Minimum wage
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FILE PHOTO: Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador looks on during a meeting with industry bosses and members of his cabinet to discuss the new administration’s policy on the minimum wage at National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico December 17, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido/File Photo
March 26, 2019
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s president said on Tuesday he wanted no conflict with Madrid over his request for an apology for human rights abuses committed during Spain’s conquest of Mexico, and hinted he could seek similar gestures from other countries.
During his regular news morning conference, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador brought up the letter he had sent the king of Spain seeking an apology for crimes against indigenous people when Spain claimed Mexico five centuries ago.
To mark the 500th anniversary of the 1519-21 conquest, Lopez Obrador said he wanted a group of experts to review the events of that period to promote reconciliation and strengthen bonds between the two countries.
“We won’t get into any confrontation with the government of Spain or any government,” said Lopez Obrador, whose December inauguration was attended by Spanish King Felipe VI.
The relationship with Spain was not at risk, said Lopez Obrador, who during the conference stressed that he had not made the letter public.
However, politicians in Spain responded in anger, with one calling it an “intolerable offense to the Spanish people.”
Asked whether he would seek apologies from France or the United States for their historic interventions in Mexico, Lopez Obrador interrupted the question and said: “In time.”
With the support of Mexican conservatives, France invaded Mexico in the 1860s and installed Maximilian, a member of the European Habsburg family, as emperor for three years.
The United States has had several clashes with its southern neighbor, most notably during a 1846-1848 conflict which resulted in the occupation of Mexico City by U.S. forces and the loss of Mexico’s northernmost territories to the United States.
Lopez Obrador, a veteran leftist, said that as head of state he would ask forgiveness for historic abuses and murders committed against indigenous Mexican peoples, including the Yaqui in the north of the country and the Maya in the south.
“Power is humility,” he said.
The president said he would also apologize for abuses committed against Chinese immigrants during the rule of dictator Porfirio Diaz, and in the conflict known as the Mexican Revolution that dominated the country after his ouster in 1911.
(Reporting by Dave Graham; Editing by Richard Chang)
Source: OANN
The Lyft Driver Hub is seen in Los Angeles, California, U.S., March 20, 2019. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
March 21, 2019
By Joshua Franklin and Ross Kerber
NEW YORK/BOSTON (Reuters) – Union pension fund adviser CtW Investment Group said on Thursday Lyft Inc “faces an all-but-insurmountable barrier” to profitability due to issues with the ride-hailing company’s pricing strategy and new regulations driving costs higher.
The comments come four days into the roadshow for Lyft’s much-anticipated initial public offering (IPO), in which it is seeking to raise around $2 billion at a valuation of up to $23 billion.
Investor demand has been strong so far, with the IPO book oversubscribing after just two days, making it more likely that Lyft will hit or even exceed its valuation target, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
This is despite Lyft not having yet turned a profit, reporting a loss of $911 million in 2018, wider than its $688 million loss in 2017.
In a letter to potential investors in the IPO, CtW argued Lyft can only become profitable by reducing the share of revenue received by its drivers. CtW said Lyft’s larger rival Uber Technologies Inc pursued this strategy.
“Over the past three years, Lyft has mimicked Uber’s pay compression strategy, and IPO investors face the risk that the far smaller company will not be capable of sustaining low pay any longer than the market leader could,” CtW Research Director Richard Clayton wrote in the letter.
CtW said challenges for Lyft would also come from local politicians, including a move by New York City to set a minimum wage for drivers.
CtW works with union pension funds affiliated with Change to Win and which it says collectively manage $250 billion in assets.
Asked why CtW was commenting on Lyft ahead of the IPO, Clayton said in an emailed statement the group wants to make sure decision makers managing workers’ retirement savings take a careful look at Lyft before deciding whether to buy into the IPO. CtW also represents drivers unions which could be affected by the rise of ride-hailing services.
A spokesman for Lyft declined to comment.
In meetings with investors this week, Lyft executives said the company would be profitable much sooner were it not for investments in areas such as its scooter business, Reuters has reported. Lyft executives also said they expect the costs of processing transactions to come down.
Lyft is scheduled to price its IPO on March 28 and begin trading on the Nasdaq the following day.
(Reporting by Joshua Franklin in New York and Ross Kerber in Boston; Editing by Susan Thomas)
Source: OANN
Eleazar Azuaje, who is in charge of looking after the water system for the apartment block, checks the water level of the main tank of the building in Caracas, Venezuela, March 18, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
March 21, 2019
By Shaylim Valderrama
CARACAS (Reuters) – Living with a scarcity of water is becoming the norm for many Venezuelans.
Families interviewed by Reuters say they have spent months without receiving any water from the tap after power blackouts cut off supply and pipes failed due to a lack of maintenance. Faced with uncertainty of when it might return, and whether it would be enough, they are conserving as much as water as they can take from rivers or buy at shops. They are bathing, washing clothes and dishes, and cooking with just a few liters a day.
From the poorest slums, to the wealthiest neighborhoods, the shortage of water cuts across Venezuelan society as families endure the country’s deepest ever economic crisis.
A 5 liter (1.32 gallons) bottle costs about $2 at a Caracas supermarket, out of reach for many low-income people in Venezuela, where the monthly minimum wage is only around $6 each month.
“We try to save water scrubbing ourselves standing in bowls,” said Yudith Contreras, a 49-year-old lawyer, in her apartment where little water has arrived over the past two years. She has taken to getting water from streams that run down the Avila mountain above Caracas.
Contreras, who is from one of the families interviewed by Reuters in a ten-story housing complex in downtown Caracas, said her family recycles the water by using it to flush the toilet. In her kitchen and bathroom, she keeps containers of water, which she carries up the nine floors to her apartment as the elevator does not work.
“You have to save water because we don’t know how long this situation will go on for,” she said.
Some residents of the building, a few blocks from the presidential Miraflores Palace, have already exhausted their water supplies. “Today I finished all that I had stored,” said David Riveros, a retired bus driver living on the first floor.
President Nicolas Maduro’s government blames the scarcity of water on a long drought and also accuses opponents of sabotaging its supply. The country’s opposition, led by Juan Guaido, who in January invoked the constitution to assume the interim presidency after declaring Maduro’s re-election a fraud, says the problem is due to little maintenance done over many years on Venezuela’s power and water networks.
Earlier this month, Venezuela was plunged deeper into chaos after a near week-long power blackout cut off the already scant water supply to most residents. Since then, Maduro has promised to place enormous water tanks on the roofs of houses and apartment blocks to alleviate the problem.
Since the nationwide blackout, the worst in decades, lines of people queuing to fill up water flowing from the Avila have multiplied, despite warnings that the water was not fit for consumption and could contain bacteria and parasites.
Yuneisy Flores, a 31-year-old homemaker whose family live on the fourth floor, washes her dishes in cartons and strains the water to remove the leftovers of food. She then uses the liquid to flush the toilet. She bathes her 3-year-old daughter in a sink to recycle the water.
In her home, three tanks and several other containers collect water when it comes intermittently. Flores, her husband, and their two little children bathe in one of the tanks, which holds some 18 liters.
“It’s hard, too hard, you can die without water,” she said. “We weren’t aware of this before. Water now is gold.”
(See related photo essay here: https://reut.rs/2FpLiOK)
(Additional reporting by Carlos Garcia Rawlins and Carlos Jasso; Writing by Angus Berwick; editing by Diane Craft)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador attends a news conference at the National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico February 15, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Romero/File Photo
March 21, 2019
By Dave Graham and Stefanie Eschenbacher
ACAPULCO, Mexico (Reuters) – For two years, financiers at Mexico’s biggest annual banking bash issued veiled warnings about the risk of veteran leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador taking power.
Now he is president, they and industry bosses have changed tack, pledging support for the popular new leader and his plans to revive the economy from the bottom up.
Bank bosses have used the run-up to the banking convention in Acapulco beginning on Thursday to signal approval for Lopez Obrador’s plans to tackle chronic inequality via welfare handouts, ramp up financial inclusion and lift economic growth.
“The financial sector has been and will continue to be committed to Mexico’s development, which is why he celebrate and go along with the measures … announced by the Mexican government,” Marcos Martinez, head of the Mexican banking association (ABM), said at a recent event with Lopez Obrador.
Martinez and other bankers hope the president will meet pledges to tackle corruption and gang violence in Latin America’s No. 2 economy, buttressing growth with the rule of law.
Still, skepticism about his economic credentials is widespread in business circles. So far executives have reasoned they have more to gain by working with him than picking a fight with a president whose approval ratings run close to 80 percent.
Lopez Obrador, who took office in December, wiped billions of the value of Mexican financial assets when he canceled a new Mexico City airport on Oct. 29. Proposals floated by his MORENA party in Congress to curb bank fees also spooked markets.
Yet even as he rolls out welfare schemes across Mexico, he has promised to run a tight budget to protect the country’s investment-grade credit rating and says he can achieve average annual growth of 4 percent during his six-year term.
At this week’s conference in Acapulco, Mexico’s banks would likely deliver a clear message to the president that they will work with him to achieve his goals, said a senior financial industry source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
That could unlock funds for Lopez Obrador’s plan to create jobs via infrastructure spending, and complement the goal of employers’ federation COPARMEX to lift the spending power of the lowest paid by tripling the minimum wage by 2024.
Cooperating with Lopez Obrador to encourage an expansion of the Mexican middle class could become a major driver of growth, and help curb the president’s worst instincts, a senior industrialist said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Stating Mexico had “more financial resources than there are projects”, the new head of Mexico’s powerful CCE business lobby, Carlos Salazar, said last month it would work to end extreme poverty by the end of Lopez Obrador’s term.
By then, the ABM aims to get 30 million more people to use banking services – nearly three-quarters of those estimated to be without an account – and to support domestic demand by boosting lending to small businesses, homebuyers and families.
Deputy finance minister Arturo Herrera told Reuters the government would push hard on financial inclusion at the banking convention, where Lopez Obrador is due to speak on Friday.
However, for the president to make the most of the goodwill in boardrooms, he must work harder to undo the damage caused by poor decisions such as the scrapping of the airport, said Gustavo de Hoyos, head of employers’ lobby COPARMEX.
Business wanted to invest, but right now, the government scored only about “50 percent” on investor confidence, he added.
“If the president and his team can take advantage of these strengths,” de Hoyos told Reuters, “I think we could see really big progress in the course of this administration.”
(Reporting by Dave Graham and Stefanie Eschenbacher; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
Source: OANN
General Motors production worker Dina Mays works on the 10-speed transmission assembly at the General Motors (GM) Powertrain Transmission plant in Toledo, Ohio, U.S. March 6, 2019. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook
March 18, 2019
By Nick Carey and Ben Klayman
TOLEDO, Ohio (Reuters) – General Motors Co built the final Chevrolet Cruze small car at its Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant on March 6, despite demands from President Donald Trump, Ohio political leaders and the United Auto Workers union not to close the plant and leave nearly 1,500 workers laid off.
Dina Mays, a 14-year veteran of Lordstown Assembly, was not at the plant for its last day. She had already moved on to her new workplace, GM’s Toledo transmission plant, where the automaker builds ten-speed transmissions for popular pickup trucks.
The U.S. auto industry is heading into a new cycle of plant closings and job cuts. Sales in the world’s second-largest vehicle market are projected to fall. Consumers shifting away from traditional sedans such as the Cruze have left GM with more workers assigned to building cars than the market can support.
But GM has the reverse problem with trucks – for now, it cannot build them fast enough. That is helping GM find new jobs for displaced sedan plant workers, and blunt attacks from the UAW and politicians.
The automaker recently announced it will add 1,000 jobs at a plant in Flint, Michigan, to build a new generation of GM’s largest pickups.
A GM spokeswoman said last week that 538 workers from a Detroit plant slated to close in 2020 and nearly 100 from Lordstown have already signed on in Flint to fill those jobs.
That and other job opportunities could cushion the blow for most of the 1,450 workers currently laid-off at Lordstown. The Ohio plant is one of five North American GM plants slated to close by January 2020.
GM Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra has said the automaker expects to have 2,700 job openings by early 2020 at other thriving plants, enough to absorb nearly all of those displaced in plants in Maryland, Ohio and Michigan willing or able to uproot for work hundreds of miles away. GM said another 1,200 affected hourly workers are eligible for early retirement.
Based on a plant-by-plant count provided by GM, if every worker displaced or soon to be displaced volunteers for or accepts a new job – and those eligible to retire do so – that would potentially leave up to 500 GM workers jobless, far fewer than the thousands decried by the UAW and Trump.
Ohio is a key state for Trump’s 2020 re-election chances. In July 2017 he vowed in Youngstown, Ohio, near GM’s Lordstown plant, that those auto jobs were “all coming back.”
“Don’t move,” he told residents. “Don’t sell your house.”
NOMADIC LIFESTYLE
But Mays and other veteran GM factory workers have been pushed into nomadic lives before. Mays is on her third GM factory in 15 years. In 2005, she moved to Lordstown in northeastern Ohio after being laid off at a GM plant in Baltimore, Maryland.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it, it’s rough,” Mays said.
Her eldest son is at college and a 12-year-old son remains with relatives near Lordstown. “But I have to be able to support myself and my kids.”
After 25 years with GM, she has five years until retirement, so transferring “was the best decision I could make.”
For those who move, GM offers a $30,000 cash package to offset costs. If the company has jobs for laid-off workers elsewhere and they refuse them, they lose their supplemental pay and are eligible to hire on again only at their “home plant” – in this case, Lordstown.
SCANT OPTIONS
For Joe Stanton, 55, transferring 160 miles (258 km) to Toledo from Lordstown made sense.
With 25 years at GM, he also has five years to go before he can retire. He rents an apartment with Mays just outside Toledo to cut costs. He moved from Pittsburgh to Lordstown in 2006 when his GM plant there closed. He owns two homes, one near Lordstown and one in Pennsylvania.
Stanton misses his adult son in Pittsburgh and girlfriend near Lordstown, but said he is lucky not to have small children or sick parents to care for so he could move to Toledo.
If the UAW renegotiates a new product for Lordstown, retooling the plant would take years, Stanton said.
“That’s a gamble I wasn’t willing to take,” he said.
For those left behind, the outlook is bleak.
Tod Porter, chair of Youngstown State University’s economics department, estimated Lordstown’s closure could cost more than 8,000 jobs including at auto suppliers and service providers, in an area still affected by steel mill closures decades ago.
Dave Green, president of UAW Local 1112, which represents workers at Lordstown, said he is fighting for the plant to reopen, but added unemployed GM workers have scant options.
“If you don’t want a job flipping burgers for minimum wage, you got to get the hell out of here,” he said.
(Reporting by Nick Carey and Ben Klayman in Toledo, Ohio; Editing by Joe White and Matthew Lewis)
Source: OANN
Asparagus ready for picking is seen in a growing tunnel at Cobrey Farm in Ross-on-Wye, Britain, March 11, 2019. Picture taken March 11, 2019. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls
March 18, 2019
By James Davey and Kate Holton
ROSS-ON-WYE, England (Reuters) – For almost 100 years, Chris Chinn’s family has farmed asparagus in the rolling hills of the Wye Valley in western England.
This year, he fears uncertainty around Britain’s departure from the European Union will keep his eastern European workers away and the asparagus will stay in the ground.
Asparagus grown in Britain is feted by chefs as among the world’s best but the seasonal worker shortage threatens the country’s asparagus industry and the viability of Chinn’s Cobrey Farms business.
It is a predicament shared by many British fruit and vegetable farmers, almost totally reliant on seasonal migrant workers from EU member states Romania and Bulgaria taking short-term jobs that British workers do not want.
At Chinn’s farm, which turns over more than 10 million pounds ($13 million) a year, the workers pick the premium asparagus spears that can grow up to 20 cm a day by hand. Sometimes they pick them twice a day before dispatching them to customers such as Marks and Spencer. and Britain’s biggest supermarket, Tesco.
“It is incredibly clear cut – there is no UK asparagus on your supermarket shelves without seasonal migrant workers,” Chinn, whose great grandfather started as a tenant farmer in 1925, told Reuters.
“We’re really at the point where we either import the workers or we import the asparagus.”
Britain’s asparagus season is short and early – traditionally running from April 23, known as Saint George’s Day, to Midsummer’s Day in mid-June. It will be the first big test of the 2019 seasonal labor crisis.
NO SHOWS
This year Chinn’s team has had to work much harder to recruit Romanians and Bulgarians who are perplexed by the long Brexit process as Prime Minister Theresa May seeks parliament’s approval for a divorce deal with the EU. They are also wary of the welcome they will receive from Britons, who voted in 2016 to leave the EU.
Though Cobrey Farms has signed up 1,200 workers who are due to start arriving at the end of this month, Chinn fears many will not turn up. He does not think he will be able to harvest the entire crop, meaning valuable asparagus will be left in the fields.
“If we’re 20 percent short of people then we will harvest 20 percent less asparagus,” said Chinn. “UK agriculture’s not a high-margin game, so 20 percent less means we’re in loss-making territory. Fifty percent could sink us.”
Chinn’s concern grew after 20 of the 100 or so workers due to help cultivate the crops in January failed to turn up.
Of 247 workers due to arrive between March 31 and April 6, 125 are yet to book flights, he said. They include 38 who have worked at Cobrey Farms before and stayed in the dozens of static caravans that stand at the foot of the hills on the farm.
Chinn, who voted Remain in the 2016 Brexit referendum, said uncertainty over eastern Europeans’ employment rights and how long they can stay, combined with a fall in the value of the pound, meant Germany and the Netherlands were now considered more attractive destinations.
“They go somewhere which is most straightforward and any, even minor, hurdles you put in their way is just nudging them ever closer to going somewhere else,” he said.
With just 11 days to go until Britain is due to leave the EU, the government is yet to agree a withdrawal arrangement or an extension, meaning the risk of a disorderly “no-deal” Brexit cannot be ruled out.
If Britain agrees on a divorce deal, a transition period will kick in, maintaining freedom of movement until the end of 2020. In the event of no deal, EU citizens arriving after March 29 would need to register to work for more than three months.
Elina Kostadinova, a 28 year-old harvest manager at Cobrey Farms who is from Varna on Bulgaria’s Black Sea, said many workers were worried about coming to Britain because of Brexit.
“They don’t know if they will be welcomed in the country, how long they may be able to stay, how they may be able to travel and what the future may hold,” she said. “It would be wonderful if the UK government could make a decision, so we can relay this message.”
British farms typically pay workers the national minimum wage of 7.83 pounds an hour plus performance-related bonuses.
Chinn said the idea of British workers plugging the gap was fanciful. He does not expect much help from the supermarkets, where sales volumes have already been negotiated for the season and prices have been fixed, barring exceptional circumstances.
PERMIT TRIAL
Britain’s fruit and vegetable sector relies on up to 80,000 seasonal workers from the EU each year. Having previously been inundated with applications, labor agencies say interest dropped off in 2017 and 2018 as workers from Romania and Bulgaria opted to go elsewhere in the EU.
For the last two seasons, Britain has been short by around 10,000 workers, threatening the food supply and forcing farms to pay higher wages and bonuses. At the end of the summer as workers want to leave, farms will offer free accommodation and to pay the cost of flights to try to persuade them to stay on.
Concordia, a labor agency charity that finds EU pickers for British farms, said it now has to work much harder to recruit.
“U.K. agriculture is definitely entering into a crisis. No labor means no harvesting, which means no fruit and no vegetables on shelves in British supermarkets,” Chief Executive Stephanie Maurel told Reuters.
She was speaking in Moscow after the British government sanctioned a pilot trial for 2,500 workers to enter the country from Russia, Ukraine and Moldova for up to six months over the next two years.
Chinn, who has 3,500 acres of land, wants the government to increase the numbers to 10,000 this summer and over 50,000 in the next couple of years.
“We can’t change this natural cycle of the crop … the crop will come out the ground when it warms up,” he said. “So the key is about not waiting for a total disaster that wipes out large swathes of UK horticulture.”
(Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Timothy Heritage)
Source: OANN
Clashes between protesters and police broke out as the Yellow Vest rallies entered their 18th consecutive week, causing more headaches for President Macron, whose “great debate” aimed at pacifying the protests ended on Friday.
Saturday’s rally saw thousands of people flooding the streets of downtown Paris, with many wearing black balaclavas and holding French flags.
Violence erupted on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, where protesters congregated to take part in the weekly march which began in November. According to the Associated Press, Paris mobilized more police than in previous weeks in an attempt to stave off unrest.
“From 7,000 to 8,000 people are currently rallying in Paris, and out of them around 1,500 people are ultraviolent, and they have come to destroy and to attack,” French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner told broadcaster BFMTV.
Riot police used water cannons and tear gas to disperse the crowd, some of whom were carrying firecrackers.
The area around the iconic landmark was quickly enveloped in smoke. Some protesters tried to erect barricades to block streets around the Place Charles de Gaulle, prompting police to respond with crowd control measures.
#YellowVest protest: Fire & thick smoke in central Paris
WATCH LIVE: https://t.co/9SQNfnTwt7 #YellowVests #LesGiletsJaunes pic.twitter.com/QnzXePzG53
— RT (@RT_com) March 16, 2019
AP reported that at least one car was set ablaze by demonstrators. The demonstration broke out into a riot, with some protesters looting stores on Champs-Elysees, according to reports.
Video taken at the scene shows cafes and shops with smashed windows and broken furniture, as police stand guard in the street. The Yellow Vests have been quick to distance themselves from looters, claiming that the vandalism is carried out by a radical minority.
Police car catches fire amid #YellowVest protests in Paris
WATCH LIVE: https://t.co/oOJWKelf4S
#YellowVests #lesGiletsJaunes pic.twitter.com/yWMKBkoncc— RT (@RT_com) March 16, 2019
A Ruptly producer filming the demonstration was injured by a projectile fired by police. Video footage shows the producer receiving first aid from Yellow Vest medics.
At least 60 people have been detained, but the figure is likely to grow as the day progresses.
In a message posted online ahead of Saturday’s protests, organizers said they wanted the day to serve as an “ultimatum” to “the government and the powerful.”
The latest round of ‘Yellow Vest’ protests coincides with the end of President Emmanuel Macron’s “grand national debate”. The first round of the debates, meant to reconcile with the grassroots protest movement, kicked off in the northern town of Grand Bourgtheroulde, with Macron and hundreds of local officials attending.
Macron expressed hope that a frank nationwide discussion of pressing issues would help alleviate growing political unrest. He has promised to increase the minimum wage but also warned that he will not back down on his pro-business reforms.
As a result, Yellow Vest activists have criticized the “grand debate” as a mere PR campaign. “We don’t care about the national debate because we know it won’t change anything,” a Yellow Vests campaigner told RT. Others said the whole approach is designed simply to placate popular anger.
Western civilization is under attack on multiple fronts. Paul Joseph Watson’s newest report reveals we may now be seeing the end of the west as we have known it for hundreds of years.
Source: InfoWars
FILE PHOTO: Sheets of former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln on the five-dollar bill currency are fanned out at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington March 26, 2015. REUTERS/Gary Cameron/File Photo
March 14, 2019
By Mayela Armas and Mariela Nava
SAN ANTONIO/MARACAIBO, Venezuela (Reuters) – In San Antonio del Tachira, like scores of Venezuelan towns near the border with Colombia, if you want to buy food or medicine it is no use amassing huge piles of bolivar currency. You need Colombian pesos or U.S. dollars.
Hyperinflation running above 2 million percent per year in Venezuela has made the Venezuelan bolivar practically worthless. For those without electronic payment cards, foreign currency has become the only practical means of trade within the South American country.
Moises Hernandez, who works as a cleaner in San Antonio, is paid in Colombia pesos, which allows him to cross the border to the city of Cucuta to buy basic necessities.
“Unless we buy over there, we cannot eat,” the 40-year-old told Reuters. “In Venezuela everything is more expensive.”
Since Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro legalized the use of foreign currencies last year, they have increasingly become the norm in many aspects of life.
In border areas and major towns, doctors, merchants and even plumbers require payment in Colombian, Brazilian, U.S. or European currency.
During a blackout that left much of Venezuela without electricity this week, the few bakeries, restaurants and pharmacies that remained open demanded cash because electronic payment systems were down. For most, that meant foreign currency.
In the western city of Maracaibo – the second-largest in Venezuela – those shops that remained open only accepted payments in U.S. dollars – 5-dollar bills and above.
“Everything is for sale in dollars and where do you find those bills?” asked Lila Matheus, 50, a mother of a 14-year-old boy in Maracaibo. “The truth is I’m afraid because I don’t know where I am going to buy food.”
Much of the foreign currency in Venezuela comes from the more than three million people who have migrated since 2015, according to the United Nations.
Those without friends and relatives outside the country can struggle. The minimum wage in Venezuela of 18,000 bolivars is equivalent to less than six dollars at the official rate.
But as basic goods become scarcer, even those able to pay in dollars are finding that inflation is soaring.
According to calculations by local firm Ecoanalitica, a basket of basic goods that would have cost $100 a year ago would now require $675 to purchase even in U.S. currency.
This week’s blackout appears to have accelerated that trend. Bags of ice cost a dollar the first day of the outage in Caracas or six dollars in Maracaibo, according to Reuters witnesses. A few days later the price in dollars had tripled.
“A year ago, we managed to get by with the money sent from abroad,” says Omaira Rodriguez, a retiree who lives in the sprawling Caracas slum of Petare. She receives remittances every fortnight from family members in Colombia and Spain.
“With what they send now, we have to work miracles because we are living through hyperinflation,” said the former public servant, adding that her monthly pension in bolivars was only enough to buy a bag of laundry soap.
In border regions and in major cities, many businesses now openly set prices in foreign currency so as not to have to change their prices every day.
Near the southern border with Brazil, hotels, restaurants and shops list prices in the Brazilian currency, the real.
“On the border, nobody accepts the bolivar, the real is our currency,” said the mayor of the border municipality of Gran Sabana, Emilio Gonzalez. “What we are going through is very complicated.”
(Additional reporting by Corina Pons in Caracas and Maria Ramirez in Santa Elena; Editing by James Dalgleish)
Source: OANN
Former Vice President Joe Biden addresses the International Association of Fire Fighters in Washington, U.S., March 12, 2019. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
March 12, 2019
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Democrats have poured into the 2020 presidential race, lining up to join what has quickly become a crowded field of challengers vying for the party’s nomination to face President Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee.
A diverse group that includes six U.S. senators have either launched campaigns or formed exploratory committees to begin raising money and hiring staff for a presidential run.
Democrats are still waiting on a decision from a few prominent potential candidates, including former Vice President Joe Biden and former Congressman Beto O’Rourke of Texas, while others, including former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, have opted not to run.
The list of declared contenders so far:
CORY BOOKER – Booker, 49, a black, second-term senator fromNew Jersey and former mayor of Newark, gained prominence in thefight over Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. He announced his candidacy on Feb. 1, the first day of Black History Month, mentioning the impact of racial discrimination onhis family and saying he would focus on creating good jobs andreforming the criminal justice system.
PETE BUTTIGIEG – The mayor of South Bend, Indiana, launcheda campaign to become the first openly gay president on Jan. 23 with a call for a new generation of leadership to bring fresh approaches to problems. Buttigieg, 37, brushed off questions about his experience by highlighting the economic turnaround in his city.
JULIAN CASTRO – The secretary of housing and urban development under President Barack Obama joined the race onJan. 12 in his hometown of San Antonio, Texas, where he once served as mayor and city councilman. Castro, 44, the grandson of a Mexican immigrant, is so far the only Hispanic in the field. He has used his family’s personal story to criticize Trump’s border policies.
JOHN DELANEY – The former U.S. congressman from Marylandwas the first Democrat to enter the race in July 2017, long before most candidates began making their moves. Delaney, 55, has focused heavily on campaigning and organizing in Iowa, the state that will kick off the nominating fight in February 2020,making repeated trips there and visiting all 99 counties.
TULSI GABBARD – Gabbard, 37, is the first Hindu to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. After announcing her run on Jan. 11, her campaign quickly became engulfed in controversy over her past anti-gay activism and statements, and the Hawaii congresswoman was forced to apologize. “In my past, I said andbelieved things that were wrong,” she said.
KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND – An outspoken leader in the #MeToomovement against sexual assault and harassment, the senator fromNew York announced her candidacy on Jan. 15 on “The Late Showwith Stephen Colbert.” Gillibrand, 52, has touted her rural roots in upstate New York and said she had proven her ability to win over more conservative rural voters. But so far she has gained very little support in opinion polls.
KAMALA HARRIS – Harris, 54, announced her candidacy on the holiday honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. The daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India has made a quick impact in a Democratic race that will be heavily influenced by women and minority voters. The first-term senatorfrom California drew record ratings on a CNN televised town hall and has moved into a solid third place in polls behind Biden and Bernie Sanders.
JOHN HICKENLOOPER – The 67-year-old former Colorado governor has positioned himself as a centrist and an experienced officeholder with business experience. During his two terms in office, Colorado’s economy soared and the Western state expanded healthcare, passed a gun control law and legalized marijuana. The former geologist and brewpub owner is one of two governors in the race and so far has refused to take corporate money for his political action committee.
JAY INSLEE – The Washington state governor entered the field on March 1 with a vow to make climate change a central issue. Inslee, 68, also has moved to put a moratorium on capital punishment and fully implement Obamacare, formally known as the Affordable Care Act, and accompanying expansion of Medicaid health coverage for the poor. He spent 15 years in Congress before being elected governor in 2012.
AMY KLOBUCHAR – Klobuchar, 58, was the first moderate in the Democratic field. She gained national attention when she sparred with Brett Kavanaugh during Senate hearings on his Supreme Court nomination. Now in her third six-year term as a senator for Minnesota, Klobuchar’s launch came amid news reports that staff in her Senate office were asked to do menial tasks, making it difficult to hire high-level campaign strategists.
BERNIE SANDERS – The senator from Vermont lost the Democratic nomination in 2016 to Hillary Clinton but jumped in for a second try on Feb. 19. In his first run, Sanders, 77, drew strong backing from younger voters who supported his proposals for free tuition at public colleges, a $15 minimum wage and universal healthcare, ideas he plans to reprise as he vies for the 2020 nomination. The campaign reported raising $10 million in the first week.
ELIZABETH WARREN – The 69-year-old senator fromMassachusetts, a leader of the party’s liberals and a fierce Wall Street critic who was instrumental in the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, jumped into the race with a New Year’s Eve video release. On visits to states that hold early nominating contests such as Iowa and New Hampshire, she has focused on her populist economic message, promising to fightwhat she calls a rigged economic system that favors the wealthy.
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON – A self-help author and lecturer, she announced her campaign on Jan. 28. Williamson, 66, an antiwar activist and advocate for racial reconciliation, backs a $15-an-hour minimum wage, universal healthcare and a return to the Paris climate accord. She lost her previous foray into electoral politics, an independent bid for Congress in 2014 in California, coming in fourth.
ANDREW YANG – The entrepreneur launched his long-shot candidacy back in November 2017 around a single issue: the future of work in a post-industrial society and the threat that automation will eliminate millions of jobs. To deal with that challenge, Yang has proposed a Universal Basic Income of $1,000 a month for every American over the age of 18. Yang, 44, has no experience in politics and ran a series of startups before launching a nonprofit that helps aspiring entrepreneurs create jobs.
(Compiled by John Whitesides, Arlene Washington and Susan Heavey; editing by Colleen Jenkins and Jonathan Oatis)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO – A Greek national flag flutters atop the parliament building in Athens, Greece, January 28, 2019. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis
March 12, 2019
ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece needs to press ahead with unfinished economic reforms to cut risks to its recovery in the medium term, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday in its first report since the country exited its third bailout.
Under the terms of Greece’s exit seven months ago the Washington-based Fund, which took part in the first two bailouts, and its euro zone lenders are continuing to monitor its compliance with economic targets they set.
The IMF expects Greece’s economy to grow 2.4 percent this year and 2.2 percent in 2020 before slowing in subsequent years, it said, reiterating projections it made two months ago.
Growth will be helped by stronger consumption this year after an 11 percent hike in the minimum wage, the first such increase since the crisis began. Greece took its first bailout in 2010.
But rising wage pressures and the reversal of labor reforms may hit employment in a country whose the jobless rate stands at 18 percent, and the banking sector remains vulnerable, the IMF added.
“Greece should reconsider recent changes in collective bargaining policies and press ahead with its unfinished reform agenda,” the IMF said.
It should cut taxes to facilitate growth and proceed with a planned broadening of the personal income tax base.
The latter has been expected to kick in next year but the leftist government of Alexis Tsipras, whose term ends in October, has said the measure will be annulled if it wins re-election.
The government has announced austerity-easing measures since the bailout program ended in August, but polls show the conservative New Democracy party is widening its lead over Tsipras’ Syriza party.
The IMF says the country must also prepare for possible fiscal risks, including increased budget costs due to legal challenges to past wage and pension cuts, reform fatigue and pre-election uncertainty.
Euro zone finance ministers could grant Greece close to 1 billion euros in April if Athens completes reforms agreed with creditors by then. So far, it has completed 13 of 16 promised reforms, the European Commission said.
Greece, which has tapped bond markets twice this year, has created a substantial cash buffer, the IMF said, adding that the country can service its debt through the end of 2022 without further market financing.
Its capacity to repay the Fund is currently “assessed to be adequate”, but if fiscal risks materialize, that capacity “could become challenged over the medium term”, the IMF said.
(Reporting by Renee Maltezou; editing by John Stonestreet)
Source: OANN
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