Madagascar Development

Uber poursuit sa route dans la voiture autonome. C'est bien ainsi qu'il faut comprendre l'annonce, mardi 28 août, du partenariat entre la plateforme de VTC et Toyota. Des questions se posent pourtant sur l'avenir de cette activité depuis mars: en Arizona, un véhicule utilisant la technologie de conduite autonome développée par Uber a été impliqué dans un accident mortel.  Les tests sur routes ouvertes avaient aussitôt été arrêtés . Ils viennent de reprendre, mais dans une version «manuelle» forcément moins utile. De plus, cette division est responsable d'une large part des pertes de la plateforme - 891 millions de dollars sur le seul deuxième trimestre 2018. Dans l'optique de son introduction en Bourse, prévue en 2019, Dara Khosrowshahi, directeur général d'Uber, pouvait être tenté de s'en séparer. Le partenariat conclu avec Toyota semble infirmer cette option. Pour Eric Meyhofer, responsable de la recherche chez Uber, cet accord «témoigne de notre e...

Puerto Rico's government sued a federal control board on Thursday to resolve a disagreement over two competing budgets that aim to pull the U.S. territory out of an 11-year recession. Gov. Ricardo Rossello said he is seeking an injunction to stop the board from imposing an $8.76 billion budget that contains various austerity measures, and he accused it of trying to dictate the island's public policy. "Our north will always be to defend the most vulnerable in all forums," he said in a statement. The lawsuit is expected to define the powers of a board created by U.S. Congress two years ago to oversee Puerto Rico's finances. The suit accuses the board of imposing its policy preferences on Puerto Ricans and micromanaging all budget expenditures, warning it could increase the flow of migration to the U.S. mainland, which would reduce the tax base and worsen the island's economic and humanitarian problems. "The board's efforts exceed i...

The executive director of a federal control board overseeing Puerto Rico's public finances said Wednesday there will be a smaller surplus available for creditors, while a bond insurance company filed a lawsuit seeking to nullify a fiscal plan that aims to pull the U.S. territory out of its economic crisis. Executive director Natalie Jaresko told reporters that Puerto Rico's government could see a $35 billion surplus in the next 30 years, $4 billion less than originally projected in the fiscal plan approved recently by the board. She noted not all the money would necessarily go to creditors seeking to recover part of their investment in Puerto Rico bonds as the government tries to restructure a portion of its more than $70 billion public debt load amid an 11-year recession. "It's a basis for what's available," she said. Assured Guaranty Corp., which insures $1.4 billion in Puerto Rico general obligation bonds, filed a lawsuit Wednesday asking a judge...

U.S. lawmakers closed a long-standing legal loophole that helped spark a financial crisis in Puerto Rico that has decimated the savings of thousands of residents. Tucked inside legislation that passed the House of Representatives Tuesday night — a larger bill largely focused on rolling back Dodd-Frank banking regulation — is a provision that creates greater oversight of brokerage firms operating in U.S. territories. The provision ends a 78-year-old legislative loophole that allowed subsidiaries of global banking institutions that operated in U.S. territories, like Puerto Rico, to do certain types of financial transactions that are legally barred stateside. This exemption from the so-called Investment Company Act of 1940 also allowed funds in Puerto Rico to skirt leverage standards and certain affiliated party transactions that apply to funds operating in the U.S. The loophole allowed for Swiss banking giant UBS and other banks to underwrite specific Puerto Rico bonds and t...

A U.S. government report Wednesday detailed how Puerto Rico accumulated some $70 billion in public debt and suggested ways federal officials could help avoid a repeat of the crisis, such as removing a triple-tax exemption on the island’s bonds and requiring local investment companies to disclose risks associated with those bonds. The report comes nearly two years after Congress enacted a law to help Puerto Rico restructure a portion of its debt and establish a federal control board to oversee the island’s finances amid what is now a more than decade-old recession. It also allowed the Government Accountability Office to examine what led to Puerto Rico’s crisis and actions the U.S. government could take. “From highlighting the stifling debt, to identifying the systemic financial malpractice of the Puerto Rico government over the past half century, the GAO report reiterates why Congress passed (the law) two years ago,” said U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, chairman of a committee that has juris...

Before Hurricane Maria hit last September, Puerto Rico was battered by the forces of another storm — a financial storm. The island's own government borrowed billions of dollars to pay its bills, a practice that Puerto Rico's current governor, Ricardo Rosselló, now calls "a big Ponzi scheme." But it didn't fall into financial ruin all on its own: Wall Street kept pushing the Puerto Rican government's loans even as the island teetered on default, with a zeal that bank insiders are now describing with words like "unethical" and "immoral." NPR and the PBS series  Frontline  spent seven months looking into Puerto Rico's difficult recovery from Hurricane Maria. And beneath the storm damage we found the damage from those economic forces, triggered by a government desperate for cash and banks and investment houses on Wall Street that made millions off that desperation. Some of those banks found ways to make even more money that risked th...

Major companies with ties to the National Rifle Association  suddenly shed ties to the pro-gun-rights interest group  amid intense scrutiny over the Parkland, Fla., school shooting. The breakups were swift amid a billowing cloud of scrutiny on  social media , where countless users threatened to boycott companies that maintained a relationship with the NRA. Most of the businesses had offered discounted products and services to NRA's several million members. Critics said the deals served as an attractive element of NRA membership. The NRA blasted the companies that severed ties for "a shameful display of political and civic cowardice."  "Let it be absolutely clear. The loss of a discount will neither scare nor distract one single NRA member from our mission to stand and defend the individual freedoms that have always made America the greatest nation in the world," the group said in a statement. Under pressure to end discounts through the NRA Business Al...