06/10/2025

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Iran approves plan to slash four zeros from currency TEHRAN: Iran’s Parliament yesterday approved a plan to remove four zeros from the national currency, the rial, which has sharply depreciated as the country grapples with renewed sanctions. Lawmakers passed the bill two months after a parliamentary commission revived the long-stalled proposal aimed at simplifying transactions, the legislature’s website said. Under the plan, 10,000 current rials will be replaced by one new rial. Both versions will circulate for up to three years, with the central bank given two years to launch the transition. The rial has hit repeated record lows in recent days, according to black market trackers, amid the reimposition of United Nations sanctions on Iran. Britain, France and Germany – signatories to Iran’s moribund 2015 nuclear deal – last month triggered the “snapback” mechanism to restore the international sanctions over the republic’s non-compliance. Yesternday, the rial was trading at about 1,115,000 to the US dollar, compared with around 920,000 when the plan was revived in early August. The redenomination was first floated in 2019 but later shelved. It still requires approval by the Guardian Council and the signature of President Masoud Pezeshkian to take effect. In daily life, Iranians drop a zero from the rial and use the resulting figure, called the toman, for most transactions. – AFP TOKYO: Bitcoin reached a new record high yesterday, rising above the US$125,000 mark. The cryptocurrency reached US$125,689, shooting above its previous August record of around US$124,500. Bitcoin has enjoyed a strong upward momentum with investors cautious about the US government shutdown. Gains in US shares have also supported bitcoin’s rise, while investors have looked to safe haven assets while US lawmakers negotiate over funding the federal government, Bloomberg News said. US President Donald Trump and his family have also been big promoters of cryptocurrencies and are involved in various crypto endeavours that have inflated his wealth. Trump’s embrace of digital assets has reversed years of US government scepticism towards the crypto industry under his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden, with the US House of Representatives passing three landmark cryptocurrency bills in July. These regulatory changes have seen the value of bitcoin soar. “With many assets including equities, gold and even collectibles like Pokemon cards hitting all time highs, it’s no surprise Bitcoin is benefiting from the dollar debasement narrative,” Joshua Lim, co-head of markets at crypto prime brokerage firm FalconX, was quoted by Bloomberg News as saying. – AFP Bitcoin rallies to record high

People stand outside of the Washington Monument, which is closed for tours, on the fourth day of a partial government shutdown in Washington. – REUTERSPIC

Trump’s budget ‘grim reaper’ eyeing massive cuts

policy plan, which envisions vastly expanded executive control over sharply reduced federal government. Now Trump is referring to the 49-year-old Vought as “he of PROJECT 2025 Fame”. Lawmaker Rosa DeLauro, the ranking Democrat on the committee that allocates government money to federal agencies, accuses Vought of having “engineered” the shutdown. “He has been scheming, hoping and planning for this since he was last in office, building his plan to dismantle essential government functions with no regard for the working class, the middle class, and vulnerable Americans who depend on them,” she said on Wednesday, day one of the shutdown. Shutdowns are brought about by lawmakers’ failure to pass an annual budget bill that funds the government. Born in the northeastern state of Connecticut, Vought graduated from a small evangelical Christian college before earning a law degree and becoming a staffer for Republican lawmakers, then a lobbyist for the conservative Heritage Foundation. He joined the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and became its director during Trump’s first term. Vought spent president Joe Biden’s term in office planning for a fresh conservative takeover over of government from his own think tank, the Centre for Renewing America.

The goal: instituting efficiency in what he saw as a bloated government. Trump “has to move executively as fast and as aggressively as possible, with a radical constitutional perspective, to be able to dismantle that bureaucracy”, he told conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson after Trump’s reelection in November 2024. In September, he called the US government “the woke and weaponised administrative state” of civil servants who resist the directives of an elected president. Vought was swiftly confirmed by the Senate for a second stint as OMB director in February 2025. But it was tech tycoon Elon Musk who wielded the cost-cutting chainsaw in the early months of the Trump administration. That reportedly irritated Vought, who disagreed with parts of Musk’s approach, sources told The New York Times . But the OMB director was on board for the abrupt dismantling of government agencies. “Yes, I called for trauma within bureaucracies. Bureaucracies hate the American people,” he said in November. “It’s quite simple: all executive power must be vested in the executive branch.” Burying foreign aid, ending federal funding for public broadcasting and rolling back dozens and dozens of regulations: “It’s exciting to be involved in this,” Vought recently said. – AFP

WASHINGTON: He is perhaps the most powerful man in Washington at the moment, after Donald Trump. Russell Vought, the right-wing ideologue who heads the Office of Management and Budget, is using the US government shutdown to deliver his brand of shock therapy to American bureaucracy. Shutdowns usually result in hundreds of thousands of federal workers being placed on temporary unpaid leave. But this time, the White House has said mass firings are “imminent”. Trump has tapped Vought to tell him “which of the many Democrat Agencies ... he recommends to be cut”. He even posted on his Truth Social platform an AI-generated video depicting the budget chief as the grim reaper walking through Washington, scythe in hand. Vought is following a far right governance blueprint, Project 2025, which he helped author. During his reelection campaign, Trump distanced himself from the ultra-conservative o Russell Vought using govt shutdown to deliver shock therapy to bureaucracy

Stellantis planning US$10b in US investments: Bloomberg NEW YORK: French-Italian-American automaker Stellantis is planning to invest about US$10 billion (RM4.2 billion) in the United States, Bloomberg News reported on Saturday, citing people familiar with the situation. (RM7.4 billion) hit from US tariffs this year, but pledged new vehicle launches to reconnect with customers as new CEO Antonio Filosa tries to get the automaker back on track after a dismal 2024. Filosa became CEO in June. brand in the long term, the Bloomberg report added. “As part of the preparations for the Company’s strategy update and Capital Markets Day next year, the CEO is leading a thorough evaluation of all future investments. This process is ongoing,” a Stellantis spokesperson said in a statement to Reuters. The spokesperson did not elaborate.

Stellantis may announce in the coming weeks about US$5 billion in fresh investment on top of a similar amount earmarked earlier in the year, the report said. The report added that the investments over several years could be funneled into plants – including reopenings, hiring, and new vehicle models – in states such as Illinois and Michigan. In July, Stellantis had warned of a €1.5 billion

Stellantis is reintroducing models, including the Jeep Cherokee and 8-cylinder RAM trucks, after dropping them proved to be one of the causes of the group’s declining sales since 2024, Filosa said in September. The carmaker is focused on reclaiming the past success of the Jeep brand and is considering fresh investments in Dodge, which could result in a new Dodge V8 muscle car, and possibly even the Chrysler

Senator Bernie Moreno, an Ohio Republican, and auto officials told Reuters on Friday that President Donald Trump is considering significant tariff relief for US auto production that could effectively eliminate much of the costs faced by major car companies. – Reuters