Business

Well another day, another horrible piece of economic data out of Brazil.

Core retail sales in South America’s most important economy slid 2.7% M/M in December, erasing a meager gain the country eked out in November when the numbers got a boost from promotions.

Broad retail sales, meanwhile, declined 0.9% marking the eleventh decline in thirteen months. They’re now off more than 16% since peaking in August of 2012.

Submitted by Frank Hollenbeck via The Mises Institute,

It is now just a matter of time before the US central bank follows the central banks of Japan, the EU, Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland in setting negative rates on reserve deposits.

We’re nearly two months into the new year and one of the defining themes for markets thus far has been the extent to which investors have seemingly woken up to the fact that central bankers are not, in fact, omnipotent.

Oil prices (and the broader financial markets) have suffered from acute bouts of volatility so far in 2016, with dramatic intraday swings the most worrying feature, and as OilPrice.com's Charles Kennedy warns, this shows no signs of letting up.

With realized volatility soaring...

NHS hospitals are facing pressure from regulators to cook their books and downplay the size of their deficits, according to a whistle blowing finance director. In anonymous evidence given to the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the finance chief told MPs that he and his colleagues are concerned that national regulators are pressurising NHS providers to deceive taxpayers and government departments about their financial performance.