Business

Not even last night's Moody's credit downgrade of China - the first since 1989 - could dent the global stock rally which has pushed global stock prices to all time highs. After initially sliding, regional stocks and emerging Asian currencies pared early losses following the unexpected downgrade of China, taking their cue from the "sudden reversal" of the Shanghai Composite Index, which some speculated saw the latest intervention of the "national team."

In what bitcoin geeks undoubtedly interpreted as a sign of bitcoin’s renewed relevance now that its price is at all-time highs, Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson told CoinDesk’s Consensus conference that her company is now in the business of mining bitcoin.

Per the FT:

“Ms Johnson noted that Fidelity has also set up a bank of computers built by 21 Inc that can crunch complex algorithms to be rewarded with bitcoin.

 

At first glance, it’s easy to be impressed by Elon Musk’s impressive resume. He’s shooting for the stars with SpaceX, changing the future of transportation with Tesla, Hyperloop, and The Boring Company, and he’s already had a profound impact on the e-commerce and payments sectors through Paypal. It’s no coincidence that most of these are $1 billion+ companies.

President Trump's fiscal 2018 budget proposal would completely eliminate 66 federal programs, for a savings of $26.7 billion. 

http://launch.newsinc.com/

As The Hill reports, some of the programs would receive funding for 2018 as part of a phasing-out plan.

Here are the programs the administration wants on the chopping block...

Agriculture Department — $855 million

When OPEC sits down on Thursday, keeping the price of Brent above $50 (to avoid a budget catastrophe and social upheaval in Saudi Arabia) and below $60 (to prevent US production from going exponential), will be just one problem the cartel nations and various hangers-on will be desperate to solve. A much bigger one, literally, is the problem that led to this week's OPEC meeting in the first place, and years of headache for OPEC and non-OPEC nations: a record global oil inventory glut.