Opinion

The vast majority of Americans have air conditioning but in Germany almost nobody does. At least not yet. So when temperatures in Berlin rose to an uncomfortable 37 Celsius (99 Fahrenheit) this week – a record for the month of June – I was uncommonly delighted to go to the Bloomberg office, where it’s artificially and blissfully cool. By letting ...

In a poor, underbanked country, there wouldn’t be anything unusual about imposing a $6.40–a-month penalty on depositors unable to keep at least $640 in their savings accounts. That’s just how financial exclusion works. But in rich Hong Kong, a city that gives banks more than $26 billion in annual earnings, it took a fintech revolution to make HSBC Holdings Plc ...

Among Facebook Inc.’s justifications for introducing a new digital currency, Libra, the company has offered one pious rationale: to connect the 1.7 billion adults who lack bank accounts to the global financial system. That’s certainly one way for the “unbanked” to enjoy the convenience of digital money. Or they could just use a DeathAdder Elite. The DeathAdder is, of course, ...

We are now passing a significant milestone. The current economic expansion has become the longest in US history. Previously, the record was the decade from March 1991 to March 2001 (120 months). When the present recovery enters July, it will mark the 121st month of expansion. Just how much longer it will last is anyone’s guess, but, politically, this is ...

Carrefour SA, Europe’s largest retailer, may be the latest Western company to pull back from China. It’s unlikely to be the last. The hypermarket operator said it would sell 80% of its China business for 4.8 billion yuan in cash to Suning.com, Chinese retailer backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Carrefour will retain a 20% stake. Over the past few ...

Much of the commentary about Facebook’s proposed Libra coin has focused on its defects as a cryptocurrency – centralised governance, weak privacy protections – or as a payment processing system – low throughput, inability to handle multiple currencies. I think it’s more interesting to examine the process for creating Libra rather than specific technical features. But Libra is a work-in-progress. ...

If you’re in the business of selling passenger aircraft, design flaws that might cause your planes to crash ought to be non-existent. That’s why the discovery of a second critical safety risk on Boeing Co.’s 737 Max is so alarming. Tests by the US Federal Aviation Administration found that flight computers could cause the plane to dive in a way ...

It’s easy to see the current stalemate over who gets the European Union’s top jobs as a battle between France and Germany. In reality, it’s a conflict between institutions. A group of EU leaders, headed by French President Emmanuel Macron, are trying to deny the recently elected European Parliament one of its key prerogatives. For the sake of the whole ...

Andrea Enria has a passion for running, but Europe’s top banking supervisor is making pretty slow going in tackling Italy’s Banca Carige SpA. The chairman of the European Central Bank’s Single Supervisory Mechanism is just watching quietly as Rome scrambles to put together a new rescue plan for the ailing mid-sized lender. The ECB is wrong to stand on the ...

One of India’s largest cities, Chennai, is dealing with a crippling crisis: It has run out of water. In the middle of a particularly hot summer, the four lakes that supply the capital of the southern state of Tamil Nadu have dried up; together they contain just 1% of the volume they did last year. Residents don’t have enough water ...