Opinion

The stronger dollar may have taken its toll on Turkey and Argentina but there is one notable exception to the stresses plaguing emerging markets – Russia. Investors have largely shrugged off the shock from US Treasury sanctions being imposed for the first time on specific Russian companies, notably aluminum producer United Co. Rusal. The MOEX Russia Index, the country’s benchmark, ...

Maybe Macy’s Inc. wasn’t just coasting on the holiday spirit after all. The department store giant said comparable sales in the first quarter were up 3.9 percent over a year earlier, blowing past analyst expectations. When you include sales at departments licensed to third parties, it was even stronger, up 4.2 percent over a year earlier. That robust growth followed ...

The Trump administration is drawing up a proposal to simplify the Volcker Rule, one of the most controversial pieces of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform. This could be a desirable development, as long as it doesn’t weaken a crucial safeguard against gambling with taxpayers’ money. The Volcker Rule has a worthy goal: Limit government subsidies to financial institutions. When authorities ...

India seems intent on cleaning up a banking sector that’s plagued by bad loans and high-profile scams. The question is how damaging the cure will turn out to be. On May 13, federal investigators went after Usha Ananthasubramanian, currently the head of state-run Allahabad Bank, filing formal charges over her alleged involvement in a multi-billion dollar fraud involving celebrity jeweler ...

Mahathir Mohamad blamed everyone except himself and his policies for his country’s entanglement in the 1997 Asian crisis. It appears two decades haven’t been enough to mellow the Malaysian leader. The 92-year-old prime minister has won an unexpected second shot at a job he retired from in 2003. But his contempt for markets is still intact. No, he hasn’t returned ...

Following the financial meltdown of a key government contractor in the UK, Carillion Plc., legislators and professionals are discussing the breakup of the Big Four auditing firms. Such a drastic measure, however, would probably do less to increase the relevance of audits than a different change, also unpopular with auditors. Carillion’s demise caused the debate because, as the construction firm ...

There’s a common misperception that the US is the land of small government, where the poor receive little assistance. To many on the left, the US is a uniquely bad actor, eschewing the enlightened social democracy of Western Europe and leaving the economically unfortunate to suffer. Those on the right tend to take a more positive view of the same ...

Other than the embarrassment of asking the country’s second-largest state-run lender to, well, stop lending, there’s no other reason why India should allow Punjab National Bank (PNB) to advance even one rupee to anybody except the government. The financial institution, at the epicenter of a massive fraud allegedly committed by uncle-nephew jeweler duo Mehul Choksi and Nirav Modi, last week ...

The company that makes your iPhones isn’t the only Apple that matters on global markets. Have a look what’s happening in China. Trading volume in the apple futures that launched on the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange in December has been soaring in recent months. On May 15 alone, 4.6 million contracts changed hands – representing 46 million metric tons of apples, ...

President Donald Trump has indicated, via Twitter, that he’s prepared to make an enormous concession to smooth trade talks with China, offering upfront to ease sanctions on ZTE Corp., the country’s second-largest telecom equipment maker. But ZTE is being punished for deliberately violating US sanctions — twice. The company’s punishment needs to be enforced, not used as a bargaining chip. ...