India’s insolvency tribunal has made a dangerous decision. Unless its judgment is quashed, credit costs for India Inc. will surge, shares of state-run banks will swoon and foreign investors will flee. The case concerns the country’s most high-profile bankruptcy, Essar Steel India Ltd. Insolvency judges recently ruled that creditors whose claims are backed by collateral won’t get preferential treatment in ...
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Galileo outage: Why world needs civilian sat-nav system
The European Union’s satellite navigation system, Galileo, has been down since July 11. The outage, the longest-ever of such a service, highlights how difficult it will be to wean the world off its dependence on the US, Russian and Chinese militaries for critical (and lucrative) navigation services. At the time of writing, Galileo’s 24 satellites were listed as “not usable†...
Read More »Like it or not, Democrats, Donald Trump is on a roll
The agonizing fact for Democrats this summer is that President Trump appears to be gaining ground on domestic and foreign policy, while his potential challengers are quarreling and mostly spinning their wheels. Trump is defying Congress, taunting allies and ignoring court rulings he doesn’t like — and seemingly getting away with it. Thursday’s anticipated executive order adding a citizenship question ...
Read More »Brexit investors shun UK assets
Since the UK decided more than three years ago to leave the European Union, the nation’s savviest investors have succeeded by putting their money where Brexit matters least. Uncertainty about the date of Britain’s departure (now pushed back to October 31) and the terms of the divorce has meant purging the UK from their holdings or limiting them to investments ...
Read More »South Korea birthrate collapse to hit growth
In 1960, South Korea had a total fertility rate of more than six children per woman, high enough to cause a population explosion. But as the country developed, this number dropped decade by decade: A country needs a fertility rate of about 2.1—a little more than one child per parent — to maintain long-term population stability. South Korea’s fertility is ...
Read More »China’s private firms still not getting enough credit
China’s new GDP numbers show that the world’s second-biggest economy is growing more slowly than at any time since the early 1990s. Chinese leaders know what they need to do to arrest the slide: pump more credit into private companies, which generate the majority of jobs and growth. The fact that growth isn’t picking up regardless of their efforts would ...
Read More »Trump’s Nafta alternative is a very bad deal indeed
President Donald Trump claims he has “tremendous Democrat support†in the House for the accord he signed last year with Mexico and Canada to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement. He threatens to withdraw from Nafta if Congress doesn’t quickly pass his new trade deal. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants the deal, now called the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement, improved ...
Read More »Higher taxes bane for India’s hedge funds
India is killing off the one industry that can bring badly behaving tycoons into line while nudging savers away from an unproductive lust for gold. That industry is domestic hedge funds, which have taken seven years to reach $6 billion in investment commitments from nothing. By contrast, equity investment in India by overseas financial investors is upward of $400 billion. ...
Read More »Yes, Amazon advertising is just a toll in disguise
Investors are giddy about Amazon.com Inc.’s fast-growing pool of advertising sales, which largely come from merchandise sellers buying commercial messages to make their goods more prominent on Amazon’s website. Calling this “advertising†is true, but also a misnomer that leads investors to imagine a Google-like marketing machine inside Amazon. It’s not – or not yet, at least. Amazon’s advertising is ...
Read More »Why China can’t get its economy moving
China’s new GDP numbers show that the world’s second-biggest economy is growing more slowly than at any time since the early 1990s. Chinese leaders know what they need to do to arrest the slide: pump more credit into private companies, which generate the majority of jobs and growth. The fact that growth isn’t picking up regardless of their efforts would ...
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