Opinion

You wouldn’t know it from the government’s optimistic pronouncements, but China’s banks are still under significant stress. Although the latest plan to help them out won’t solve any fundamental problems, it will buy time — maybe enough to come up with better ideas. By several measures, Chinese banks are strained. Their official loan–to-deposit ratio increased from 65.8 percent in June ...

The European Central Bank’s (ECB) policy meeting was a masterclass from President Mario Draghi in how to ride two horses at once: calling time on quantitative easing while keeping a dovish tone. The bond-buying program will end this year — but the governing council paired this with a clear message that interest rates won’t rise before the end of summer ...

The latest review of BP – one of world’s leading integrated oil and gas companies – of the world’s appetite for energy, contained a startling chart indicating that coal’s grip on electricity generation has not changed in 20 years. There were clear signs of a shift occurring at the margin when you looked at growth in different types of power ...

Markets welcomed the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) $50 billion rescue stabilization package last week, which seems to be stabilizing the peso. But the financial umbrella will be costly. Rightly or wrongly, Argentines blame the IMF for precipitating their country’s worst economic crisis. In the eyes of many voters, the mere association will damage President Mauricio Macri’s standing. As detrimental, the ...

Bitcoin’s price was supposed to go to the moon. Yet over the past six months, from high to low, the linchpin of the entire cryptocurrency craze has shed 66 percent of its value. It’s an unraveling almost on par with the Nasdaq index during the dot-com bust, or US bank equities in the financial crisis. Thankfully, the wider economy has ...

Samsonite International SA Chief Executive Officer Ramesh Tainwala resigned this month after a short seller highlighted issues with how he’d presented his educational history. Investors in AirAsia Bhd. should take notice. After all, co-founder Tony Fernandes is another notable Asian CEO who’s not been shy of boasting academic credentials that are less than they first appear. At a time when ...

Washington is working up a sweat over China’s industrial policies. There are fears Beijing will build technology companies and advanced manufacturers capable of squashing American rivals by lavishing aid on favoured sectors. Many of the tariffs the US plans to impose are aimed at products generated by this state-led agenda, most of it under the “Made in China 2025” program. ...

For all the flaws of the tax reform that Congress passed back in December, there’s one area where it appears to be working: Getting US companies to bring back the enormous piles of money they have stashed abroad. Now the question is what they will do with it. Before 2018, the US government taxed companies’ foreign earnings in a highly ...

The European Central Bank (ECB) has said it intends to end its bond-buying program at the end of this year. It was the right decision. The aim of the program was to stave off the threat of deflation, and that has been done. Nonetheless, risks remain, and the central bank can’t afford to ignore them. The euro-zone economy has come ...

The Hong Kong market is low-hanging fruit for shy but hungry unicorns. Bitmain Technologies Ltd., the world’s dominant producer of cryptocurrency-mining equipment, is mulling a public listing, founder Jihan Wu told Blake Schmidt of Bloomberg News. Giving early backers such as Sequoia Capital and IDG Capital an exit is a fine gesture, sure, but the four-year-old Chinese company is rushing ...