A firm that counted itself a client of a broker accused of a 50 billion US dollars Wall Street con has criticised US regulators for what it says are systemic failures. Bramdean Alternatives said the charges against Bernard Madoff raised fundamental questions about the American financial regulatory system.
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has ordered halting payment on foreign bonds he calls illegal and illegitimate. If this is the case it would be Ecuador's second default in a decade.
The outgoing George Bush administration said it may be willing to give emergency aid to the ailing US car industry, keeping open the prospects for a bailout the day after Congress failed to approve a deal.
World Trade Organization (WTO) chief Pascal Lamy has abandoned attempts to restart the world trade talks. Lamy told ambassadors in Geneva that he has decided there was not sufficient consensus among major economies to call new ministerial talks on a trade deal.
The former chairman of the Nasdaq stock market has been arrested and charged with securities fraud, in what may be one of the biggest fraud cases yet. Bernard Madoff ran a hedge fund which ran up 50 billion US dollars of fraudulent losses and which he called one big lie, prosecutors allege.
United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Latinamerica to continue fighting poverty and avoid the temptation of closing off trade. Rice said on Wednesday countries should not repeat the mistakes of the Great Depression when nations deepened that crisis by turning inward.
Germany's Munich based Ifo (Institute for Economic Research) expects the German economy to contract 2.2% in 2009 and continue falling into the following year, according to a forecast published on Thursday.
The Lower House of Argentina approved early Thursday a controversial bill that would establish a moratorium on unpaid taxes and give tax opportunities to Argentines who repatriate money and assets held overseas.
LAN Chile and related companies, one of the leading airline groups in Latin America reported a passenger traffic increase of 9.9% in November, according to preliminary monthly traffic statistics and punctuality indicators.
Brazil's government will cut taxes by 8.4 billion Real (approximately 3.6 billion USD) to prop the slowing economy and meet a 4% growth target in 2009 next year, Finance Minister Guido Mantega and Central Bank president Henrique Meirelles announced Thursday in Brasilia.