Bloomberg Indonesia’s most populous province is set to go the polls in what’s shaping up as a test of President Joko Widodo’s popularity and a potential springboard for his rivals ahead of next year’s presidential election. More than 30 million people are expected to vote in West Java’s gubernatorial election on Wednesday in a contest between two former generals, the ...

Bloomberg Republic of Macedonia’s president rejected an agreement with Greece on the nation’s new name, a move that may be only a temporary hurdle in the ex-Yugoslav nation’s NATO and EU accession plans. The veto by opposition-backed President Gjorge Ivanov, who said on Tuesday he won’t sign the accord, is expected to be overturned in parliament as early as next ...

The escalating trade war between the United States and China poses crucial, though unanswerable, questions: Is this the beginning of the end of the post-World War II international trading system or will the present arrangements survive, as they have for 70 years? Almost certainly, historians will judge favourably the postwar expansion of trade (it has never been completely “free” but ...

I hate Google Glass, and I think I’ve hit upon a way to get everyone to understand the dystopic future this eyewear augurs: Give it to flight attendants. The summer of 2014 was a turning point for me. I had always considered myself a genuinely nice person who would never consider violence against a stranger. But then, at a conference ...

Italy’s auction of five and 10-year government bonds on Thursday will be the most important test of investor appetite since the country’s political crisis subsided. Buyers are understandably skittish. Appetite for the 10-year securities the government sold at the end of May was poor, something I remarked on at the time. Since then, yields on Italy’s two-year bonds have climbed ...

The rising US dollar and higher interest rates are pummeling emerging markets. Foreign investors who rode the big rally in these markets in 2016 and 2017 see little reason to stick around and are leaving en masse. This shift will probably persist since dollar-denominated obligations make up some 75 percent of the trillions of dollars in developing-economy debt. True, cheaper ...

Real estate is the driver of the Chinese economy. By some estimates, it accounts (directly and indirectly) for as much as 30 percent of gross domestic product. Keeping housing prices buoyant and development robust is thus an overriding imperative for China — one that is distorting policymaking and worsening its other economic imbalances. Despite reforms in recent years, there’s little ...

Rescuing a dying bank with taxpayers’ money is often the only way to prevent a costlier contagion. But nursing a deposit-taking institution by tapping life-insurance premiums of policyholders? That’s like allowing a localized infection to spread all over, hoping the natural immunity of an otherwise healthy body will help beat back the germs. India’s plan to sell a majority stake ...

A pattern is emerging in the war between the European Union’s antitrust authorities and US tech companies. The changes that Google and Apple made after adverse rulings and large fines appear to be little but window-dressing, and left intact the problems the penalties were intended to solve. In June 2017, the European Commission fined Google 2.4 billion euros for giving ...

Bloomberg Some of the world’s largest money managers soured on emerging markets as compounding trade threats deepened the worst monthly rout for developing currencies since the US election. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said it’s reducing an overweight position in developing-nation currencies, preferring a more “defensive” stance as China and Europe warned the escalating trade war could trigger a global recession. ...