Argentina devaluation

Argentina finally hit the panic button. After years of trying to avoid a currency devaluation that would add to soaring inflation and reduce its popularity with voters, the government conceded defeat in that fight on Monday. The move was an admission by President Alberto Fernandez that his administration had run out of options—and money—to defend an unsustainable exchange rate after suffering a stinging defeat in a crucial primary election on Sunday. The 18% devaluation takes the official peso rate to 350 per US dollar (compared to 287 on Friday) and comes with another huge hike in the central bank’s key interest rate. It was raised 21 percentage points to 118%. —Natasha Solo-Lyons

Russia’s central bank called an extraordinary meeting Tuesday after the ruble crashed through the level of 100 to the dollar for the first time since March of 2022, shortly after Vladimir Putin launched his war on Ukraine.

US regulators will soon propose requiring banks with as little as $100 billion in assets to issue enough long-term debt to cover capital losses if they ever fail. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve are working on the plan as part of Washington’s response to this year’s failures of midsize lenders.

Goldman Sachs economists anticipate the Fed will start lowering interest rates by the end of next June, with a gradual, quarterly pace of reductions from that point. “The cuts in our forecast are driven by this desire to normalize the funds rate from a restrictive level once inflation is closer to target,” they wrote in a note.

Mastercard agreed to take a minority stake in the financial-technology business of MTN Group, Africa’s biggest wireless carrier, sending the telecom company’s stock up the most in three months. The size of Mastercard’s stake won’t be disclosed until the transaction closes, but MTN said that the deal values the entire fintech unit at $5.2 billion.

Tech stocks had their best day in two weeks, helping US equities edge higher in light trading. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 rose 1.2% as AI-favorite Nvidia and other technology giants drove Monday’s advance. Here’s your markets wrap.

For years, Elon Musk has been outspoken about the dangers of population collapse. As it turns out, the voluble billionaire has been putting his money where his mouth is. The Musk Foundation made one of its biggest ever donations and its largest to higher education—$10 million to the University of Texas at Austin—in 2021. The donation is linked to the Population Wellbeing Initiative, a new interdisciplinary research group devoted to the study of population.

Singapore needs to figure out how to better deploy its sizable reserves and leverage its wealthy status by investing more in the region, according to Piyush Gupta, chief executive of the city-state’s largest bank. “We’ve still not caught up around the fact that we are a rich country,” the head of DBS Group Holdings said Monday. “We have capital resources, how do we put it to work to create competitive advantage?”

They’re lawyers in New York, doctors in Phoenix and dentists in Memphis. They’re young, old, Democratic and Republican. And they all have two things in common: they’re rich but they don’t feel they’re rich. In a nationwide survey of more than 1,000 Americans making at least $175,000 a year—roughly the top 10% of US tax filers—a full quarter said they were either “very poor,” “poor” or “getting by but things are tight.” Half described themselves as just “comfortable.” Many have considered moving to a different part of the country for lower taxes and a cheaper cost of living. But how much of a difference would moving actually make? Try our comparison tool, which we’ve made free to all readers, and find out how much richer you would (or wouldn’t) feel somewhere else.

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