Everything Is Going Wrong in Ecuador (BusinessWeek)

As emerging markets come unhinged around the world, few nations face tougher challenges than Ecuador, a dollarized oil producer in El Nino’s path, where street protests are flaring up alongside one of the planet’s most dangerous volcanoes.

With crude sinking below $40 a barrel and few reserves to bolster public finances, frustrated citizens wonder where profits from the OPEC nation’s oil boom went. President Rafael Correa’s popularity dipped to an all-time low in late June before rebounding. The Cotopaxi volcano outside Quito threatens its first major eruption in more than a century and one of the worst sets of El Nino storms since 1950 is forecast to bring crop-crushing floods to the Pacific coast.

“People are worried about it all, the eruptions, the economy,” said Michel Levi, a professor and coordinator of the Andean Center of International Studies at the Universidad Andina in Quito.

Some are reminded of the late 1990s, when the last severe El Nino cycle hit amid plunging oil prices and widespread protests. That collision of natural disaster and economic crisis ushered in a period of acute instability that culminated in the collapse of the nation’s financial system and the adoption of the U.S. dollar as the official currency.

Correa, who took office in 2007, turned much of that around. Record oil profits and more than $10 billion in Chinese loans helped him preside over record-setting construction of highways, hospitals, schools and hydroelectric dams, which jumpstarted growth. Improved access to public education and health care propelled him through two re-elections.

Dark Side

Poverty has declined to about a fifth of the nation’s 16.3 million people from more than a third. Infant mortality and illiteracy rates have fallen while cheaper state credit has given many a chance to buy their first home.

All of this has turned Correa, a self-described revolutionary socialist, into Ecuador’s most powerful politician since the end of military dictatorship in 1979. The prosperity has come with a dark side, however, including what human rights groups condemn as a clampdown on press freedoms and use of the nation’s courts to silence opponents through jail terms and hefty fines. The government has rejected such charges as lies.

Now, Correa faces more challenges and he is accusing labor unions, indigenous groups and middle-class workers concerned about new tax proposals of joining a “conservative restoration” bent on overthrowing him. His government often interrupts television and radio broadcasts to accuse opposition politicians, journalists and foreign governments of plotting a “soft coup.”

Severe El Nino

Even without the potential natural disasters, Ecuador was facing a painful adjustment from the oil shock and stronger dollar that will probably lead to years of recession, wage cuts and severe unemployment, according to Bank of America Corp.’s senior Andean economist Francisco Rodriguez.

Oil rebounded from a six-year low as investor appetite for risk recovered and China’s central bank cut its benchmark lending rate for the fifth time since November. Crude has still slumped more than 35 percent since this year’s closing peak in June.

The plight of the country’s cocoa farmers, the world’s biggest producers of the beans used in fine chocolate, highlights some of those risks.

Heavier-than-normal rains in the first half of the year have already damaged half of the cocoa trees at a time when slowing demand from Europe and China and unfavorable currency swings are hurting sales, according to Ivan Ontaneda, the president of the National Cocoa Exporters Association. Local forecasters are now predicting a more severe El Nino than in the late 1990s when about half the nation’s agricultural harvest was destroyed, he said.

“We’re raising an alarm before the situation gets worse,” Ontaneda said by phone from Guayaquil.

State of Emergency

Ecuador can ill afford to lose any of this year’s harvest because agricultural exports like bananas, shrimp and cocoa help maintain enough liquidity in the economy to support dollarization.

As to the volcano, the government decreed a national state-of-emergency on Aug. 15 to prepare for the worst, setting up evacuation plans for affected areas. The decree includes suspending some constitutional rights and banning media from publishing unauthorized information.

Cotopaxi, some 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of Quito, is considered one of the world’s most dangerous. Spewing lava from its enormous height could cause catastrophic mudslides and flooding by melting glaciers that cover the volcano’s peak. Much of Quito’s urban expansion in recent decades has filled potential flood plains.

Responding to such a natural disaster won’t be easy because Ecuador’s government failed to save and plan during the oil bonanza, said Jose Hidalgo, director of Cordes, a Quito-based research institute.

Thin Cows

Ecuador’s communications secretariat referred a request for comment to the economic policy and finance ministries. Neither replied to telephone and e-mail messages. Correa has often dismissed the idea of saving for a rainy day by arguing, in effect, that it’s always raining. Last November, he referred to the biblical story of seven fat cows and seven thin ones, saying that to conquer poverty, “we are always in the era of thin cows, and the wisest is to use every last dollar of savings that we have.”

With monetary policy controlled by the U.S. Federal Reserve, Ecuador’s government can’t print more dollars to help offset years of capital outflows. That’s why unexplained delays in promised loans from China, Ecuador’s biggest external creditor, are so important, said Eurasia Group analyst Risa Grais-Targow.

“They really don’t have the flexibility or tools that they can use to respond to a more difficult oil price environment,” Grais-Targow said from Washington. “They are really hamstrung in a way that some of their neighbors aren’t.”

Gallows Humor

Less external financing also limits Correa’s ability to use public spending to calm street protests as he attempts to push through a constitutional reform to allow himself to run for another term in office, she said.

For now, Ecuadoreans are resorting to gallows humor.

“Sometimes it makes you want to laugh,” Cordes’ Hidalgo said. “What else could happen to us?”

Ashley Madison: 'Suicides' over website hack (BBC)

Two individuals associated with the leak of Ashley Madison customer details are reported to have taken their lives, according to police in Canada.

 

The police in Toronto gave no further information about the deaths.

Ashley Madison's Canadian parent company Avid Life Media is offering a C$500,000 (£240,000) reward for information on the hackers, they added.

Details of more than 33m accounts were stolen from the website, which offers users the chance to have an affair.

Addressing the hackers, known as The Impact Team, acting staff superintendent Bryce Evans of the Toronto police said: "I want to make it very clear to you your actions are illegal and we will not be tolerating them. This is your wake-up call."

Police are seeking information from members of the wider hacker community that might aid their investigation.

The breach was "very sophisticated", said Detective Menard from the technological crime unit of Toronto Police.

Cash reward

Mr Evans confirmed that credit card data was included in the original data dump released by The Impact Team.

He said that investigators believed this was limited to the last four digits of the main card number. 

Consequently, police are advising victims of the hack to review their accounts.

He also explained that the hack had already led to a series of "spin-offs of crimes and further victimisation".

"Criminals have already engaged in online scams by claiming to provide access to the leaked websites," he said. 

"The public needs to be aware that by clicking on these links you are exposing your computers to malware, spyware, adware and viruses."

'Thunderstruck'

The unfolding of the hack was also detailed at the conference - from the moment on 12 July when several Avid Life Media employees logged in to their computers and were confronted by a message from the hackers.

This message was accompanied by music - AC/DC's "Thunderstruck", said Mr Evans.

"This hack is one of the largest data breaches in the world and is very unique on its own in that it exposed tens of millions of people's personal information," he added.

Police have set up a Twitter account, @AMCaseTPS, and hashtag, #AMCaseTPS, in a bid to gather information about the hack from members of the public.

In a statement, Avid Life Media confirmed the offer of a financial reward for information and it believed the investigation was proceeding positively.

"We are confident that the considerable investigative and prosecutorial power that is being brought to bear on this unprecedented crime will lead to arrests and convictions," the firm said.

China's Building a Huge Canal in Nicaragua, But We Couldn't Find It (BusinessWeek)

A man points out the towns that will be affected where the canal, red line, will be built across Nicaragua

Deep on the southeastern side of Lake Nicaragua, along a bumpy dirt road that climbs gently through lush-green forest, sits the tiny town of El Tule. It is quintessential rural Central America: Chickens roam outside tin-roofed homes while pigs stand tied to trees, awaiting slaughter; the sound of drunk locals singing along to ranchera music greeted visitors on a recent weekend afternoon.

The village, if you listen to Nicaraguan officials, is a key point in what will be the biggest infrastructure project the region has ever seen, the construction of a $50 billion canal slated to run 170 miles from the country’s east to west coast. Awarded two years ago by President Daniel Ortega to an obscure Chinese businessman named Wang Jing, the concession calls for El Tule to be ripped up, erased essentially, in order to make way for the canal right before it plunges into the lake and then meets the Pacific Ocean a few miles later.

The idea is that the waterway will attract many of the larger vessels that the Panama Canal — located just 300 miles to the southeast — has historically struggled to accommodate. A construction deadline of 2020 has been set. Yet a four-day tour through El Tule and surrounding areas slated for crucial initial development only seemed to corroborate the belief, harbored by many analysts inside and outside Nicaragua, that this project isn’t going to get done.

The tiny town of El Tule in Nicaragua.

Juharling Mendoza, a 32-year-old local entrepreneur, is so convinced that the project won’t proceed that he’s constructing a two-story house with three guest rooms and an attached convenience store just outside of El Tule. He says bluntly: “There isn’t going to be a canal.”

It is true, as supporters of the canal quickly point out, that public works of this magnitude tend to move in fits and starts. The Panama Canal itself was decades in the making. However, for a project that made so little sense to so many skeptics from the very beginning, the almost non-existent initial progress — along with the struggles to raise financing — is only fanning those doubts.

Sverre Svenning, a shipping expert at Oslo-based Fearnley Consultants AS, notes that Panama’s current $5 billion canal expansion will allow it to better accomodate today’s bigger tankers. Overall traffic, he says, isn’t strong enough to sustain a second route. And then there are the massive engineering and environmental challenges to overcome, like making sure the country’s volcanos don’t disrupt the canal, according to Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas. “I’m very skeptical,” he said.

 A Google earth map presented by HKND Group shows — in red — where the canal will cut through Nicaragua.

Conspiracy Theories

Many people doubt that Ortega — a former guerrilla who rose to international fame when he defeated U.S.-backed forces in the 1980s — and his Chinese partners ever truly intended to build a canal. 

Conspiracy theories abound as to what their real intentions are. It has become something of its own cottage industry. A small sampling: The project is a land grab by Ortega; or a tool to whip up support ahead of next year’s elections; or a Chinese plan to threaten U.S. hegemony in the region by mapping out infrastructure designs so close to its shores.

While Wang, a billionaire who made his fortune largely in the telecom industry, hasn’t received official public backing from Beijing, China watchers say it’s unlikely he’d have signed such a deal without getting the green light at first from home. 

In extending its influence throughout Latin America and the rest of the developing world, China’s record on these mega projects is spotty. Several have been put on hold long after companies began the work, like a $3.5 billion resort in the Bahamas and a $1.3 billion refinery upgrade in Costa Rica.

Back in a 2013 interview, Wang made it clear he was aware of the public perception. “I don’t want it to become a joke or an example of a failed overseas Chinese enterprise,” he said.

In response to questions this week, Wang’s Hong Kong-based HKND Group said construction of the port on the Pacific Coast will begin this year, a position echoed in Managua by Manuel Colonel Kautz, the head of the country’s new canal authority. HKND said it’s waiting for the Nicaraguans to sign off on the environmental impact study before proceeding and that it’s held talks with companies across the globe looking to invest. 

Ortega’s press office declined to comment.

The $50 billion canal would be the biggest infrastructure project the region has ever seen with the waterway slated to run 170 miles from Nicaragua's east to west coast

Vanderbilt’s Failure

The dream of a canal cutting across Nicaragua dates back centuries. Before Teddy Roosevelt and the Americans settled on Panama, Nicaragua was the top pick for an inter-oceanic waterway that would end the need for ships to make the long trek around Cape Horn. Railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt even took a shot at building one in the 1850s. The mast of his dredge boat still stands as a symbol of that failure, rising out of a lagoon in southeast Nicaragua.

The job looks no easier today really than it did then.

It will require 16 million cubic meters of concrete, nearly one million tons of rebar and steel and the excavation of 4 billion cubic meters of rock and soil. Nearly all of these materials — as well as the bulldozers and cranes — will have to be imported, HKND says. The $50 billion price tag is almost five times the annual economic output in Nicaragua, the poorest nation in Central America.

‘Go Away’

In a country with little independent polling, it’s hard to gauge support for the project. Traveling along the canal route last month, the most common concerns heard were about eviction and, to a lesser extent, the environmental impact.

In Rio Grande, a town along the Pacific Coast, Antonia Ponce was adamant that she’s not moving. “Only over my dead body,” she said. Her 19-year-old granddaughter, Tatiana, then pulled out a sign she made last year when the Chinese workers showed up to work on the road. In Chinese lettering surrounded by an axe and machete, emblems of the Nicaraguan countryside, it reads: “Go Away, Chinamen.” 

A resident holds his land contract near the Hacienda Miramar, where work has started on the canal in Rio Grande, Nicaragua

But the overriding sentiment on the ground was skepticism.

A few miles to the west of Rio Grande, in a village where oxen-pulled wooden carts pass through empty dirt streets, a rancher named Jose Mena Cortez said he’s seen all this before — the bold promises from politicians of public works and growth. “They always come with big plans,” he said. “And they never do anything.”—With Haixing Jin

HBO Hires Oscar the Grouch to Bring Kids to Pay-TV Network (BusinessWeek)

Mr. Snuffleupagus, left, Big Bird and actor Taraji P. Henson during the "Sesame Street Promo" skit on April 11, 2015 on an episode of "Saturday Night Live."

Time Warner Inc.’s HBO appointed Oscar the Grouch and Elmo to lead its children’s programming, part of an effort by the premium cable network to expand its audience at a time when fewer young people are watching conventional TV.

The network announced on Thursday a five-year deal with the nonprofit educational group behind “Sesame Street” to carry new seasons of the popular children’s show.

The partnership will make the next five seasons of “Sesame Street” available exclusively on HBO as well as HBO Go and HBO Now, the network’s streaming services.

The deal will let Sesame Workshop produce almost twice as much new content as previous seasons and make the show available for free to PBS and its member stations nine months later, HBO said in a statement.

Sesame Workshop will produce a “Muppet” spinoff series and develop a new original educational series for children for HBO, which has licensed more than 150 library episodes of Sesame Street, according to the statement.

While Netflix and Amazon subscribers have been able to watch old episodes of “Sesame Street,” that content will no longer be available on those services because of the HBO deal, according to Steve Youngwood, chief operating officer at the nonprofit Sesame Workshop.

The partnership could help HBO, which offers movies and television shows like “Game of Thrones” and “Silicon Valley,” attract more subscribers as TV viewing moves online. The premium channel has been expanding its offerings to reach a broader audience, recently announcing a major content deal with Vice Media, which is popular with younger audiences, and hiring former ESPN commentator Bill Simmons to host a weekly program and produce short-form videos for its streaming services.

Kids Programming

HBO’s Web-only service, which was introduced in April, is seen as a competitor to Amazon and Netflix, which has been expanding its library of children’s TV programming.

In 2011, Netflix started a dedicated section for kids under 12 years old featuring TV shows and movies from the Disney Channel, Cartoon Network and others. DreamWorks is creating 300 hours of original kids shows exclusively for the streaming service, Netflix has said.

Rich Greenfield, an analyst at BTIG Research, said Netflix has retained subscribers by adding more children’s content, calling it “a critical glue” to its service.

HBO is following a similar strategy to keep subscribers interested in its new online service, he said. While canceling cable-TV service can be “painful,” it’s easy for people to drop online services like HBO Now if they don’t have enough content to appeal to all members of the family, especially children, Greenfield said.

“They have to expand the programming to make it stickier,” he said. “Otherwise it’s too easy when a show ends to disconnect for a few weeks.”

These Are the 20 Richest Small Towns in America (BusinessWeek)

Your favorite ski resorts dominated the top ranks

Downtown Vineyard Haven, Matha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, USA.

Ever heard of Summit Park, Utah, or Edwards, Colorado? Maybe not, especially if you're not an avid skier or snowboarder. Ski resorts, however, aren't the only thing these places have in common—they're also among the wealthiest small towns in the U.S.

The map below shows the 20 micropolitan areas (about 10,000 to 50,000 in population) that ranked the highest in Bloomberg's index of small town wealth, which combines measures of household income and home values. The home of Park City Mountain Resort in Utah ranked first with a median household income of $83,336 and median home value of $485,700. Edwards ranked second, with Jackson, Wyoming close behind. 

What is it that draws wealthy people to these areas? Natalie Gochnour, the associate dean of the business school at the University of Utah, said it's the nicely powdered slopes in the winter and crisp mountain air in the summer. Most of these areas encompass ski resorts or are close to one. In the off-season, these towns offer all sorts of outdoor activities such as hiking, biking, fishing and camping that attract the adventurous year-round.

There's an interesting difference between the towns in Utah and those in Colorado that dominated the top ranks. While Utah has companies like Adobe and Goldman Sachs settling in and creating job opportunities in cities within commuting distance of its mountain towns, Colorado's big cities are too far from these resorts for people to drive back and forth on a daily basis.

That probably means a good portion of residents in these Colorado towns would need to be living on income they earned in the past or on the return from their investments. (An increasingly important exception would be people who telecommute.)  Wealthy people who buy second (or third or fourth) homes in the area also drive up the cost of living there. 

"Colorado isn't benefiting from the location advantages that Utah has," Gochnour said. 

Several of the top non-ski towns on the list also have something in common - they're all on islands. Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, a small pocket on President Obama's favorite vacation spot, Martha's Vineyard, ranked fourth. Kapaa, Hawaii, on the east coast of Kauai, ranked 10th and Key West, Florida ranked 13th. All three places are touted for their beaches, golf courses and affluent lifestyles. 

Methodology: Bloomberg ranked more than 500 U.S. micropolitan areas (geographic entities that contain an urban core of about 10,000 and 50,000 in population) based on median household income, the share of households making $200,000 or more each year, median home value and the share of homes worth at least $1,000,000. Each metric was weighed equally and scored on a scale of 0-100 to derive the total index. All data were sourced from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2013 five-year American Community Survey. 

Cloud security: 10 things you need to know

Is the cloud truly safe? Here's what you need to know about cloud security. 

If we're talking about the cloud, we have to talk about security.

It seems that every time the cloud is brought up in the enterprise, the conversation to follow is focused on how secure, or not secure, it really is. Some would have you believe the cloud is safer than on-premise, while others contend that it is the least safe place you could store your data.

When thinking about cloud security, it's ultimately up to each individual organization and its leadership to determine if a cloud deployment is the right strategy. However, cloud adoption is growing overall, and it is important to consider how it affects the organization.

Here are 10 things you need to know about cloud security.

1. The cloud security market is growing

According to the Research and Markets' Global Security Services Market 2015-2019 report, the market for security products and services is growing globally and demand for cloud-based security is leading the charge. In fact, the Cloud Security Market report by MarketsandMarkets predicts the market size at nearly $9 billion by 2019.

2. 43% of companies experienced a data breach last year

In 2014, data breaches were all over the major news channels. Big brands like Target, Neiman Marcus, JP Morgan Chase, and Home Depot all announced that their data had been compromised. Toward the end of 2014 a Ponemon Institute report claimed that 43% of companies had experienced a data breach within the past year, up 10% from the year before. Additionally, data breaches in South Korea compromised the credit card information of 40% of the population.

3. It's more than public vs private

One of the raging debates when it comes to cloud security is the level of security offered by private and public clouds. While a private cloud strategy may initially offer more control over your data and easier compliance to HIPAA standards and PCI, it is not inherently more or less secure. True security has more to do with your overall cloud strategy and how you are using the technology.

4. Cloud and security top IT initiatives in 2015

While the term "cloud security" wasn't explicitly mentioned, both "cloud" and "security" top the list of IT initiatives for executives in the 2015 Network World State of the Network report. Thirty six percent of IT executives ranked security as their no. 1 initiative, while 31% had the cloud leading their initiatives.

5. Storage is perceived as the riskiest cloud app

When most consumers think about the cloud, they are likely thinking about popular cloud storage and backup services. Cloud storage is important to the enterprise too, but it presents its own challenges. More than 50% of the respondents to the Cloud Usage: Risks and Opportunities Report from the Cloud Security Alliance listed storage as the most risky cloud application according to their organization's definition of risk. The second most risky set of applications were those dealing with finance or accounting.

6. Your employees are your biggest threat

Outside hackers are what most people perceive as their biggest threat to security, but employees pose an equal risk. The 2015 Data Breach Industry Forecast by Experian claims that employees caused almost 60% of security incidents last year. This is further compounded by employees working remotely or using their personal mobile device to access sensitive materials outside of the company network.

7. Controlling adoption is difficult

The rise of bring-your-own-device (BYOD) and bring-your-own-application (BYOA) trends means that many cloud services and tools are sneaking into organizations under the noses of IT leaders. Results of a survey conducted by The Register shows that 50% of respondents said the biggest challenge in regards to cloud services is getting the chance to assess security before a service is adopted by users.

8. Many organizations don't have security policies

According to the Cloud Usage: Risks and Opportunities Report, 25.5% of respondents don't have security policies or procedures in place to deal with data security in the cloud. Also, 68.1% said they do have security policies in place, and the remaining 6.4% didn't know whether they do or do not have the proper policies in place.

9. IoT presents a new risk to cloud security

Research firm Gartner predicts that the IoT market will grow to 26 billion units installed by 2020, bringing with it a slew of security issues for organizations that are leveraging the technology. The Experian Data Breach Industry Forecast notes that the storage and processing of the data points collected by IoT devices will create more vulnerabilities, and we will likely see cyberattacks targeting the IoT.

10. The right tools aren't always used

Fortunately, there are quite a few ways in which enterprises can make their cloud initiative more secure. While these tools and services exist, they aren't always used the proper way, or even used at all. Sixty percent of respondents to The Register's cloud survey said they were using VPN connections, but only 34% said they were using cloud firewalls or encrypting data at rest. The numbers continued to drop in regards to other preventative measures until the bottom of the list where only 15% said they were using obfuscation or tokenization of sensitive data.

Millennials Are Developing Parents’ Taste for Jaguars, Cadillacs (BusinessWeek)

Millennials: Which Luxury Cars Do They Prefer?

Millennials are developing a taste for expensive -- and even luxury -- automobiles and taking out cheap leases so they can afford them.

Lexus, Jaguar, Cadillac and Acura are among the top 10 brands leased by millennial buyers, along with other pricey cars like Subaru, Mini and Buick, according to Edmunds.com, an auto pricing website. The 18- to 34-year-old group leases 60 percent of their luxury cars compared with about 50 percent for other buyers, Edmunds says.

"Millennials like Varatharajah are used to upgrading their smartphones every couple of years and expect the same for their cars"

The leasing data is more evidence that American millennials -- aka Generation Y -- like cars after all, defying predictions that they’d shun driving for public transportation or Uber. They are now the second-largest group of new car buyers, after their boomer parents, and will buy or lease almost 2 million vehicles this year. Millennials typically prefer to spend $300 max per month on a car and put down no more than $3,000, according to Edmunds. Leasing is the only way to get the car they really want and allows the tech-hungry cohort to get a new vehicle every two or three years.

“If they see a chance to get into a nicer car while staying within their budget, they’re likely to explore that opportunity,” said Jessica Caldwell, director of industry analysis at Edmunds. “In most cases, leasing opens the door to the bells and whistles that they couldn’t otherwise afford.”

Of the 10 brands they lease the most, only Toyota’s entry-level Scion brand and Fiat Chrysler’s Ram pickup brand are mainstream, Caldwell said

Accelerating Economy

To be sure, millennials are still finding it hard to land well-paying jobs. And though they represent 24 percent of the U.S. population, they account for just 8.7 percent of luxury car customers and 11.6 percent of the mass market, according to Edmunds. But analysts say their appetite for cars will pick up as the economy accelerates and more and more Gen Yers move to the suburbs where public transportation is spotty.

Auto leasing is making a comeback and this year has accounted for more than a quarter of new-auto sales, according to Edmunds, the highest rate in years. Leasing is spurring a sales boom and provides an entree for buyers who might otherwise be unable to afford a car. Millennials lease 29 percent of the time, compared with 26.7 percent for other American car buyers, and they are leasing more often.

When Mo Varatharajah was shopping for some new wheels recently, the 25-year-old resident of Sunnyvale, California, saw long-term vehicle ownership as a less-appealing option and more costly compared to leasing a car. With a monthly payment of $380, he was able to get into a Mercedes C300 rather than a more pedestrian car.

‘Nice Car’

“The affordability of a monthly payment makes leasing much better than owning,” said Varatharajah, a business manager at a logistics company. “It’s a great way to build credit up with a brand and move into a nicer car.”

Plus, millennials like Varatharajah are used to upgrading their smartphones every couple of years and expect the same for their cars. It makes no sense to them to buy a car and hang on to it -- even if doing so is cheaper in the long run.

“Leasing lends itself to staying up to date with the latest technology,” said Kevin Tynan, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst.

Gen Yers see another downside to long-term ownership: the hassle and cost of repairs and maintenance.

“With leasing, you’re not responsible for taking care of and fixing up the car,” Varatharajah said. “That’s even more important when it comes to luxury brands with more expensive costs.”