Bloomberg Tropical Storm Gordon will grow into a hurricane as it grazes offshore natural gas and oil fields, where it has already sparked evacuations, before coming ashore over the lower Mississippi Valley later on Tuesday or early Wednesday. Gordon, with top winds of 65 miles (100 kilometres) per hour, was about 230 miles east-southeast of the mouth of Mississippi River, ...
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Argentina needs IMF help to contain currency crisis
When they discuss the currency crisis, senior officials from Argentina and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will seek a response that strikes a balance between domestic policy changes and external financing aid, a task that has been complicated by political and trust issues. While Argentina is almost certain to get some concessions from the IMF, a decisive solution will be ...
Read More »Vodafone Hutchison’s ‘debt trick’
Aren’t the strong meant to end up eating the weak? That’s not what’s happening in Australia, where Vodafone Hutchison Australia Ltd. or VHA — an unlisted company with negative net assets and A$7.57 billion of net debt at the end of 2017 — is on paper carrying out a takeover of TPG Telecom Ltd. While the deal is billed as ...
Read More »What happens after China surpasses the US economy
The US economy will grow a bit faster than China. Huh? That’s not a typo. It’s one of the projections in a fascinating OECD paper sketching scenarios for the world through 2060. Other developments canvassed: China’s share of global output peaks in the 2030s and then declines while India’s slice keeps rising. Indonesia’s economy catches up to its population. The ...
Read More »There’s still a chance to avoid a no-deal Brexit
The fog surrounding Britain’s decision to leave the European Union shows no sign yet of clearing. The UK exits the union next March — but, more than two years after the country voted to go, the terms of its separation and the form of the future relationship are entirely unresolved. This continuing uncertainty is a huge cost in its own ...
Read More »We may be facing textbook emerging-market crisis
Emerging-market stresses have been building since at least 2013. Investors may have forgotten the effect of the ‘taper tantrum’ on the so-called Fragile Five – Brazil, India, Indonesia, Turkey and South Africa – a term coined by Morgan Stanley to describe their vulnerability to capital outflows. Monetary accommodation, lower current-account deficits and growth disguised the underlying challenges, attracting more capital ...
Read More »China’s SUV makers steer towards trouble
Unlike their American peers’ unceasing love for gas guzzlers, Chinese consumers are getting over them. The country’s carmakers should recalibrate. Auto stocks have been the worst-performing sector in China as sales slide and foreign carmakers stake claims to a bigger share of the world’s largest market. Earnings last week didn’t give investors too much to bet on. Sales of Chinese ...
Read More »Prediction markets look smarter than peer review
When they’re asked to make bets, social scientists have a surprising knack for predicting which of their colleagues’ papers are full of baloney. This is in contrast to the notoriously bad job social scientists have apparently been doing evaluating papers through traditional peer review. In a series of attempts to test the health of the field, a high proportion of ...
Read More »Bank Indonesia to beef up tools in battle to save rupiah
Bloomberg Indonesia’s central bank is intensifying its fight to protect the nation’s currency and bonds with a slew of measures that includes more hedging tools. Bank Indonesia plans to soon introduce overnight index swaps and interest-rate swaps to widen its pool of hedging tools for investors, exporters and banks. The central bank will also start offering a one-month tenor foreign-exchange ...
Read More »Australia holds key rate as sliding currency stimulates growth
Bloomberg Australia kept interest rates at a record low on Tuesday, as it has for the past two years, while a currency sliding towards 70 US cents offers the prospect of additional stimulus for the economy. As expected, Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe left the cash rate at 1.5 percent, a stance he expects will eventually tighten the labour market ...
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