Bloomberg The Philippine economy contracted in the first three months of 2020 as restrictions to stem the coronavirus outbreak shut most businesses and sapped consumption, a trend seen worsening in the current quarter. Gross domestic product fell 0.2% in the first quarter compared to a year ago, using 2018 as the new base year, the Philippine Statistics Authority said. That ...

Bloomberg China’s exports unexpectedly rose in April aided by stronger shipments to South East Asia, though with the coronavirus pandemic damaging global demand that increase is likely to be temporary. Imports fell. Exports rose 3.5% in dollar terms in April from a year earlier, while imports dropped 14.2%, the customs administration said on Thursday. Economists had forecast that exports would ...

A peculiar fact about the coronavirus catastrophe so far is that the world’s poorest have largely been spared the worst. Of the 10 countries with the most deaths to date, nearly all are among the wealthiest. But if the virus has overwhelmed places with modern hospitals and world-class medical infrastructure — as anyone who’s been in New York or Milan ...

If working from home during the pandemic has shown anything, it’s that apartments and houses are our castles, like it or not. Hong Kong is emerging from a semi-lockdown (restaurants open, schools shut, workers everywhere on the home-office spectrum) and it’s clear that investors see refuge in housing, too. The world’s least-affordable residential prices look likely to keep floating in ...

It’s not all sunshine and roses being Europe’s benchmark borrower. Germany has a unique problem in that its AAA-rated debt is so revered as collateral that it’s very expensive to actually buy. The country’s debt agency has sharply increased its second-quarter borrowing program to 130 billion euros ($140 billion) to help pay for the Covid-19 crisis. Given that investors already ...

In the midst of the constant up-and-down of coronavirus news, both from science and the markets, it’s easy to lose sight of the scariest scenario of them all: the one where there’s no magic bullet. In this entirely plausible situation, there would be no effective Covid-19 vaccine or transformative therapy; the combination of testing and contact tracing wouldn’t successfully suppress ...

The instruction given by Boris Johnson to the British people on March 23 was dead simple: “You must stay at home.” The pithiness and urgency of that message, the alarming rise in deaths, and the UK prime minister’s subsequent hospitalisation with Covid-19 all reinforced the instruction. People got it. Some say it was too successful. Many Britons don’t seem to ...

As states relax shelter-in-place orders, the economy should bounce back a bit this month and next. Continued fears among consumers and businesses mean the US won’t be back to February’s levels any time soon, but the early April collapse might mark a low as we adjust to our new pandemic normal. The bigger worry might be July, as three key ...

05 May 2020, Northern Ireland, Magherafelt: Workers manufacture Personal protective equipment (PPE), including face shields, for health workers at the Bloc Blinds factory. Photo: Peter Morrison/PA Wire/dpa[/caption Suppose you’re working in an essential industry and your employer hasn’t provided you with adequate personal protective equipment. Maybe you say to yourself, “Okay, there’s a shortage, they’re trying.” Then you discover that ...

Bloomberg The US delayed an annual report to Congress assessing Hong Kong’s autonomy, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said, amid signals that China’s top agency in the city could take a more hands-on role. The postponement will “allow us to account for any additional actions that Beijing may be contemplating in the run-up to the National People’s Congress that would ...