The annual performance review seems to be on its way out at U.S. corporations. Prominent companies have been ending the practice of numerically ranking employees as well. Sounds great! Performance reviews are a pain, right? If you think getting rid of them might betoken a kinder, gentler, mellower approach to human resources, though, you might want to check out …

Urjit Patel, the new governor of the Reserve Bank of India, has a hard act to follow. His predecessor and former boss at the central bank, Raghuram Rajan, was eminent at home and abroad, and set a high standard for talking truth to power — which could explain why he won’t be serving a second three-year term. Patel, Rajan’s quiet …

  Brazil may have pulled off the Olympics, but its economy is still in doldrums. And the political chaos is adding to the economic misery. The country is grappling with the worst recession in more than a century as the economy shrinks sharply. Brazil’s GDP has fallen by 5.4 % year-on-year. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) slashed …