Dr M Khalid's global village blog

Rumors last week that Russia was on the verge of selling its gold reserves were quashed with the news on Friday that it has continued to add to its holdings.  However, John Butler, chief investment officer at Atom Capital, and Alasdair MacLeod, the head of research at online bullion exchange GoldMoney Foundation, believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin could bring the country onto some sort of "gold standard" to try to shore up its economy.  "It was (and still is) in Russia's power to adopt a gold standard," MacLeod told CNBC via email. "There is no doubt that Russia and China, plus the other Eurasian states in their sphere of influence are all accumulating gold and the indications are they see it as central to replacing the  U.S. dollar  for cross border trade." Whether Russia would actually decide to do it was another matter, said MacLeod, and expected the country's central bank to the lack the courage to act. However, he said...

Each month, William Piorun has to choose between paying his mortgage or buying medicine that keeps his pituitary-gland tumor in check. This month and last, the 65-year-old Medicare patient paid the mortgage, and stopped taking a drug that his doctor says he needs to ward off the risk of premature death. Once, hard choices like these were commonly forced only on those without health insurance. Now more patients who have insurance or Medicare must confront them as drug bills for those with chronic and life-threatening decisions soar. Related:   Gilead Drops After Drug Manager Blocks $1,000 Hepatitis C Pill Earlier this year, Piorun faced out-of-pocket bills of $1,000 a month for medicines. That -- together with $2,000 in monthly mortgage and home-equity payments, other bills and living expenses -- was too much for him. “The average worker can’t pay these prices,” said the self-employed auto-parts supplier, who makes $45,000 a year. He said he was “appalled” when he disc...

For the world: http://talent.linkedin.com/blog/index.php/2014/12/the-25-hottest-skills-to-recruit-for-on-linkedin For USA: The 15 hottest skills of 2014 in the U.S. on LinkedIn were: Cloud and distributed computing Statistical analysis and data mining Middleware and integration software Network and information security Mobile development Foreign language translation Storage systems and management Mac, Linux and Unix systems Java development Perl/Python/Ruby Algorithm design Digital and online marketing Computer graphics and animation Data engineering and date warehousing Software QA and user testing I think rest of them are not so important to focus so I did not list them however, for deeper insights: Completed list of 25 skills: http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/7601-hottest-employee-skills.html

“To help counteract an economic slowdown, China is ready to provide financial aid to develop cooperation,” Premier  Li Keqiang  said at a Dec. 15 gathering in Astana,  Kazakhstan . While the remark applied to any of the five other nations represented at the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization group, it was directed at Russia, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named as the plans weren’t public. Any rescue package for Russia would give China the opportunity of exercising the kind of great-power leadership the U.S. has demonstrated for a century -- sustaining other economies with its superior financial resources. President Xi Jinping last month called for China to adopt “big-country diplomacy” as he laid out goals for elevating his nation’s status. “If the Kremlin decides to seek assistance from Beijing, it’s very unlikely for the Xi leadership to turn it down,” said Cheng Yijun, senior researcher with the Institute of Rus...

The chart below shows the break-even points for the top 400 new fields and how much future oil production they represent. Less than a third of projects are still profitable with oil at $70. If the unprofitable projects were scuttled, it would mean a loss of 7.5 million barrels per day of production in 2025, equivalent to 8 percent of current global demand. Making matters worse, Brent prices this week dipped further, below $60 a barrel for the first time in more than five years. Why? The U.S. shale-oil boom has flooded the market with new supply, global demand led by China has softened, and the Saudis have so far refused to curb production to prop up prices. It’s not clear yet how far OPEC is willing to let prices slide. The U.A.E.’s energy minister said on Dec. 14 that OPEC wouldn’t trim production even if prices fall to  $40 a barrel . An all-out price war could take up to 18 months to play out, said Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners LLC, a finan...

Sergei Shvetsov, deputy governor of Russia’s central bank, summed it up. The bank, he intimated, would rather not have pushed the economy closer to a deep slump by hiking borrowing costs but could not sit back and do nothing as the rouble crashed. “Believe me, the choice that the central bank council made yesterday was a choice between the very bad and the very, very bad,” Shvetsov said. In the end, Moscow got lucky. It was just a very bad day. Clearly, the attempt at “shock and awe” by pushing interest rates up from 10.5% to 17% in one go failed. The rouble ended another turbulent day’s trading below where it started and plumbed new record lows against the dollar. Russia has spent the past nine months fighting an economic war against the west – and Tuesday 16 December was the day that war was lost. Put simply, this was Moscow’s Norman Lamont moment. Back in September 1992, the then chancellor said he would defend the pound and keep Britain in the exchange rate mechanism by rai...

Bond traders have seen wrong forecasts for interest rates and the economy from the Federal Reserve for years. So, it’s little wonder they’re discounting central bankers’ talk of higher borrowing costs in 2015 as oil plunges, roiling markets worldwide and lowering the growth outlook. “The Fed believes it understands market turmoil,” Jim Vogel, a fixed-income strategist at FTN Financial, wrote yesterday in a research note. “Central banks have a lot more to learn when it comes to global financial conditions.” Fed policy makers concluded a two-day meeting in  Washington  today after discussing their plan to withdraw monetary stimulus and hashing out what the collapse in oil means for the outlook. Central bankers said they’d be “patient” on the timing of the first borrowing-cost increase since 2006 and lowered their forecast for interest rates at the end of next year. Here are five ways traders have been telling the Fed that they should postpone their tightening strategy:...