World

Plata, the Mexican financial technology company, has secured a new financing of up to US$500 million arranged by Nomura Securities International, Inc. ("Nomura") It is the largest funding to date for a Mexican digital financial services company. The transaction also sets an important precedent: it marks the first time a Japanese top-tier investment bank participates in a financing of this scale within Mexico's digital financial sector, reflecting the growing international interest in Plata and in Mexico's financial system. The announcement comes as Plata continues to work towards launching operations as a bank, after having received its banking license authorization in December 2024. The company embarked on this extremely rigorous process ...

Europe must accelerate its rearmament in ‍response ‌to a stark shift in U.S. military doctrine, a ⁠French government official said ‌on Tuesday, calling Washington's new security strategy "an extremely brutal clarification" of its ideological posture. The U.S. National Security Strategy, made ⁠public last week, caused shock across Europe, with a broadside that ​said the continent was facing "civilisation erasure" ‌and that U.S. policy ⁠should include "cultivating resistance" within the European Union. "The new American security strategy is an extremely brutal clarification of ​the United States' ideological posture," Junior Army Minister Alice Rufo told lawmakers at the National Assembly's weekly question-and-answer session. "We live in a world of carnivores, ​Europe ‍is no is...

The Supreme Court seems likely to eliminate one of the remaining checks on money in politics, a decision in line with recent rulings favoring First Amendment free speech rights over fears about potential corruption. In a challenge involving Vice President JD Vance, the court considered on Dec. 9 whether to scrap a rule aimed at preventing wealthy donors from bypassing limits on what they can give candidates by funneling money through political parties. The rule was passed in 1974 as part of Congress' response to the Watergate scandal and upheld by the Supreme Court in 2001. During two hours of oral arguments, the court’s conservatives did not attack the GOP’s argument that the law and the campaign finance landscape have changed since 2001. "The coordinated party spending l...

The entire stock market, and therefore the entire economy, depends on it maintaining pretty impossible growth metrics. As the price of almost everything has increased, and American workers’ wages have all but stalled, politicians like President Donald Trump have tried to ease our minds by telling us that the economy is “doing great” and that the stock market is booming. “Record high, record high, record high,” Trump said at an event earlier this month in Florida. Still, despite what has been a good year for the stock market, it’s hard to find a day in which a podcaster, influencer, or economist isn’t warning that the AI boom that’s powering the economy could be a bubble — one that is about to burst. The company that’s driving Wall Street’s positive movement is Nvidia, the mos...

Something in the US economy isn’t adding up, and it’s rattling the people charged with wrangling inflation and keeping the labor market intact. US companies have sharply slowed their hiring this year, hesitant to invest without knowing the full effects of President Donald Trump’s sweeping economic policies. The economy lost jobs in June and August, and the average pace of job gains for the three months ending in September was only around 62,000, according to the Labor Department. Yet workers’ productivity, a key driver of economic output, remains high. And gross domestic product, which captures all the goods and services produced in the economy, has stayed robust. That dichotomy of an expanding economy and a softening labor market presents a conundrum for policymakers at...

The UK could’ve been a true tech leader – but it has cheerfully submitted to US dominance in a way that may cost it dear Two and a half centuries ago, the American colonies launched a violent protest against British rule, triggered by parliament’s imposition of a monopoly on the sale of tea and the antics of a vainglorious king. Today, the tables have turned: it is Great Britain that finds itself at the mercy of major US tech firms – so huge and dominant that they constitute monopolies in their fields – as well as the whims of an erratic president. Yet, to the outside observer, Britain seems curiously at ease with this arrangement – at times even eager to subsidise its own economic dependence. Britain is hardly alone in submitting to the power of American firms, but it offers a cle...

United States job growth accelerated in September despite a cooling job market as the unemployment rate rose. Nonfarm payrolls grew by 119,000 jobs after a downwardly revised 4,000 drop in August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report released on Thursday. The unemployment rate rose to 4.4 percent, up from 4.3 percent in August. The healthcare sector had the most gains, totalling 43,000 jobs in September. Food and beverage services sectors followed, adding 37,000 jobs, and social assistance employment grew by 14,000. Other sectors saw little change, including construction, wholesale trade, retail services, as well as professional and business services. The federal workforce saw a decline of 3,000, marking 97,000 jobs cut from the nation’s largest empl...