The Wall Street Journal reports, Gasoline prices fell for the fifth consecutive week, extending a sharp decline, easing fears that prices would soon top $4 a gallon at the pump. The average price of regular gasoline dropped to $3.790 a gallon as of Monday. Many of the forces that drove gasoline up are reversing, and that is helping bring prices back down, though they still remain near record highs. Tensions over Iran’s nuclear program have eased, while softening economies in the U.S. and Europe have curbed demand. At the same time, some refineries pegged for closure are coming back online, and bottlenecks in the supply of crude oil are becoming unclogged.
Reuters reports, Months after rebels brought down the extravagant dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi, the disarray in Libya’s state finances at the end of last year, was so bad the new leadership did not know the size of state assets, how their money was being spent, or what had happened to more than $2 billion, transferred from the sovereign wealth fund. An internal National Transitional Council document, paints a picture of a government bureaucracy so fractured and disorganized, that nobody appeared able to keep track of what money was coming in, and how much was going out. Libyan officials say the anomalies in the state’s finances were the result of complex accounting rules, delays in settling bills and poor communication between government departments – not by money being misused or stolen. But campaigners for financial transparency, say that the disarray in tracking government finances, creates a fertile environment for abuse, especially when Libya is now earning over $2 billion a month, from selling crude oil.
Bloomberg reports, Wall Street’s biggest banks have lost almost two dozen of their most-profitable credit traders in the past 13 months, as regulators limit the kind of risk-taking, that amplified the housing crisis four years ago. As banks slash or defer pay and reduce the amount they’re willing to wager, traders are seeing better opportunities, at hedge funds and investment firms, that seek to profit in markets lenders are retreating from. Traders are fleeing cash bonuses, that were capped last year at 65,000 pounds at U.K. lender Barclays, 100,000 euros at Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank and $125,000 at Morgan Stanley in New York. Some of the largest hedge funds, may pay bonuses of as much as 12 percent of traders’ profits, and unlike the banks, the funds typically pay 50 percent or more of bonuses to their highest earners, in cash.
The Wall Street Journal reports, Gasoline prices fell for the fifth consecutive week, extending a sharp decline, easing fears that prices would soon top $4 a gallon at the pump. The average price of regular gasoline dropped to $3.790 a gallon as of Monday. Many of the forces that drove gasoline up are reversing, and that is helping bring prices back down, though they still remain near record highs. Tensions over Iran’s nuclear program have eased, while softening economies in the U.S. and Europe have curbed demand. At the same time, some refineries pegged for closure are coming back online, and bottlenecks in the supply of crude oil are becoming unclogged.
Reuters reports, Months after rebels brought down the extravagant dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi, the disarray in Libya’s state finances at the end of last year, was so bad the new leadership did not know the size of state assets, how their money was being spent, or what had happened to more than $2 billion, transferred from the sovereign wealth fund. An internal National Transitional Council document, paints a picture of a government bureaucracy so fractured and disorganized, that nobody appeared able to keep track of what money was coming in, and how much was going out. Libyan officials say the anomalies in the state’s finances were the result of complex accounting rules, delays in settling bills and poor communication between government departments – not by money being misused or stolen. But campaigners for financial transparency, say that the disarray in tracking government finances, creates a fertile environment for abuse, especially when Libya is now earning over $2 billion a month, from selling crude oil.
Bloomberg reports, Wall Street’s biggest banks have lost almost two dozen of their most-profitable credit traders in the past 13 months, as regulators limit the kind of risk-taking, that amplified the housing crisis four years ago. As banks slash or defer pay and reduce the amount they’re willing to wager, traders are seeing better opportunities, at hedge funds and investment firms, that seek to profit in markets lenders are retreating from. Traders are fleeing cash bonuses, that were capped last year at 65,000 pounds at U.K. lender Barclays, 100,000 euros at Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank and $125,000 at Morgan Stanley in New York. Some of the largest hedge funds, may pay bonuses of as much as 12 percent of traders’ profits, and unlike the banks, the funds typically pay 50 percent or more of bonuses to their highest earners, in cash.