Bloomberg The US boom won’t be enough to stop the rest of the world economy from slowing. Finance ministers and central bankers head to Indonesia next week for the International Monetary Fund’s annual meeting, with the lender signalling it will cut its global growth forecasts for the first time in two years after the best upswing since 2011. That’s despite ...

Bloomberg Brazilians are putting their young democracy to a political stress test, going to the polls deeply divided after years of corruption and recession have pummeled faith in their institutions. The 147 million voters in Latin America’s largest economy have from 8 am until 5 pm on Sunday to cast ballots for a new president as well as most state ...

Bloomberg A populist surge wasn’t enough to dislodge the pro-Western centrist parties that have ruled Latvia for more than 25 years. While the governing coalition lost ground at elections on Saturday, Prime Minister Maris Kucinskis said newly formed parties with similar ideologies can join to represent a majority in parliament. That would once again lock out the Russia-leaning Harmony, which ...

Bloomberg US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo reported progress on Sunday after meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang amid high expectations that he can resolve details over a second summit with President Donald Trump. Pompeo returned to Seoul and was meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, with a written statement possible, according to the Blue House. ...

Bloomberg Theresa May is taking her message direct to the opposition. Days after she danced on stage and promised better times ahead for her Conservative Party members, the UK prime minister took the rare step of writing in the Observer newspaper to entice wavering Labour supporters over to her camp. John McDonnell, who would lead economic policy if Labour came ...

Bloomberg Nigeria’s main opposition party nominated former Vice President Atiku Abubakar as its candidate to challenge President Muhammadu Buhari in February’s elections in Africa’s biggest oil producer. Abubakar, 71, won the People’s Democratic Party’s primaries with 1,532 votes, Ifeanyi Okowa, chairman of the nomination convention committee and governor of Delta state, said on Sunday in the oil hub of Port ...

The descent of American capitalism into a racket is being greased by professed capitalists in government, in collaboration with professed capitalists in what is called, with decreasing accuracy, the private sector. This is occurring under the auspices of Republicans, and while many Democrats are arguing, with some accuracy but more incoherence, this: The government has become a servant of grasping ...

After four successive days of increasing risk spreads, and after a prominent politician, Claudio Borghi, said there was an advantage to having your “own currency,” Italy is back squarely on both public and private radar screens as a potential source of systemic economic and financial disruptions. This has led to suggestions that the country could become “a new Greece.” While ...

We all agree, they said. Please make more rules for us, they said. Give more money to our regulators, they said. When an assemblage of savvy corporate lawyers converges on such improbable sentiments, skepticism is usually in order. Last week’s privacy hearing on Capitol Hill demanded a load of it. Representatives from numerous tech and telecom luminaries — including Amazon, ...

Christine Lagarde and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have answered the easy question but dodged the hard ones. Yes, of course an era of tit-for-tat tariffs dims the global economic outlook. So … what can the IMF do about it? Does it need more funding to protect the international economy, given the weakening scene? Director Christine Lagarde should say so ...