Billions Archives

New Zealand earthquake damage will cost BILLIONS, Prime Minister John Key says

November 14, 2016 by administrator

A powerful earthquake in New Zealand has killed at least two people and destroyed infrastructure and property. The premier indicated that the damage was likely to amount to billions of dollars.

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key on Monday indicated that damage caused by a 7.8 magnitude that struck the South Pacific nation on Sunday could cost the country around 2 billion New Zealand dollars ($1.43 billion, 1.33 billion euros), local news reported.

“It’s hard to believe that the bill is going to be less than a couple of billion,” Key told Radio New Zealand.

The devastating cost of the New Zealand earthquakes that rocked the country could cost “billions”, according to the Prime Minister John Key.

After surveying some of the damage from the 7.8-magnitude earthquake and the subsequent tremors that hit, Key has indicated that it will cost them “a couple of billion dollars”, according to Radio New Zealand on Monday.

“It’s hard to believe that the bill is going to be less than a couple of billion,” he told Radio New Zealand, according to their Twitter account.

New Zealand was also hit by another strong earthquake with a magnitude of 6.2 as well as a hundreds of aftershocks.

Emergency response teams were already flying by helicopter to the region at the epicentre of the original 7.8 magnitude quake, which struck just after midnight some 91 km (57 miles) northeast of Christchurch in the South Island, amid reports of injuries and collapsed buildings.

Kurdistan Reportedly Sells 910,000 Bpd For $1B Every Month “Where Barzani stashing the Billions?”

November 3, 2016 by administrator

By Tsvetana Paraskova

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq is selling 910,000 bpd and reaping nearly US$1 billion in oil revenues every month, an investigative reporting piece by the Kurdistan region’s news outlet NRT showed on Wednesday. If the figures are correct, Iraq as a whole is pumping much more than the central government, the Kurdistan government, and OPEC sources have been estimating.

According to a foreign source with knowledge of Kurdistan’s oil, NRT has estimated that the fields in the Kurdistan Region and in Kirkuk under the control of the KRG Ministry of Natural Resources are producing as follows: Khurmala oil field – 210,000 bpd, Tawke oil field – 190,000 bpd, Taq Taq oil field – 110,000 bpd, Havana and Bai Hassan oil field – 300,000 bpd, and other small oil fields – 100,000 bpd. That’s a total of 910,000 bpd, or 27,300,000 barrels every month. If oil is sold at US$36 as the KRG has indicated, this means almost US$1 billion in revenue.

NRT’s investigation has revealed that except for some foreign companies and “officials from the Kurdistan Region, including Masoud Barzani, the KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani and the KRG Minister of Natural Resources, Ashti Hawrami, no other individual or party is aware of the revenue”.

According to figures by the autonomous province’s Ministry of Natural Resources, the KRG received US$328 million from crude oil exports in September. For the whole month of September, the KRG shipped a total of 16.94 million barrels of crude, according to the ministry.

Iraq – which has questioned the way OPEC calculates output from secondary sources since day one after the cartel agreed to work toward an agreement to limit production – released a few days ago detailed data about the crude oil output at each of its 26 oilfields as well as equally detailed export figures, in an attempt to prove that OPEC’s external-source output estimates do not reflect reality.

The data also included a total output figure from fields in Kurdistan. According to these figures, Iraq pumped 4.7 million bpd in September.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

Obama offered $115bn arms sales to Saudi Arabia: Report

September 8, 2016 by administrator

The administration of US President Barack Obama has offered Saudi Arabia $115 billion in arms sales, a report seen by Reuters has found.

The offer, including weapons, other military equipment and training, is the highest the United States has offered in its 71-year alliance with the monarchy, the agency reported Wednesday.

Authored by William Hartung of the US-based Center for International Policy, the report said the offers were made in 42 separate deals and most of what they consist are yet to be delivered.

According to Reuters, “US arms offers to Saudi Arabia since Obama took office in January 2009 have included everything from small arms and ammunition to tanks, attack helicopters, air-to-ground missiles, missile defense ships, and warships. Washington also provides maintenance and training to Saudi security forces.”

Hartung’s report was based on data from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.

“It’s time for the Obama administration to use the best leverage it has – Saudi Arabia’s dependence on U.S. weapons and support – to wage the war in Yemen in the first place,” Hartung said. “The more recent deals that have involved resupplying Saudi Arabia with ammunition, bombs, and tanks to replace weaponry used up or damaged in the war in Yemen are no doubt driven in part by the effort to ‘reassure’ the Saudis that the U.S. will not tilt towards Iran in the wake of the nuclear deal.”

He further suggested that, “Pulling back the current offer of battle tanks or freezing some of the tens of billions in weapons and services in the pipeline would send a strong signal to the Saudi leadership that they need stop their indiscriminate bombing campaign and take real steps to prevent civilian casualties.”

Saudi Arabia has been incessantly pounding Yemen since March 2015, with the UN putting the death toll from the military aggression at about 10,000.

According to the Control Arms Coalition, a group that is campaigning against arms sales, Britain, France and the US are violating the 2014 Arms Trade Treaty by exporting conventional weapons to a country engaged in war crimes.

Last month, the Obama administration approved a potential $1.15 billion arms package for the Saudi monarchy.

5 Banks to Pay Billions and Plead Guilty in Currency and Interest Rate Cases

May 20, 2015 by administrator

nytimes.com 5 Big Banks to Pay Billions and Plead Guilty in Currency and Interest Rate Cases
Adding another entry to Wall Street’s growing rap sheet, five big banks have agreed to pay more than $5 billion and plead guilty to multiple crimes related to manipulating foreign currencies and interest rates, federal and state authorities announced on Wednesday.
The Justice Department forced four of the banks — Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, and the Royal Bank of Scotland — to plead guilty to antitrust violations in the foreign exchange market as part of a scheme that padded the banks’ profits and enriched the traders who carried out the plot. The traders were supposed to be competitors, but much like companies that rigged the price of vitamins and automotive parts, they colluded to manipulate the largest and yet least regulated market in the financial world, where some $5 trillion changes hands every day.
Underscoring the collusive nature of their contact, which often occurred in online chat rooms, one group of traders called themselves “the cartel,” an-invitation only club where stakes were so high that a newcomer was warned “mess this up and sleep with one eye open.” To carry out the scheme, one trader would typically build a huge position in a currency and then unload it at a crucial moment, hoping to move prices. Traders at the other banks agreed to, as New York State’s financial regulator put it, “stay out of each other’s way.”
As part of the criminal deal with the Justice Department, a fifth bank, UBS, will plead guilty to manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, a benchmark that underpins the cost of trillions of dollars in credit cards and other loans.

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