Free Republic

Asia needs more transport infrastructure. More than the state, which finances the lion's share, can fund. So what more can be done to bring in increased private capital, when investors have so far been mostly disappointed by the returns? Is there a way of breathing new life into the public private partnership (PPP), the most common vehicle for private infrastructure investment? We think so. Governments need to offer private sector investors more than they can hope to earn from ticket sales on railways or motorway tolls. They should consider sharing the extra tax revenues generated from the increased economic activity...

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on March 23, 2018 in New York City. Stocks plunge more than 500 points 47 Mins Ago | 02:18 Stocks fell sharply on Friday as worries of a trade war brewing between the U.S. and China grew. Wall Street also digested disappointing employment data. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 740 points, with Boeing and Caterpillar as the biggest decliners in the index. The S&P 500 declined more than 2.5 percent, with industrials as the worst-performing sector. The Nasdaq composite dropped 2.7 percent. The sell-off accelerated in the...

Wall Street is shocked, but it shouldn’t be: Tariffs targeting China should have been a given, and now the market’s tanking on trade war fears as if it just crept up on everyone, but Trump’s been very clear on this. Wall Street is known for being short-sighted, though, and allowing itself to get caught up in the euphoria of the day. And now the world’s biggest investors are losing hundreds of billions.

The Russian government quietly held a financial interest in U.S. social media. A major investor in Twitter and Facebook had financial ties to two Russian government-owned firms known as vehicles for the Kremlin’s politically sensitive dealings, newly unearthed documents show. The records show that one of the Kremlin-owned firms, VTB Bank, quietly directed $191 million into an investment fund, DST Global, that used the money to buy a large stake in Twitter in 2011. They also show that a subsidiary of the Kremlin-controlled energy giant Gazprom heavily funded an offshore company that partnered with DST Global in a large investment...

The most effective way to temper the tantrums of Antifa is to protest them at their homes and at the office The most effective way to drive Antifa activists into headlong panic would be to expose them for who they are in real life. Counter protesters like those brutally attacked in Berkeley, Calif. over the weekend should stop providing themselves as fodder at protests where police continue to Stand-Down. They should instead search for and find the identities of Antifa leaders and expose them at their homes and work fronts. Ripping off the masks of Antifa activists will send them...

Seeking Investors to Build a Wall The government is preparing to solicit bids to provide a wall. I don’t know if they will ask for proposals from the bidders or issue specifications to the bidders. I suggest they request proposals with the objective to propose efficient methods to keep people from crossing a border. My idea is to submit an unsolicited proposal that will keep people away from the border by storing the nation’s nuclear waste along the border.

LONDON — The rest of the planet bears a warning for President Trump’s plan to lean heavily on private business in conjuring a trillion dollars’ worth of American infrastructure: Handing profit-making companies responsibility for public works can produce trouble. In India, politically connected firms have captured contracts on the strength of relationships with officialdom, yielding defective engineering at bloated prices. When Britain handed control to private companies to upgrade London’s subway system more than a decade ago, the result was substandard, budget-busting work, prompting the government to step back in. Canada has suffered a string of excessive costs on public...

Investors are hoping to seize upon the $1 trillion infrastructure plan proposed by President Donald Trump to transform the nation’s highways, bridges, and tunnels into assets they can monetize by adding tolls and other user fees.The Trump infrastructure plan, which the administration plans to roll out this week, is centered on the idea of “asset recycling,” which refers to the process of securing new infrastructure spending by leasing the operations of existing public property to private operators.The privatization-centered scheme has the nation’s largest toll operators salivating. Transurban, Cintra, and TransCore, three major toll operators, have retained federal lobbyists to influence...

Investors reacted positively from President Donald Trump’s Tuesday night address to Congress, pushing the Dow Jones industrial average above 21,000 points Wednesday for the first time in its history. Banks, financial institutions, companies in the energy and materials sector saw huge gains as Trump reaffirmed during his speech his plans to cut taxes and push for other business-friendly policies. The Dow jumped 242 points, or 1.2 percent, to 21,055 as of 10:07 a.m. Eastern Time. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index gained 24 points, or 1 percent, to 2,387. The Nasdaq composite index added 59 points, or 1 percent, to...

Dear Editor, As states and municipalities around the nation struggle to find ways to afford much-needed improvements to aging and congested roadways, the Commonwealth of Virginia has established itself as an innovative leader when it comes to carefully prioritizing the state’s transportation investments and wisely leveraging private sector resources to ensure the best deal for state taxpayers. The I-66 Outside the Beltway project exemplifies this leadership, and Cintra, together with its partner Meridiam, is proud to be part of the team selected by the Commonwealth to finance, design, build, operate and maintain this more than $3 billion transformative project at...

PRESIDENT-ELECT Donald Trump has proposed a $1 trillion plan to fix America’s infrastructure. It relies on public-private partnerships as its primary source of financing. Our country’s complex transportation network needs an overhaul, but private investment is not the answer, mainly because of the returns that investors expect. Public-private partnerships can be an excellent procurement tool, but selecting the right project is key. Virginia has been a national leader in such deals since the General Assembly passed the Public Private Partnership Act in 1995. The law was designed for the partnerships to be used as an option for certain projects if...

Full Title: Bill Gates teams up with Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos to lead a $1 BILLION venture to tackle climate change In a bid to tackle climate change, Bill Gates has joined forces with some of the richest people in the world, including Sir Richard Branson and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, to create a £800 million ($1 billion) fund. The initiative, named Breakthrough Energy Ventures, plans to invest in green energy over 20 years. Its funders hope that this long-term approach will help to deliver the next generation of reliable and affordable energy to the world.

Investors are now saying loudly and clearly: We want Hillary Clinton to win, and we think she will. Nearly all the "market metrics" point to a Clinton victory. Investors are no longer gobbling up gold, which usually happens when they are worried. The price has fallen 6.5% since the first presidential debate, as Donald Trump's poll numbers have tanked.

Donald Trump loves the idea of infrastructure. He brings it up all the time. He wants to make an infrastructure bill a priority in his first 100 days as president. And Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have said they’d love to work with him on this."We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals," Trump promised cheering supporters on election night. "We're going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none. And we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it."The...

A rare point of agreement between President-Elect Trump and Congressional Democrats is that America has an infrastructure deficit: The nation’s transportation, power, water and sewerage facilities are too often outdated and unable to reliably serve a growing population. But while the diagnosis crosses party lines, solutions are more controversial. Democrats may not be too worried about the recent increase in federal deficits, but Republicans who have made an issue of the national debt will be reluctant to produce more red ink. Likewise, tax increases to pay for new federal construction spending are off the table under Trump and a Republican-controlled...

Pension funds and other asset owners increasingly are investing in U.S. infrastructure, often buying the assets from infrastructure money managers. This could be a win-win. Investor interest comes at a time when the first crop of infrastructure funds raised in the U.S. in 2004 and 2005 are coming to the end of their 10-year life span. Managers are expected to bring more transactions to market to take advantage of growing interest by direct investors. Industry insiders expect more infrastructure core projects to change to institutional investor ownership. Investors prize the core projects, even though returns generally are lower than investments...

<p>Bill Clinton told CNBC on Tuesday that activist investors, rather than trade deals, are partially at fault for U.S. corporations moving operations out into Mexico.</p> <p>GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump has called for "economic independence" and blamed globalization for "totally" wiping out the American middle class. Trump has previously called NAFTA "the worst trade deal in history" and blamed Bill and Hillary Clinton for endorsing it.</p>

Pension fund chiefs from California and New York City urged Exxon Mobil shareholders on Wednesday to back a measure that would force the company to finely detail how its business will be impacted as governments move to tackle climate change. CalPERS investment director Anne Simpson and NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer also said in a letter they would engage other shareholders as they push the world's largest publicly-traded oil company to say more about how its revenues, reserves and operations could be hurt by the Paris Agreement that governments signed in December to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. Their...

CHICAGO--The Chicago Stock Exchange, Inc. (CHX) is pleased to announce that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by an investor group led by Chongqing Casin Enterprise Group (the 'Casin Group'). The Board of Directors of CHX has unanimously approved the transaction, which is subject to regulatory approvals. The acquisition is expected to close in the second half of 2016. Terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.

Inventories will continue to rise, but the momentum is slowing. The following are some observations as to how we got here and how we’re gonna get out. 9 reasons why oil has taken so long to bottom: 1. OPEC increased production in 2015 to multiyear highs, principally in Saudi Arabia and Iraq where production between the two added 1.5 million barrels per day (mb/d) to inventories after the no cut stance was adopted. 2. Russian production increased in 2015 to post Soviet highs. 3. Long planned Gulf of Mexico production began coming on in late 2015. 4. An overhang of...