Get Smart Fast — 2/2/16
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Some of the biggest names in the hedge-fund industry are piling up bets against China’s currency, setting up a showdown between Wall Street and the leaders of the world’s second-largest economy.
The Navy was set to announce a choice in late summer 2014, but continuing controversy inside the service, the Pentagon and Capitol Hill led leadership to suspend any decision pending a service-wide review of unmanned and intelligence assets. Now it would seem a decision has been made between strike and recon. The winner? Aerial refueling.
Although these and other initiatives — what Alphabet refers to as its “Other Bets” — pulled in $448 million last year in revenues, the whole group of subsidiaries wound up losing the company $3.5 billion, up from $1.9 billion the year before.
- Japan is now offering NEGATIVE INTEREST RATES
The policy — which means banks are essentially paying for the privilege of parking their money — represents a last resort for a country that has struggled through a quarter-century of weak growth. In theory, negative rates will push banks to lend more to companies, which would then spend and hire.
For all of 2015, BP said it lost $6.48 billion, compared with a profit of $3.78 billion in 2014 — before plummeting oil prices began taking their full toll. ExxonMobil, the industry’s largest player, reported a 58 percent decline in its quarterly profit but beat analyst estimates.
