Recession Signal As Consumers Struggle To Pay Bills

Germany's Pension Time Bomb: $2+ Billion In CRE Losses Expose Cracks In The Fiat Era Submitted by Thomas Kolbe, A shock for the insured members of the Versorgungswerk Zahnärzte Berlin-Brandenburg (VZB). According to a report this week by Bloomberg, losses at the private pension fund total €1.1 billion. Roughly 50 percent of its invested capital has effectively been wiped out—channeled into private loans to non-listed companies, including rPlanet Earth in California, a shrimp farm in northern Germany, and, repeatedly featured on the investment menus of German pension funds, U.S. commercial real...

More Nations Are Mulling Social Media Bans For Teens After Australia's first-of-its-kind social media ban for adolescents under the age of 16 came into effect in December, more countries in Europe and elsewhere are taking steps to implement their own restrictions. As Katharina Buchholz reports, according to Statista research, France and the United Kingdom have gotten furthest, with laws passing in one chamber each of the countries' bicameral legislatures as of early February. While the latter country is also aiming to ban social media for kids under the age of 16, France's...