Archive - Jan 13, 2016

Earlier today GE announced plans to cut 6,500 jobs in Europe over the next two years, including 765 in France, a spokesman for the company in France said on Wednesday. The spokesman added that GE was sticking to its pledge to create 1,000 net jobs in France in the next three years as part of its recent acquisition of Alstom's energy business. So definitely firing 6,500, but tentatively promising to add 1,000.

“Following technical and operational investigations and in interaction with relevant political and national security bodies of the country and after it became clear that the US combat vessels’ illegal entry into the Islamic Republic of Iran’s waters was the result of an unpurpuseful [sic] action and a mistake and after they extended an apology, the decision was made to release them."

After two months of sharp currency devaluation, the market was carefully watching last night's China trade data to see if the Yuan debasement had led to a positive trade outcome to the world's second largest economy, and as reported last night, it was not disappointed when China reported a December trade surplus of $60.09 billion from $54.1 billion in November, as a result of exports beating expectations and rising 2.3%, the first increase since June, while imports declined by just 4%, the smallest drop since 2014 despite China importing a record amount of oil, or 33.2 million tons, in December.

Basically, the gold mining industry issued billions of new shares and debt to help replace production and to compensate for rising costs