Google monopoly
A federal judge ruled Google holds an illegal monopoly in the search and text advertising markets. The decision focused on Google’s exclusive search arrangements on Android and Apple devices, which the court said reinforced its dominance.
“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Judge Amit Mehta wrote in the decision. The ruling stems from combined antitrust suits filed by the Department of Justice and several states...

What is happening?
Markets are a sea of red and institutions brace for uncertainty and more pain for several key reasons. The sell-off started on Thursday last week in the US; with the unwinding of the 'carry trade' when Japan's central bank raised interest rates in the week, hiking rates for the second time in 17 years, taking rates from 0% to 0.1% to 0.25%. So now
institutions are reversing the narr...

Financial markets are united in forecasting the Reserve Bank of Australia will keep a hold on interest rates at its board meeting next week.
But one leading economist is expecting to see a significant downward revision of the RBA's headline inflation forecasts to reflect the impact of government energy rebates.
Financial markets had been hanging on the result of Wednesday's quarterly CPI data which showed annual inflation had climbed to 3.8%...

With the world focused on the Paris Olympics, the Reserve Bank (RBA) is being advised to avoid hasty decisions regarding interest rate hikes.
Bell Partners Finance managing director Mark Stevenson (pictured above) stressed the potential repercussions of increasing the current OCR of 4.35%.
“The rate increases have had a big impact and continue to do so. Another increase will hurt badly,” Stevenson said, highlighting the struggles faced by mortgage holders amid 1...