The Argentine government will tax exports to raise revenues and balance its budget a year earlier than planned.The peso fell -16% after Macri unexpectedly requested for faster payments from the IMF last Wednesday.

California might become the U.S. state with the strictest net neutrality law. On Friday, state lawmakers voted to pass a bill that proposes to stop internet providers from charging higher fees to websites for a better connection, and it also precludes “zero rating” - when a provider doesn't count certain content against a customer’s data usage." The legislation is at odds with the Republican-led Federal Communications Commission’s vote earlier this year for revoking the Obama administration's net neutrality protections.      

Google Home is used by 30% of U.S. smart speaker owners each month. Google started working on its language identification tool, LangID, in 2013.Google’s latest bilingual offering will be operative by Thursday, starting with  English, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Japanese.

According to estimates by Standard Chartered Plc., China’s share in global debt tripled last year from its 2009 levels. During the global recession of 2009, China’s debt -- corporate, household and government – was 6.1 percent of the global total.China now ranks as the third most ‘indebted’ nation in terms of its share in global debt, following the U.S. and the euro area. Standard Chartered projects China’s debt-to-GDP ratio rising to about 290 percent by the end of 2020, compared to 270 percent as of March 31.

Indonesia’s rupiah is severely hurting, and might plummet to new lows according to some analysts’ predictions. Finding itself in the middle of emerging markets sell-offs propelled by crises in Turkey and Argentina, the rupiah has declined more than -6% over the last three months. Some analysts believe that rupiah's value per dollar could drop below 15,000, which would be the lowest point since the 1998 Asian financial crisis. Bank Indonesia has hiked interest rates four times since May attempting to rein in the decline in rupiah.

Ford Motor Co. is dropping plans to import a new model from a China plant, as U.S.-China trade wars intensify. Earlier, Ford was planning to ship the Focus Active from China.Kumar Galhotra, Ford’s president of North America, has indicated that it would be too costly and hence sub-optimal for the business to bring the Ford Active model into the U.S. amidst the hike in tariffs.  

A study reveals that Ferrari has been the most profitable brand among car makers for the first six months of the year.According to the study, conducted by Duisburg (Germany) economics professor Ferdinand Dudenhoffer , Ferrari generated an operating profit of €69,000, or approximately $80,000, per every brand new car sold. Other luxury brands, Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover and Porsche raked in €800 ($927) per car and €17,000 ($19,715) per vehicle sold respectively in operating profits. Those experiencing losses include Bentley with €17,000 ($19,715) loss with each new car sold, and Tesla which loses about €11,000 ($12,757) with each new car sold.

Apple will unveil its newest iPhone models on September 12 at the Steve Jobs Theater on the company’s Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California. The company is planning to launch three new models iincluding one with a larger display than previous models and with OLED screen. Another one might have an edge-to-edge display similar to the iPhone X but with less-costly LCD screen technology. On Thursday, Warren Buffett remarked that the iPhone is "enormously underpriced" compared to its functionality.He has slightly raised his stake in Apple.

Major tech companies such as Apple and Microsoft are reducing their appetite for short-term corporate debt securities. Following the Republican-led tax overhaul this year, which incentivized U.S. corporations to bring home their overseas cash stockpile, tech giants are parking less money in corporate debt holdings compared to their earlier binge on such securities.Apple along with 20 other cash-rich companies including Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. are now selling in $50 billion clips, compared to the previous per-quarter purchase of $25 billion of short-term corporate debt (according to data tracked by Bank of America Corp. strategists, as reported by Bloomberg).

American liquefied natural gas makes the list of China’s tariff targets. Among the $60 billion worth of U.S. goods that China has threatened to tax at 25% rate, LNG’s inclusion has potentially heated up the trade war even more – with the U.S. being the world’s top producer of natural gas and China being the second-largest importer of LNG as of last year.Around 15% of U.S. LNG exports were shipped to China in 2017. Earlier, Beijing had refrained from including natural gas/fuel in its list of U.S. goods that it planned to increase tariffs on, and at one point was even willing to buy more U.S. energy exports – a sentiment far off from the latest trade tensions.

Coca-Cola wants to buy coffee chain Costa Coffee from British multinational drinks and hotels group Whitbread for £3.9 billion ($5.1 billion). The acquisition could potentially be a big push for Coke’s expansion into the coffee market, with Costa Coffee’s nearly 4,000 stores across 32 countries including parts of Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa.Approval from shareholders and regulators  are still pending on the deal, but it is expected to come through by 2019. Coca-Cola’s foray into coffee follows the January merger of JAB’s coffee brand Keurig with Coke’s domestic competitor Dr Pepper Snapple.

Google might have struck a ‘secret’ deal with Mastercard to track consumers’ offline purchases. A Bloomberg report indicates that according to some people familiar with the matter, Google paid Mastercard millions of dollars in exchange for insights into whether the  online ads run by the search engine led to consumers buying things from physical stores for the past year.The data, if indeed accessed by Google, is likely to have helped the tech giant in its advertising business strategies as it got to know consumers’ purchase habits and history beyond online platforms. These reports could potentially raise concerns about how far consumer credit/debit card data is protected from third parties.

Indeed, according to the research Recreational Marijuana Insights and Opportunities by Deloitte Canadian market for recreational marijuana will reach 600,000 kg by 2021, and in dollar terms the market will reach somewhere between $4.9 to $8.7 billion.Of course, the supply-demand equation, in this case, means a significant downside for the prices of cannabis. While the excitement of the legalized marijuana is still there, and many companies are ramping its production to meet ever-growing demand, the biggest risk in the next few years will be an oversupply of the product.

Facebook-owned Instagram is adding three new layers of security on its platform. The photo & video-sharing website will now allow users to get more detailed information for checking an account's legitimacy.The information includes location of an account, when the account was started, any username changes in the past year and ads run by the account. This is intended to help users get better clarity on the identity of people they are following. Instagram is also providing users the option to use third-party authenticator apps, such as Google Authenticator, as a way to log in securely. Also, public figures can provide Instagram their user name, full name, and a copy of a legal or business ID to have their accounts tagged as verified. The new security features seem to aim at restoring confidence and trust among users, particularly amidst recent security issues that surfaced on other social media platforms.

Aston Martin wants to get listed on the London Stock Exchange. The 105-year old British luxury carmaker made the announcement on Wednesday.It might initially float a minimum of 25% of the company. In 2017, Aston Martin made £876 million ($1.1 billion) in revenues, which is a nearly 50% surge over the previous year.

The researchers at Deloitte surveyed 1,053 senior executives at companies with $500 million or more in annual revenue in seven countries: USA, Canada, China, France, Germany, Mexico, UK.  More than one-third of respondents survey say they’ve already brought a blockchain implementation to production; another 41% plan to bring blockchain to production in the next year. 2018 global blockchain survey from Deloitte reveals that 84% of respondents are strongly bullish on blockchain’s potential, because of its ability to broadly scale and reach mainstream adoption." Overall, 60% believe that they will lose a competitive advantage if they don’t adopt blockchain.

The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced on July 31st that it would proceed with a plan to offer national banking charters to fintech firms offering loans or online payments, allowing them to bypass the state laws that currently govern fintech and nonbank services.The announcement came after a report from the Treasury Department recommended that the OCC move ahead with its plans to offer national fintech charters, characterized as “…a more efficient, and at least a more standardized, regulatory regime, than the current state-based regime in which they operate.”     Online lenders like SoFi are becoming increasingly ubiquitous, leveraging technology to create a new banking system that exists beyond traditional frameworks.

Alphabet’s Google is partnering with four Indian banks to expand its financial footprint in India. Google’s  payment app Google Tez in India is being rebranded as Google Pay which will allow Indian customers of the partner banks to get “pre-approved instant loans” and receive the amount in their bank accounts instantly via Google’s platform.Caesar Sengupta, an executive of the company, announced Tuesday that the new service is scheduled to come into operation within the next few weeks. Google is not alone in its plans to penetrate India’s digital financial/payment market.

In an announcement on Monday, Toyota unveiled its plans to invest $500 million in ride-sharing app company Uber to expand into the self-driving vehicle market. Uber is planning to integrate autonomous technology into Toyota Sienna minivans and start testing them out by 2021.During the International Consumer Electronics Show in January, the two companies had announced e-Palette, an autonomous vehicle project intended to serve various purposes including pizza delivery and ridesharing. We have seen similar partnerships made by Waymo (Alphabet’s self-driving technology subsidiary) with Chrysler and Jaguar Land Rover.  

According to the New York-based Conference Board’s indicator, U.S. consumer confidence increased in August to 133.4 - the highest level in around 18 years. According to the Board’s gauge, consumer sentiment about present conditions in August climbed to the highest value since December 2000, while the expectation measure rose to a six-month high. Compared to the previous month’s 20.4%, a fraction of households expecting incomes to increase in the next six months was 25.5% - marking the highest share since December 2000.The share of households expecting more jobs, however, declined to 21.7%, from preceding month’s 22.6%.