The White House is considering another round of tax cuts, according to a story by The Washington Post’s Erica Werner, Josh Dawsey and Jeff Stein. This is a monstrously bad idea, but it’s hardly a surprise. It displays President Trump’s cavalier attitude towards budget deficits, as earlier reflected in his 2017 tax cut of $1.5 trillion over roughly a decade. ...

The internet came to life 50 years ago this week, with a simple message sent from the University of California, Los Angeles to the Stanford Research Institute. The system crashed only two characters into the transmission of the word “login”: SRI received only “lo” — “as in ‘lo and behold!’” in the words of UCLA’s Leonard Kleinrock. The UCLA terminal ...

I hope Alphabet Inc. has a plan. The Google parent company announced that it would spend $2.1 billion to buy Fitbit Inc., a pioneer in the fitness-tracking gadgets that haven’t proved to be a lasting category of consumer electronics. Google has now spent billions of dollars developing homegrown hardware such as its Pixel smartphones and buying all or parts of ...

China has a standard road map for fixing state-owned giants that have gone off the rails: Create an even more inflated behemoth through a mega-merger, in the hope that the stronger business will be able to prop up the weaker one until the storm blows over. It’s a playbook that’s been followed in steel, shipping, energy and rolling stock — ...

In the hours before climbers were permanently barred from Uluru, the world-famous red sandstone monolith that rises from the heart of Australia, the line to ascend it snaked for hundreds of feet — past a sign posted by its aboriginal owners noting that the site is sacred, and requesting that visitors refrain from climbing it. The last-minute trekkers weren’t alone ...

There’s been some chatter in markets that the rebound in equities in October and a re-steepening of the Treasury market’s yield curve are signs that investors believe the global economic outlook is looking up – or at least not getting any worse. As indicators go, those are fine, but perhaps the most telling may be the dollar. The Bloomberg Dollar ...

People have a love-hate relationship with the futures markets. Futures are either financial drivers of rapid economic growth, turbocharging small amounts of capital to outflank entrenched barriers to innovation, or — to a populist — they are demonic pits where speculators manipulate prices and corrupt honest real economic activity. Since people also love or hate cryptocurrency, the rise of Bitcoin ...

Bloomberg US equity futures climbed with European and Asian stocks as investors took confidence from signs that America and China are inching towards a trade deal. Treasuries fell, while the yuan strengthened past 7 for the first time since August. Contracts on the S&P 500, Dow Industrials and Nasdaq 100 all pointed to a positive start on Wall Street, following ...

Bloomberg China’s yuan rallied past 7 per dollar and analysts are already warning the strength won’t last. The currency jumped as much as 0.60% to 6.9880 a dollar on Tuesday, trading stronger than the key level for the first time since August. The offshore rate rose as much 0.66%. The level had been a key support for the currency for ...

Bloomberg As the Federal Reserve signals it’s satisfied after pulling off a mid-cycle easing, Wall Street’s rate strategists are as divided as ever on the direction of Treasury yields. JPMorgan Chase & Co strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou warned that 10-year yields may surge 100 basis points over the next six months given the Fed is now done with its “insurance” cuts. ...