Hard-won budget and debt deal clears Senate and advances to Trump
A hard-won budget and debt deal easily cleared the Senate on Thursday, powered by President Donald Trump's endorsement and a bipartisan drive to cement recent spending increases for the Pentagon and domestic agencies. The legislation passed by a 67-28 vote as Trump and his GOP ...
S&P warns it could be bubble time again for Japan's real estate companies as debts rise
Japan's real estate firms are entering dangerous territory. That's the assessment of S&P Global Ratings, which said in a report Friday that the sector's debt levels now eclipse that of the nation's bubble era. Remember that? It was back in the 1980s, when newspaper headlines ...
Slovenia faces similar fiscal challenges to Japan, Finance Minister Andrej Bertoncelj says
Slovenia has similar challenges to Japan in terms of huge government debts and an aging population, and both countries can learn from each other, Slovenian Finance Minister Andrej Bertoncelj said this week in Tokyo. In an interview with The Japan Times on Wednesday, Bertoncelj, who ...
Shadow banking crisis raises risk of renewed Indian bad-loan reckoning
Just as India's banks emerge from under a pile of bad loans to large energy, steel and other industrial companies, they are facing a new reckoning from the accelerating crisis in the country's shadow banking sector. A year after a series of defaults by Infrastructure ...
Dreams of economic revival after Mahathir's return fade in Malaysia
A year ago, Malaysian land surveyor Muhammad Nur Aliff had high hopes that a shock election victory by 93-year-old Mahathir Mohamad could be the catalyst for reform and revival in a country hobbled by sky-high public debt and corruption. But polls show that such optimism ...
America's $1.6 trillion student debt woe spurring suicidal thoughts: survey
The $1.6 trillion in U.S. student debt may not pose a direct threat to the economy, but it's causing anguish that goes far beyond financial concerns for the people who owe it. One in 15 borrowers has considered suicide due to their school loans, according ...
OECD secretary-general urges Japan to pull trigger on tax hike and pursue structural reforms
A top OECD official says the scheduled consumption tax hike to 10 percent this fall is “essential” to ensure Japan’s fiscal sustainability.
China's local government debt: The bomb that doesn't explode — but gets kicked down the road
China has embraced the idea of defaults imposing some discipline on debtors in its bond market. And some of the most troubled debtors are local governments' financing vehicles. So an LGFV default has long seemed on the cards. But it just isn't happening. Moody's Investors ...
Many residents in the hardest-hit prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima are struggling to repay emergency relief loans that they received in the wake of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, a Jiji Press survey of related municipalities showed. In the three prefectures, a total ...
SoftBank's giant debt burden looks worse than it actually is, analysts say
As SoftBank Group Corp. continues its transformation into a giant investment fund, some analysts are increasingly watching a metric more familiar to lenders as they judge its creditworthiness. And by that gauge, they say, its massive debt pile looks manageable. SoftBank's loan-to-value ratio, its net ...
Deep in the red: Chinese county pays price for vanity-project binge
In the heart of an impoverished village in southern China, a life-sized statue of Mao Zedong sits on a platform adorned with intricate stonework, flanked by a diorama of Red Army soldiers and traditional brick-and-tile homes with curved roofs. Officials have spent a small fortune ...
Fate of $1 trillion in risky U.S. loans may be in Japan's hands
Japanese banks might have snapped up a third of the loans made to highly indebted U.S. companies, propelling the size of the market past $1 trillion.
