Here is a brief excerpt from composite of mini-commentaries by Isabelle Roughol, featured by LinkedIn Pulse. To read the complete article, check out others, and sign up to receive email alerts, please click here.
* * *
The Justice Department is going after white-collar criminals. In a memo, Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates (above) instructed federal prosecutors nationwide to go after individuals, not just companies, involved in corporate wrongdoing and to pressure companies to turn over evidence implicating their boards and executives. Yates will discuss the policy today in a speech at the New York University School of Law.
The announcement seems to address criticism of the DoJ for not being tough enough on Wall Street following the financial crisis. The US government collected an unprecedented amount of fines from major banks — $190 billion at last count — but most judicial action ended in settlements. Fines barely dented profits and none of the executives who made negligent or nefarious decisions faced a judge or the bars of a cell. As The Atlantic’s William D. Cohan notes
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/how-wall-streets-bankers-stayed-out-of-jail/399368/
in the latest issue, the Justice Department was much harder on FIFA officials for rigging the attribution of a couple World Cups.
“Corporations can only commit crimes through flesh-and-blood people. It’s only fair that the people who are responsible for committing those crimes be held accountable.”
– Sally Q. Yates, deputy attorney general
* * *
China’s yuan moves yet one step closer to reserve currency. Premier Li Keqiang announced the country will be opening up the onshore foreign exchange market to foreign central banks. So far, they had been trading the yuan in Hong Kong at a different rate from the mailand. With this, Beijing moves closer to satisfying IMF requirements for the yuan to join the family of major world currencies alongside the US dollar, euro, yen and British pound. This summer, it started to allow the yuan to fluctuate more freely — with the results you know. Speaking at the “summer Davos” in Dalian, the prime minister also assured “China won’t see a hard landing in the economy” (he can’t really say anything else) and ruled out quantitative easing.
* * *
Because you’ve heard enough about Greece and China, let’s talk about Brazil. Standard & Poor’s downgraded the country’s sovereign rating to BB+ with a negative outlook aka junk, after 7 years as investment grade. Here’s what’s going on with the once shining star of the BRICs:
o An incredibly unpopular government mired in corruption scandals, with protests calling for President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment;
o The deepest recession in 25 years at -2.6% in the second quarter and forecast to last the longest since the 1930s;
o A rapidly degrading fiscal situation, with a deficit at 0.5% and debt at 65% of GDP — numbers Europe would envy, but that have already been reviewed down twice this year;
o Inflation at a decade high, near 10%, with outlook rising every week;
o Overcapacity and a real estate bubble bursting, with the highest vacancy rate in Latin America in Rio.
But at least there’s the Olympics… For more on Brazil, don’t miss daily updates from our local editor, Rodrigo Brancatelli, who’s taking it all in strides with a great sense of humor. (Google Translate works wonders.)
* * *
Here is a direct link to the complete article.
Isabelle Roughol is an international editor at LinkedIn. She’s “Curious by profession” and based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.