Word: banking
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Israelis into the sea," I am at a loss to find even one instance of Israelis speaking of "driving the Arabs into the desert sands," as McGirk claims [May 19]. To the contrary: most Israelis would be content for Palestinians to establish a peaceful state in the West Bank and Gaza and, in return, let Israelis live in peace in Israel. Regrettably for both, as long as several major Arab factions are sworn to the destruction of Israel, this will not happen. Arye Ephrath, Fairfax, Virginia...
...latest flashpoint in the global financial crisis, Iceland is nursing a familiar sort of economic pain in a typically cool way. Over the past two years, the country's banks enjoyed extraordinary growth by borrowing heavily on international capital markets, leading Iceland to rack up a $2.7 billion current-account deficit, equivalent to 16% of its GDP; the comparable figure even in the notoriously indebted U.S. is only 5%. In January banks worldwide clamped down on loans in response to the global credit crunch, and investors began to worry that Icelandic banks had leveraged themselves too aggressively. Rumors swirled that...
...restore investor confidence, Icelandic banks and government officials have emphasized their economy's unflagging strengths in a charm offensive directed at ratings agencies and investors. Iceland is the fifth richest country in the oecd; the prices of its largest exports, aluminum and fish, are at record highs. "The Icelanders are richer than us," says British economist Portes. "They're not exactly going to starve." (Iceland's gross national income per capita is $39,400, compared to the U.K.'s $35,300.) What's more, the banks remain fundamentally sound: they have strong deposit ratios and are more profitable than their...
...banks flatly dismiss the notion that the central bank will need to bail out the system. "That's just unthinkable," says Ásgeir Jónsson, chief economist at Kaupthing, Iceland's largest bank. Following the 2006 crisis, banks greatly strengthened their liquidity positions and shifted their liabilities further into the future: on average, newly issued bonds now mature in 2010 or after, rather than within a year. Although Iceland's major banks had hoped to grow quite quickly this year, they will use their liquidity conservatively as a buffer instead. Meanwhile, to their relief, Iceland's banks have negligible...
...Pisani's eyes, squeamishness and silence are killers. When money finally poured into AIDS programming early this decade, very little cash got to the marginalized groups who really were high-risk. In Ghana, three-quarters of new HIV infections occur in the sex trade, according to the World Bank, but 99% of the HIV funding goes to general-population programs like microcredit schemes. The same pattern of ignoring high-risk, low-status people is found in countries like Nigeria, Cambodia and Thailand, says Pisani: "It's very strong to say it's deliberate neglect, but we are deliberately choosing...