You may remember, early this year, a spate of gloomy reportage about the coming collapse of retail jobs due to automation and online shopping. This wasn’t just a dystopian forecast: Employment in the retail sector fell for seven straight months starting in January. A streak like that hadn’t happened outside of a recession since the early days of World War ...

There’s a lot of discussion these days about the US bond market’s yield curve, or more specifically how it has shrunk to the narrowest levels since 2007 — a movement that has historically presaged an economic slowdown. What hasn’t been talked about as much is how Europe’s yield curve has failed to follow the same path. And while there are ...

A year ago, I argued that lots of people don’t just want material goods — they crave the dignity that comes from working for a living. Even jobs that economists might deride as make-work can yield meaning, self-respect and social status. For this reason, I suggested that the government should establish a program to give work to everyone who wants ...

In 2009, the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen rolled out its first electric city bus. As of May of this year, it had 14,500 of them on the road — and by the end of this month, the city plans to have an all-electric fleet. Shenzhen’s efforts are another example of how China is leading the way in transforming urban ...

After UK and EU negotiators reached a deal opening a path for trade negotiations, arch-Brexiter Michael Gove declared British Prime Minister Theresa May had ‘won.’ That is a statement worthy of all the now-debunked Brexit slogans. The parties’ agreement shows the EU has given up virtually no ground, and that’s what’s likely to happen in the trade talks, too. In ...

Bloomberg As stocks surge and consumer prices inch higher, investors say it’s time for the Bank of Ja-pan to reduce equity purchases that have been criticised for distorting the market. Sometime next year, the BOJ will cut its annual buying target for domestic exchange-traded funds by as much as a third from the current 6 trillion yen ($53 billion), says ...

Bloomberg Pakistan’s central bank allowed the rupee to decline as it bowed to persistent economic pressure, including widening deficits and declining foreign-exchange reserves. The rupee closed at 107 per dollar at the close on the interbank market, after falling as low as 109.5 per dollar, the State Bank of Pakistan said in an emailed statement. The currency — officially a ...

Bloomberg HSBC Holdings Plc said its 5-year-old deferred prosecution agreement with Department of Justice has expired, signaling the US is satisfied with the bank’s improvements to its compliance systems after it was ensnared in a money-laundering scandal in Mexico. The Justice Department will file a motion with a court in the Eastern District of New York seeking the dismissal of ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank will spend 2018 guiding its bond-buying program to a gentle halt as the euro zone benefits from the most-synchronized economic growth in two decades, according to a Bloomberg survey. Policy makers, who have already agreed to halve monthly purchases to 30 billion euros ($35 billion) starting next month, will taper them to zero in the ...

Bloomberg The Labour Party is debating moving some of the Bank of England’s operations to Birmingham if it wins power in the next general election. The plans, first reported by the Financial Times and confirmed by the UK’s main opposition, are aimed at spreading investment across the country. They’re based on an analysis by the economist Graham Turner of GFC ...