Opinion

  Mark Gilbert Bloomberg View Germany this week joined the elite club of sovereign borrowers able to raise funds for a decade at an interest rate of less than zero. Other euro zone countries, including France, Spain and Italy, are also enjoying 10-year borrowing costs at or near record lows. Negative German yields are the strongest signal yet that the …

  Shang-su Wu SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS Among the various projects proposed under China’s “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) strategy, the Singapore-Kunming Rail Link (SKRL) seems to be the most promising rail project. Since announced at the fifth summit of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1995, this project has evolved from a conventional railway to a …

  Once described as giver of “stability,” the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), or the Philippine central bank, has tightly guarded the local financial system and inflation during the past six years of overflowing credit in the country. It was not an easy job: 24 positive credit rating actions that allowed the Philippines to move up to investment grade lured …

Aaron Karp SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS The report that Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha, India’s 61-year-old Air Force chief, capped a tour of Sweden with a flight in a Saab Gripen-D on June 10 comes a crucial moment in Indian security planning. Just a few weeks before, when Saab unveiled the Gripen-E fighter, the significance was easy to miss. The …

  Therese Raphael Though it is only days after the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, Americans aren’t too numb to share a sense of solidarity with Britain over the murder of the Labour Party politician Jo Cox. Former U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords, who was shot by a would-be assassin in 2011, summed up the reaction of many with a …

  WASHINGTON Brexit is winning — that is, Britain’s exit from the European Union. As the June 23 referendum approaches, public opinion has swung toward “Leave” the EU as opposed to “Remain” in the EU. This has fueled anxieties about the global economy and the fate of Europe. Brexit could compound economic pessimism, leading to a selloff in stock markets …

  As the June 23 referendum vote approaches, the polls show the Leave campaign is edging the Remain camp amid international angst that UK’s exit from the EU would have a negative impact on the bloc and global economy as well. Polls ahead of the British vote saw stocks and the pound dropping after four polls put the Leave campaign …

  Ramesh Ponnuru A lot of people who want tighter gun control blame the US Supreme Court for standing in their way. In 2008, a 5-4 majority read the Second Amendment to protect an individual’s right to own guns. That decision, writes Fareed Zakaria, “has made common-sense regulation of guns much harder” and contributed to America’s high gun-homicide rate. The …

  Cal Wong SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS Over the past two years, Chinese firms have been snapping up stakes in big name global sports teams including Inter Milan, Atletico de Madrid, The World Triathlon Corporation and its Ironman brand, Manchester City, and Yokohama Marinos, to name a few. But what is driving this rush in sports investments? The government is …

  German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s recent and ninth visit to China to attend the annual government-to-government consultations might have been the most difficult one so far. This time Merkel arrived with a much longer list of pressing issues to discuss than before, including issues such as market economy status, overcapacity in steel exports, the South China Sea dispute, and the …