The absurdist political theater surrounding the US government debt ceiling is having another revival. With debt default looming next month, President Donald Trump has agreed to a deal that will grant emergency relief for Hurricane Harvey and raise the ceiling — until December, when another phony fiscal crisis is scheduled. Given the impressive dysfunction of Congress, compounded these days by ...

The recently held Brexit talks between the UK and the European Union didn’t go well. The March 2019 deadline for concluding an agreement is approaching, and progress has been much too slow. Prime Minister Theresa May needs to get a grip on this process. Britain’s government faces two crucial obstacles. It’s in May’s power to break through both. The first ...

China’s ban on initial coin offerings has provided a much-needed pause in the booming market, where people ranging from legitimate entrepreneurs to outright thieves attract money by selling digital tokens. But the move also raises a question: How can any government control a phenomenon that transcends national borders and rules? The Chinese central bank’s decision to outlaw token sales is ...

Debates over immigration are fraught with misconceptions. One of the most common is that the integration of Muslims into Western Europe societies has gone very badly, in large part because terror attacks loom so large in the news. Those attacks are a very real problem, yet they do not reflect the typical reality. A new study from the Bertelsmann Stiftung ...

Bloomberg The head of European listings at Nasdaq Inc. says Britain’s decision to leave the European Union is driving more UK companies to its Nordic market. Nasdaq Nordic now expects up to 15 percent of its initial public offerings and listings in 2018 could be made by companies outside the region. Most of the approaches it’s getting are from UK ...

Reuters Stock markets in the Middle East were mixed in narrow ranges on Sunday, with banks and petrochemicals supporting Saudi Arabia while Qatar edged down to a fresh 18-month closing low. The Saudi index rose 0.2 percent. All but two of the 14 listed petrochemical shares advanced after a pick-up in oil prices at the end of last week, with ...

Bloomberg Oil has denied Saudi Arabia the opportunity to overtake South Africa as the biggest stock market in the Middle East and Africa, even as political turmoil and a faltering economy hold back share prices in Johannesburg. The total market capitalisation of the South African bourse was $489 billion, about $25 billion more than that of Riyadh’s after its main ...

Bloomberg The White House is considering more than a half-dozen candidates to be the next head of the Federal Reserve, including economists and business people, with a goal of filling out a depleted board with expertise ranging from financial regulation to community banking, according to three people familiar with the matter. The breadth of the search goes against the narrative ...

Bloomberg New York’s banking regulator ordered Habib Bank Ltd. to pay $225 million and surrender its license to operate in the state, effectively removing Pakistan’s largest lender from the US financial system. Managers in Habib’s branch office in Manhattan failed for more than a decade to shore up weak anti-money-laundering controls and sanctions compliance, New York’s Department of Financial Services ...

Bloomberg The rally in Indonesian bank stocks may be nearing an end amid sluggish credit growth and tougher regulations for loan quality assessments. Equity analysts are now downgrading banking stocks after the Jakarta Finance Index rallied 21 percent this year—more than double that of the main gauge—as they expect nonperforming loans in the $527 billion industry to creep up again. ...