2016, for a total of 60.4 million immigrants and their children in the country, noted CIS, adding that immigrants and their minor children now account for nearly one in five U.S. residents.
India’s Steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal has donated $25 million to the prestigious Harvard University with an aim to increase engagement with South Asian countries, including India.
The donation will establish an endowed fund for the South Asia Institute at the university.
The institute spearheads Harvard’s engagement with South Asian countries, including India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka as well as diaspora populations from these countries, the university said in a statement.
As a result of the endowment from the Mittal Foundation, Harvard’s South Asia Institute would be called as Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute at Harvard University, it said. Founded in 2003, the South Asia Initiative became a University-wide interdisciplinary institute in 2010 under the leadership of its current faculty director, Indian-American Tarun Khanna, the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School.
“We are so grateful for the Mittal family’s support and what it will enable us to learn and share — across the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities — and the many people and institutions it will allow us to engage,” said Khanna.
“International centers like the South Asia Institute at Harvard University serve as a vital conduit between the University and the world we study,” said Harvard President Drew Faust.
“The generous support from the Mittal family is a testament to both the important work being done by this community of scholars and students and the continuing impact it will have in the region,” Faust added.
South Asia has played a dynamic and influential role in the development of our world since the very first civilisations, said 67-year-old Mittal, chairman and CEO of ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel company.
“Ensuring that we fully understand its history and unique dynamics is a critical enabler in helping to shape a successful future,” he added. As someone who was born in India, the long-term prosperity of India and its neighbouring countries “matters a great deal to me and my family,” Mittal told Harvard Gazette in an interview.
“Harvard is one of the world’s greatest learning institutions, with a unique ability to facilitate dialogue and drive thinking and progress,” he said. The Mittal family has long supported educational endeavours and public policy development in India as a means of positioning the country — and the region — for future success, the university said.
Reserve Bank of India has said linkage of biometric identity number Aadhaar with bank accounts is mandatory. The RBI clarification followed media reports quoting a reply to a Right to Information+ (RTI) application that suggested the apex bank has not issued any order for mandatory Aadhaar linkage with bank accounts.
“The Reserve Bank clarifies that, in applicable cases, linkage of Aadhaar number to bank account is mandatory under the Prevention of Money-laundering (Maintenance of Records) Second Amendment Rules, 2017 published in the Official Gazette on June 1, 2017,” the central bank said in a statement. These rules have statutory force and, as such, banks have to implement them without awaiting further instructions, it said.
The government in June had made Aadhaar mandatory for opening bank accounts+ as well as for any financial transaction of Rs 50,000 and above. Existing bank account holders have been asked to furnish the Aadhaar number issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) by December 31, 2017, failing which the account will cease to be operational, the government notification had said.
There were reports in media quoting an RTI query in which RBI had said it “has not issued any instruction so far regarding mandatory linking of Aadhaar number with bank accounts”.
The government in Budget 2017 had already mandated seeding of Aadhaar number with Permanent Account Number to avoid individuals using multiple PANs to evade taxes. The notification issued amending the Prevention of Money- laundering (Maintenance of Records) Rules, 2005, mandated quoting of Aadhaar along with PAN or Form 60 by individuals, companies and partnership firms for all financial transactions of Rs 50,000 or above.
India is on course to achieving universal access to electricity and clean cooking facilities by the early 2020s, a decade ahead of other developing countries, the International Energy Agency has said, indicating global recognition for the Narendra Modi government’s energy programme.
“Developing countries in Asia are making significant progress. Many countries in the region are well on track to reach universal energy access by 2030, while India is on course to reach that goal by the early 2020s,” the International Energy Agency has said in its latest report, ‘Energy Access Outlook: from Poverty to Prosperity’.
“Just look at India, which has provided electricity access to half a billion people since 2000. The government’s tremendous efforts over the last several years have put it on track to achieving one of the biggest success stories ever in electrification,” an IEA statement on Wednesday quoted its executive director Fatih Birol as saying.
According to Birol, the process of providing access to clean and affordable energy is being accelerated by the “convergence of political will and cost reductions”. Globally, this has brought universal energy access by 2030 within reach.
“The cost-effective strategy for providing universal access to electricity and clean-cooking facilities in developing countries is compatible with meeting global climate goals and prevents millions of premature deaths each year. It would also benefit women the most, as it would free up billions of hours currently lost to gathering fuelwood,” says the report.
In the Indian context, the report’s positive results towards universal energy access are a reflection of the bristling pace set by the Modi government to electrify all villages and rural households through the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana and providing free connections to poor households through the Subhagya scheme announced recently, besides bringing clean cooking fuel to poor homes through the Ujjwala scheme.
These schemes, clearly targeted at improving the lives of India’s poor, are at the core of the Modi government’s development plank. Together, they also form a key element of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s political outreach plan by lighting up homes and rid poor women from the scourge of smoky ‘chulhas’
So far 14,670 villages, or 80% of the unelectrified villages, have been electrified in the two years since the electrification drive was launched. Only 2,791 inhabited villages, marking 15% of the target, remain to be electrified. With the rapid progress in village electrification, the government earlier this month announced the Saubhagya scheme envisaging free connections to poor households. The Ujjwala scheme too has reached over 3 crore poor homes since it was launched in May 2016 against a target of 5 crore homes set for 2019.
Despite a sharp fall in inequality around the world, the US, China and India have witnessed upward trends in its level, the International Monetary Fund said last week. The International Monetary Fund said that despite the relevance of education, health and progress in recent years, gaps of access to quality education and healthcare services between different income groups in the population remained in many countries, including in advanced economies.
“If one focused on citizens around the world, global inequality has trended down sharply in recent decades, and that is a change from the upward trend since the beginning of the 19th century,” Vitor Gaspar, the Director of the IMF Fiscal Affairs Department, told reporters on the occasion of release of the annual Fiscal Monitor report here.
Declining global inequality reflects mainly catching up across countries, he said, adding that differences in per capita income between countries account for about two-thirds of global inequality in 2015.
In contrast, if one looks at inequality country by country, it become obvious that most people around the world live in countries where inequality has increased. “It is important to emphasise that inequality has increased in the largest countries in the world: China, India and the United States,” he said.
“More broadly, if we focus on inequality within countries, we observe that over the past three decades inequality has increased in about half of the countries around the world, particularly in advanced economies,” Gasper said.
Investments in education and health help reduce income inequality over the medium term, address persistent poverty across generations, enhance social mobility, and ultimately promote sustainable and inclusive growth, the IMF official said.
Building human capital is perhaps the best insurance against job insecurity due to rapid technological change, he said. “Fiscal policy is a powerful instrument for inclusive and sustainable growth. Fiscal policy can make the difference,” Gasper said.
According to the report, global inequality – measured across all citizens of the world by abstracting from national borders – has been declining in recent decades, reflecting strong income growth in some large emerging market economies such as China and India. However, the picture of inequality within countries is mixed. While income inequality has increased in most advanced economies, trends in other economic groups have been more varied.
In fact, inequality has declined in almost half the countries for which data are available, the report noted. Asserting that economic growth is fundamental, the IMF said that in many countries, growth has ensured that increases in inequality are compatible with improving living standards for households across all deciles of the income distribution, although there are significant differences across countries regarding the extent to which growth has been inclusive.
Indian American Congressmen Raja Krishnamoorthi and Rep. Ami Bera have been appointed on September 13th to serve as co-chairs for the New Economy Task Force for the Democratic party, along with representatives Susan DelBene, Debbie Dingell and Darren Soto. Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., the House Democratic Caucus chairman, announced the launch of the “Jobs for America” task forces, for which Indian American freshman Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., and three-time congressman, Rep. Ami Bera, were named among the co-chairs.
The task forces serve as a unified effort from House Democrats to craft a real legislative agenda for America that will benefit the hardest-working Americans and middle-class families across the nation, according to a Democratic Caucus news release.
They will create opportunities for job growth, boost hardworking families and give every worker the opportunity to achieve the American dream by developing legislation focused on investing in key industries, restoring worker benefits, removing barriers to help workers find stable and well-paying jobs, helping our veteran communities transition to the workforce, and identifying jobs of the future, the caucus added.
“I’m honored to take a leading role in crafting our job-focused agenda for the new economy. Fundamentally, building the economy of the future means ensuring that out workers have the in-demand skills they need to thrive and that businesses have the advanced infrastructure they need to grow. On the New Economy Task Force, I look forward to working with my colleagues to accomplish both these goals,” Krishnamoorthi said in a press release.
The task force will take a forward-leaning approach to job growth by looking at rapidly advancing technology, artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing and ensuring that workers are trained for the jobs of tomorrow. The task force is one of five Democratic Caucus Jobs for America Task Forces aimed at identifying opportunities and solutions for American workers in five key areas: Rebuilding America, Jobs with Dignity, Access to Jobs, New Economy, and Reinvesting in Our Returning Heroes.
“Congressman Krishnamoorthi understands just how important it is to take a proactive and aggressive approach to jobs and our economy, and I’m grateful for his leadership in this important endeavor,” said House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley.
“Our economy isn’t working for far too many Americans. Middle-class families and hardworking men and women struggle to attain the opportunities they so greatly deserve, find financial security and retire with confidence,” said Crowley in a statement. “Americans want to know what Democrats stand for and how we’ll fight for them. This effort will provide a specific roadmap for how families in Queens, the Bronx, and across America can obtain better wages, better jobs, and a better future.”
Over the course of several months, Bera, Krishnamoorthi and the 18 other co-chairs of the task force will meet with business and labor leaders, entrepreneurs and middle-class Americans to develop a legislative package that will benefit all Americans, the news release said.
The New Economy Task Force is one of five Democratic Caucus Jobs for America Task Forces aimed at identifying opportunities and solutions for American workers in five key areas, including Rebuilding America, Jobs With Dignity, Access to Jobs, New Economy and Reinvesting in Our Returning Heroes.
HAB BANK IS NOT AFFILIATED WITH HABIB BANK LIMITED (HBL)
“In light of recent news regarding HBL, HAB Bank, strongly affirms it has no direct, indirect or any affiliation whatsoever or shared ownership with Habib Bank Limited, a Pakistan-based financial institution with an office in Manhattan”, as stated in a press release issued by HAB Bank, New York.
The release further stated that HAB Bank is a U.S.-based community bank headquartered in Manhattan with FDIC membership. HAB Bank has no operations outside the US. The institution has operated continuously and successfully since its original incorporation in 1983 and has branches in NY, NJ and CA.
“HAB Bank proudly serves our consumer and commercial banking customers in the New York Tri-state area and California for over three decades,” said Saleem Iqbal, President and CEO of HAB Bank.
We reached out to HAB Bank’s President & CEO Mr. Saleem Iqbal to seek clarification on the penalties assessed by the New York State against Habib Bank Limited. In an exclusive interview with this newspaper, Mr. Iqbal answered a series of questions clarifying HAB Bank’s position. on the whole matter and reiterated the fact that HAB Bank has no affiliation, direct or indirect, with Habib Bank Limited or HBL.
Reporter: What is the difference between HAB Bank and Habib Bank Limited or HBL?
Saleem Iqbal: HAB Bank is a US chartered, FDIC Insured bank with branches in three states. Our charter dates back to 1983. Habib Bank Limited on the other hand is Pakistan based foreign bank with a branch in New York City. As we have categorically stated over the last so many years, HAB Bank is not affiliated in any manner whatsoever with Pakistan based Habib Bank Limited or HBL.
Reporter: How does this action by the NY regulator impact you?
Saleem Iqbal: This has no impact on HAB Bank, we are two different banks.
Reporter: How do you safeguard and protect your bank from such matters?
Saleem Iqbal: HAB Bank, from day one of its inception, has built a strong culture of compliance. We recognize that banking industry in our country is highly regulated and there are number of federal as well as state laws that applies to us as a community bank. We have a top-down approach in complying with various regulations including Anti Money Laundering laws currently in place. Our frontline personnel are fully aware of such laws and trained by the Bank on an ongoing basis. Then there is active oversight by the senior management and the board of directors in addition to an extensive risk management framework.
Reporter: What does future hold for HAB Bank?
Saleem Iqbal:
The Bank has shown steady and consistent growth; we are one of the largest South Asian-American banks in the US with assets over $1.3 billion with branches in three states. We were one of the few community banks in the US which remained unscathed and actually grew during the Great Recession, which started in 2007. We will continue to grow and to serve the banking needs of the South Asian community in the US.
HAB BANK was incorporated in 1983 as a New York State Chartered Bank. HAB is a member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and holds $1.3 billion in assets as of June 30, 2017. Headquartered in New York, the Bank and besides Manhattan maintains branches in, Jackson Heights, Richmond Hill, Hicksville in NY, Iselin in NJ, Artesia and Downtown Los Angeles in CA.
For further information, please visit HAB Bank’s website at www.habbank.com and Click on “Important Announcement”.
Americans owed more than $1.3 trillion in student loans at the end of June, more than two and a half times what they owed a decade earlier. The increase has come as historically high shares of young adults in the United States go to college and the cost of higher education increases.
Here are five facts about student loans in America, based on a Pew Research Center analysis of recently released data from the Federal Reserve Board’s 2016 Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking.
About four-in-ten adults under age 30 have student loan debt. Among adults ages 18 to 29, 37% say they have outstanding student loans for their own education. (This includes those with loans currently in deferment or forbearance, but excludes credit card debt and home and other loans taken out for education.) Looking only at young adults with a bachelor’s degree or more education, the share with outstanding student debt rises to 53%.
Student debt is less common among older age groups. Roughly one-in-five adults ages 30 to 44 (22%) have student loan debt, as do 4% of those 45 and older.
While age differences may partly reflect the fact that older adults have had more time to repay their loans, other research has found that young adults are also more likely now than in the past to take out loans to pay for their education. About two-thirds of college seniors ages 18 to 24 took out loans for their education in the 2011-2012 school year, up from about half in the 1989-1990 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
2The amount students owe varies widely, especially by degree attained. The median borrower with outstanding student loan debt for his or her own education owed $17,000 in 2016. The amount owed varies considerably, however. A quarter of borrowers with outstanding debt reported owing $7,000 or less, while another quarter owed $43,000 or more.
Educational attainment helps explain this variation. Among borrowers of all ages with outstanding student loan debt, the median self-reported amount owed among those with less than a bachelor’s degree was $10,000. Bachelor’s degree holders owed a median of $25,000, while those with a postgraduate degree owed a median of $45,000.
Relatively few with student loan debt have six-figure balances. Only 7% of current borrowers have at least $100,000 in outstanding debt, which corresponds to 1% of the adult population. Balances of $100,000 or more are most common among postgraduate degree holders. Of those with a postgraduate degree and outstanding debt, 23% reported owing $100,000 or more.
Young college graduates with student loans are more likely than those without loans to have a second job and to report struggling financially. About one-in-five employed adults ages 25 to 39 with at least a bachelor’s degree and outstanding student loans (21%) have more than one job. Those without student loan debt are roughly half as likely (11%) to hold multiple jobs. A similar relationship holds among all young adults regardless of educational attainment.
Student loan holders also give a more downbeat assessment of their personal financial situation compared with their peers who don’t have outstanding student debt. Only 27% of young college graduates with student loans say they are living comfortably, compared with 45% of college graduates of a similar age without outstanding loans.
Young college graduates with student loans are more likely to live in a higher-income family than those without a bachelor’s degree. For many young adults, student loans are a way to make an otherwise unattainable education a reality. Although these students have to borrow money to attend, the investment might make sense if it leads to higher earnings later in life.
On average, those ages 25 to 39 with at least a bachelor’s degree and outstanding student debt have higher family incomes – the individual’s income plus that of his or her spouse or partner – than those in this age range lacking a bachelor’s degree (regardless of loan status). About two-thirds of young college graduates with student loans (65%) live in families earning at least $50,000, compared with 40% of those without a bachelor’s degree. However, they are still less likely to earn this level of family income than young college graduates without outstanding student loans (77%). (Family income captures more than just an individual’s personal returns from higher education, including the fact that college graduates are more likely to marry.)
About three-in-ten young adults without a bachelor’s degree (31%) live in families earning less than $25,000, compared with 8% of young college graduates with student loans.
Compared with young adults who don’t have student debt, student loan holders are less upbeat about the value of their degree. Only about half (51%) of those ages 25 to 39 with at least a bachelor’s degree and outstanding student loan debt say that the lifetime financial benefits of their degree outweigh the costs. By comparison, about seven-in-ten young college graduates without outstanding student loans (69%) say the lifetime benefits outweigh the costs.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai received nearly $199.7 million in compensation last year, double the amount he made in 2015, according to a filing from Google’s parent company, Alphabet (GOOGL, Tech30). Pichai’s base pay was a mere $650,000. On top of that, he received a stock award for $198.7 million. The company’s compensation committee attributed the lavish pay to Pichai’s promotion to CEO and “numerous successful product launches.”
Pichai, a longtime Google executive, took over as CEO as part of a corporate restructuring in 2015. Larry Page, Google’s cofounder and previous CEO, shifted his focus to growing new businesses under the Alphabet umbrella. Alphabet gave the award to Pichai in January 2016, a few months after he succeeded Larry Page as Google’s CEO. Pichai still reports to Page, a Google co-founder who is now Alphabet’s CEO.
Page limits his annual pay to $1 because he already has an estimated fortune of $41 billion. The stock that Pichai received will vest in quarterly increments through January 2020. Under Pichai, Google has boosted sales from its core advertising and YouTube business, while also investing in machine learning, hardware and cloud computing.
In 2016, Google unveiled new smartphones, a virtual reality headset, a router, and a voice controlled smart speaker similar to the Amazon Echo. These efforts have started to pay off for the company.
Google’s “other revenues,” a category that includes hardware and cloud services, hit nearly $3.1 billion in the most recent quarter, a gain of about 50% from the same quarter a year earlier. Alphabet’s stock has soared this year, pushing it above a $600 billion market cap this week for the first time.
The estimate by the United States Department for Agriculture Economic Research Service (USDA) assumes the Indian economy will expand annually at an average 7.4% to $6.84 trillion by 2030. This will make it bigger than that of the economies of Japan ($6.37 trillion) and Germany ($4.38 trillion)
India is well poised to become the third-largest economy by 2030, surpassing four developed nations Japan, Germany, Britain and France, according to projections by a US government agency.
The estimate by the United States Department for Agriculture Economic Research Service (USDA), based on data collated by World Bank and IMF, assumes the Indian economy will expand annually at an average 7.4% to $6.84 trillion by 2030. This will make it bigger than that of the economies of Japan ($6.37 trillion) and Germany ($4.38 trillion).
What’s more, India’s annual economic output will be almost double that of Britain ($3.6 trillion) and France ($3.44 trillion) in the next 15 years. International Monetary Fund’s managing director Christine Lagarde, who has repeatedly coined India as a “bright spot”, has forecast that the Asia’s third largest will surpass Germany by 2030.
India’s fast growing young population is perceived to boost economic activity and help the nation outpace ageing developed nations. Rising aspirations in the world’s second most populous country is driving demand for mobile phones, electronic goods, cars and houses.
The government’s apex think-tank Niti Aayog on Sunday projected the Indian economy to grow by an annual average rate of 8% in the next 15 years. “The future looks extremely bright…There is a very good case that we should over the next 15-16 years grow at 8%,” Niti Aayog’s vice chairman Arvind Panagariya has said.
After 15-16 years, India’s gross domestic product or the size of the economy will touch Rs 469 lakh crore from Rs 137 lakh crore in 2015-16, he said while reeling out the numbers in terms of the local currency.
The US will continue to be the global leader with an annual economic output, measured in terms of gross domestic product, of $24.8 trillion in 2030. But it is estimated to grow by an average annual 2.1% from $16.97 trillion in 2016, as per the USDA data.
China will close in the gap with the US by growing its GDP by 5.3% to $19.2 trillion by 2030, from $9.4 trillion in 2016. Last month, management consultant PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) portrayed India to emerge as a super-power ranked only after the United States and China.
By 2040, India’s GDP in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP) will grow to $30 trillion from $8.7 trillion in 2016, while US will grow from $18.6 trillion to $28.3 trillion, PwC said in a report titled “The World in 2050”. China will continue to lead the chart with its GDP rising from $21.3 trillion to $47.4 trillion by 2040. However, India’s GDP measured in terms of dollar will grow to $28 trillion to emerge as third biggest by 2050, only after China ($49.9 trillion) and the US ($34.1 trillion), PwC said.