Letter Requesting Donation for School
Our Lady of the Tower School, Deir El Ahmar — atiejelmouallem.com
Our school “Lady of the Tower School for the Sisters of the Holy Family” is located in Bekaa- Lebanon in the district of Deir El Ahmar. It is on the main road between Btedhi and Chlifa. Its ultimate goal is our children’s spiritual and educational lives.
From 1932 till now, our school still taking care of poor children, but due the economic circumstances in Lebanon in general, and in our school in particular, we requires your generous attention in the form of donation. Your donation and help can bring a smile to thousands of faces by helping them to achieve a good life and to continue their learning in our school.
Learn more on how you can help.
France Considering a Currency Board For Lebanon | Blog Baladi
Highlights:
– Annahar reported yesterday that the French President is considering establishing a currency board for Lebanon in case everything falls apart. Talks about a currency board had emerged earlier this year when Steve H. Hanke, an American applied economist at Johns Hopkins University, suggested such a solution to help establish confidence and stability immediately.
Read more.
Crypto Finally Has a Reason to Exist: Decentralized Finance – Bloomberg
Highlights:
– The core use case for crypto is called DeFi, a recently coined abbreviation for “decentralized finance.” DeFi doesn’t have a formal definition, but it typically includes the use of the blockchain to borrow and lend using auction markets; to trade in unconventional derivatives; to trade one set of crypto assets against another; and for unusual forms of insurance. The profit opportunities arise in part because the blockchain eliminates the need for traditional financial intermediaries, with their fees and associated regulations.
– There could be $100 billion invested in DeFi right now. More important, these systems are growing rapidly. Reliable numbers are difficult to come by, but by one account DeFi grew sevenfold in just a few months in 2020, to a total value of $7 billion.
– One criticism of DeFi is that it is effectively regulatory arbitrage, bypassing useful laws and restrictions in the quest for higher private gain.
– You could say that crypto is a Trojan horse of a new and quite different financial system.
Read more.
IMF Sees Risks After El Salvador Makes Bitcoin Legal Tender – Bloomberg — www.bloomberg.com
Highlights:
– El Salvador’s congress approved a law this week requiring businesses to accept Bitcoin in exchange for goods and services. President Nayib Bukele said the digital currency will help counter El Salvador’s low banking penetration and cut the cost of sending remittances.
– The plans for Bitcoin under an increasingly autocratic regime will likely only compound concerns about corruption, money laundering and the independence of regulatory agencies,” Siobhan Morden, head of Latin America Fixed Income Strategy at Amherst Pierpont, wrote in a note.
Read more.
Richest People in Asia Pour Into Singapore’s Billionaire Playground During Covid – Bloomberg — www.bloomberg.com
Highlights:
– For rich people “who can decide where they want to live and settle down, Singapore is a place of choice now,” said Stephan Repkow, who founded Wealth Management Alliance in 2015.
– On a per capita basis, the mortality rates in Malaysia and Indonesia are more than 10 and 30 times higher than in Singapore, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.
– The number of single family offices in the city-state has doubled since the end of 2019 to about 400, including firms recently set up by Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Shu Ping, the billionaire behind Chinese hotpot empire Haidilao International Holding Ltd.
– It’s given enough jabs for 30% of the population, almost twice the rate in China and even further ahead of neighboring Malaysia and Indonesia.
– One top banker who declined to be identified said Chinese clients ranked first among new account openings, followed by those from India and Indonesia.
– Singapore makes it relatively easy for the super rich to settle. Through its Global Investors Program, the country grants a fast-track to permanent residency to qualified business owners or families.
– The government also introduced a new investment vehicle last year, known as the Variable Capital Company, making it more attractive for family offices, hedge funds and private equity firms to set up shop.
Read more.
The Bottom 90% of Americans Are Borrowing From the Top 1% – Bloomberg — www.bloomberg.com
Highlights:
– By forcing interest rates down, extreme wealth inequality pushes the U.S. economy toward a “debt trap” that’s hard to escape with conventional macroeconomic tools, write Atif Mian of Princeton, Ludwig Straub of Harvard, and Amir Sufi of the University of Chicago in an important paper that came out earlier this year, titled “Indebted Demand.”
– Here’s their concept: The rich can’t possibly spend everything they earn, so they save a lot. In theory those savings can be recycled into productive investment, but in practice a lot of the money finances borrowing—i.e., dissaving—by people farther down the income ladder.
– The lending from rich to poor can be indirect. For example, let’s say a rich person buys shares issued by a company. The company stashes the proceeds in a bank. The bank in turn makes a loan to a non-rich person to buy a car or a house.
Read more.
Living at AlJurf
Find Out More About Living at AlJurf
AlJurf Gardens harnesses nature’s raw beauty and combines it with refined heritage-inspired architecture and contemporary design to present a sanctuary of wellness and calm. Throughout the villa spaces, the refined and controlled raw beauty of nature is repeated in different scales, to showcase its exquisiteness across every typology of homes, gardens and courtyards.
Learn more.
Inflation Outlook: Economist Roger Bootle Sees Consumer Prices Surge After Covid – Bloomberg — www.bloomberg.com
Highlights:
– While most central bankers seem content the higher gains are transitory, some economists are sounding the alarm.
– How high inflation will go, and for how long, that’s debatable.
– “If I had to put my money on a single factor that was going to push up costs in the years to come, I would say it was the environmental emphasis and in particular the drive towards net-zero. This is going to lead to a whole series of costs and price increases across the economy.
Read more.