Finance

To understand reality and approach it better, we usually build mental interpretations of how things work. We use our abstraction abilities to form a picture in our minds.

A century ago, you would have needed only $100 to buy what $1,641 buys today (a 1,541-percent inflation rate). A decade ago, you would have needed $100 to buy what $115 buys today (a 15-percent inflation rate).

Five of Latin America’s six largest economies will be choosing new presidents over the next 15 months. With such a substantial potential for fundamental change across the region, emerging-market analysts are wringing their hands at some of the candidates garnering substantial leads in their respective races.

Recent years have turned Brazil’s political and economic spheres into a tangled mess. Economically, the country has yet to recover from the commodity price collapse in 2014.

Assuming Venezuela’s 2018 elections are free and fair, there is little hope for current President Nicolás Maduro. Under normal circumstances, Maduro would most likely walk away with the presidential election scheduled for December 2018.

In today’s economy in which multinational enterprises (MNEs) play an increasingly prominent role, transfer pricing continues to be high on the agendas of tax administrations and taxpayers alike.

In both the United States and Europe, debt levels are climbing due to the peaking of private-equity activity. Low rates have encouraged leveraged transactions, for which the level of debt has increased with the rise in prices that investors are ready to pay.

According to Financial Times Lexicon, “CoCo bonds, or contingent convertible notes, are slightly different to regular convertible bonds in that the likelihood of the bonds converting to equity is ‘contingent’ on a specified event, such as the stock price of the company exceeding a particular level for a certain period of time….

In Australia, S&P Global Ratings just decided to downgrade the credit quality of 23 banks and lenders, including Australia’s biggest regional banks. The rating agency fears that the rise in property prices and the high level of household debt could lead, in an adverse scenario, to big difficulties for the Australian economy.

Opening a big beverage company for AB InBev (Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV) in an important city could be something usually done many times each year. Fortunately, it was important for Mexicans and Yucatecans as it became a recognition of the confidence and trust of a global company in Mexican people and workers.