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Total compensation and benefits at publicly traded Wall Street banks and securities firms was a record $135 billion in 2010, according to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal. This is up 5.7% from the $128 billion in 2009 for the same firms. The 25 largest financial firms saw revenues increase to $417 billion. Things are going back to where they were before the financial crisis with total compensation and benefits now exceeding the levels in 2007. In 2010 deferred compensation made up half of the total pay compared to being one third of total pay in prior years.

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Canada's 2015 budget provides an extension till 2025 for a tax break to write off capital investment at an accelerated pace that was first introduced in 2007. Business investment in Canada is slowing to growth of 1% since mid-2012. The tax rate for small business over four years starting in 2016 will be cut from 11% to 9%.

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Britain's prime minister spent 3 nights in intensive care for coronavirus. He said the "development of a vaccine is the most urgent shared endeavor of our lifetimes." He will confirm Britain's pledge of 388 million pounds for vaccine research, tests and treatments, part of 744 million pounds to the the global effort against coronavirus. "The more we pull together and share our research the faster our scientists will succeed."

An online pledging conference will take place on Monday as part of the vaccine fundraising drive of the European Union and other countries. The initiative from the EU and president of the EU Ursula von der Leyen, is to raise 7.5 billion euros for vaccine research and development of a vaccine for coronavirus. It has the support of Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Norway, Japan, Canada, and other countries. The month long investment drive will go on till the Global Vaccine Summit on June 4.

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Facebook has invested heavily in proving that digital ads on Facebook are effective. Some of the research was done with Datalogix and other firms. About 60 ad campaigns were carefully tracked to show how consumers seeing ads on Facebook spend their dollars on products in brick and mortar stores. One ad with cuddly bears for Coca-Cola was more effective than ads on television, says CEO Sandberg. In addition to targeting users based on what users share in their Facebook profiles advertisers can now see the effects on sales. Facebook's vice president of measurements and insights, Brad Smallwood, says advertisers were given the first big report on how consumers acted after seeing ads in the real world. The results are most evident in digital advertising for mobile phones. Facebook has 6% of the $118 billion digital advertising global ad market compared to Google's 31%. The share in mobile is 18% in 2013, up from 5% in 2012. Facebook shares were up 14% or $7.55 to $61.08 on Jan. 30, 2014. Facebook's share price increased by 20% in July 2013 after a similiar announcement of improvement in mobile ad revenues. Facebook's IPO price was $38 in 2013....

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Poor countries are disproportionately hit by climate change. Take Kenya for instance. Drought hit Kenya in 2011 causing $11 billion in damage, then again in 2014-2018 leading to food insecurity for 3.4 million people and leaving 1 million with scarcity of water. This story is repeated in many parts of Africa.

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Ireland's plan to reduce foreclosures by getting banks to reduce the monthly payments owed by mortgage borrowers.

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Indian and Chinese leaders agreed to increase trade from the current $60 billion to $100 billion by 2015. China agreed to open its consumer markets to Indian pharmaceuticals, information technology and agricultural products to better balance trade between the two countries. During the first 10 months of 2010, China exported goods valued at $32.9 billion dollars to India and India exported $17 billion to China.

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A Wall Street editorial on the problems identified in the budgets and finances of U.S. states identified by the State Budget Crisis Task Force co-chaired by Volcker and Ravitch. This includes Medicaid costs, underfunded pensions, and budget gimmicks that understate the true extent of problems.

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PSG with Luis Enrique abandons star centric days of Mbappe, Neymar Messi, to develop a French team with attack as the style, working as a team, and half the players French or from the Academy. Goals are spread out over many players rather than with one star. The result is a team that is now in the Champions League finals today in Budapest against Arsenal of  London, England. BBC looks at the details of this transformation under coach Luis Enrique of Spain.

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French Premier Castex makes an effort to reassure the public in France as he takes the jab in Paris. The Astra Zeneca vaccine is back in use in France and new trials from the US show its 100% effectiveness in prevention of hospitalization and deaths, 79% effectiveness in preventing symptomatic illness. Experts also say it is safe.

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DJT considers De Santis for Defense to replace Hegseth. Lori Chavez-Deremer Republican Congresswoman from Oregon is considered to be pro-worker as Labor Secretary.

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An assessment of the Financial Regulatory Reform that is emerging in House and Senate Bills. Yes reforms will be passed but will they prevent another crisis and are they tackling the root causes of the financial crisis. The assessment here is that they fail on both accounts. According to Christopher Whalen of the Institutional Risk Analyst it tackles the symptoms more than it responds to the causes of the crisis. He sees the response in the areas of derivatives trading, credit ratings agencies, consumer proteciton agency, as inadequate to meet a future crisis.

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In an effort to calm unsettled global financial markets ECB president Mario Draghi said in a speech on July 26, 2012: "Within our mandate, the ECB is willing to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro and, believe me, it will be enough." Yields on Spain's government bonds reached 7.5% as investors shunned Spanish bonds fearing the need for a government bailout.

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Honda will run a CR-V commercial during the Super Bowl broadcast by NBC on Feb. 5, 2012. This is part of its effort to spruce up its image with a younger demographic. The ad will show a woman who is proposed to and says she wants to do some other things first before getting married such as the fun things - going on some amazing hiking trip, going sailing, mountain cycling, finish my short film and so on.

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Republicans in the U.S. are talking about impeachment more than Democrats in tweets, ads and messages they send out. The Democrats are talking about other issues and this is not what you would expect after Democrats voted together on party lines to pass two articles of impeachment of president Trump. Republicans may even use the issue of impeachment in favor of president Trump as the impeachment process moves to the Senate where Republicans are in a majority. Republicans believe president Trump did nothing wrong and may call Senator Biden and his son Hunter Biden to testify in the Senate about activities in Ukraine, say experts.

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This analysis concludes that it will be harder for developing countries to tackle job losses from robots. One problem is that taxing robot use would lead to investments in production in countries that allow robots. Opportunities exist for technology and robots in agriculture in India, by offsetting this with retraining agricultural workers for other work. China has managed the transition to robots by finding alternative opportunities for workers. Companies have shifted to robots with the higher wages in China and shortage of workers.