Singapore is very proud of its reputation for technocratic excellence. In recent months, government officials have tried to tackle the country’s most pressing question — how to live with Covid-19 — by scrutinising, modeling and projecting data, as if staring hard enough at those little gray-rimmed boxes on Excel would produce the answer. The trouble with this strategy is that ...

Japan’s outgoing prime minister gave his successor, Fumio Kishida, a gift. In one of his last acts, Yoshihide Suga will lift emergency pandemic restrictions that have hampered the country’s most economically vital regions. It gets progressively harder for the new leader from there. Kishida emerged from a four-way ballot on Wednesday to become leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party ...

Bloomberg The top US military leaders pointed rare criticism at key decisions by Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden which they said undermined Afghanistan’s military and made it harder for American troops to remain as the nation’s government collapsed. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Trump’s 2020 peace deal with the Taliban had a ...

Bloomberg Myanmar’s Covid-19 outbreak has pushed more people into poverty, and the most vulnerable sections of the society may face “extreme deprivation” in the coming months, according to the UN World Food Program. “We’re concerned that the cumulative impact is putting pressure on the most vulnerable segments of society,” the food agency’s Country Director Stephen Anderson said in a Bloomberg ...

Bloomberg China’s central bank injected liquidity into the financial system for a ninth day in the longest run since December as it sought to meet a surge in seasonal demand for cash. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) pumped in 100 billion yuan ($15.5 billion) of cash with 14-day reverse repurchase agreements, resulting in a net injection of 40 billion ...

Bloomberg UK consumers have just one year left to spend about $32 billion of paper 20- and 50-pound notes as the Bank of England (BOE) withdraws them from circulation. The notes, which have been superseded by polymer equivalents featuring artist JMW Turner and mathematician Alan Turing, will no longer be accepted in shops after September 30, 2022, the BOE said ...

Bloomberg Thailand’s central bank held its key interest rate unchanged amid optimism that an economic rebound will hold, as Southeast Asia’s second largest economy loosens growth-stifling restrictions and virus cases ease. The Bank of Thailand voted unanimously on Wednesday to hold one-day repurchase rate at a record-low 0.5% for an 11th straight meeting, as predicted by 19 of 22 economists ...

Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co invested in 10 banks with diverse leadership, acquiring stakes with a total value of more than $60 million, and is giving their customers free access to thousands of ATMs as part of its effort to help address the racial wealth gap. The “investments and commitments” JPMorgan has made in minority deposit institutions, known as MDIs, ...

Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG plans to return 5,000 workers to New York City over the next six months. Many of the returning staff will still have the option of more flexible working arrangements, Christiana Riley, chief executive officer of Deutsche Bank Americas, said in an interview from the Frankfurt-based company’s new US headquarters. “The demise of New York is vastly ...

Bloomberg Bank of Nova Scotia is set to become Canada’s first bank to sell a junior bond known as limited recourse capital notes in a currency other than loonies. Toronto-based Scotiabank is reaching out to US dollar-based investors before deciding to go ahead with the deal. In June, the bank sold LRCNs in the Canadian dollar corporate bond market. Canadian ...