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When nothing is something in bonds

  So it turns out nothing really is something in the bond market. Big Wall Street firms may lament the persistence of zero interest-rate policies in the US, but they look downright ostentatious when pitted against Europe’s vortex of negative-rate policies. In the past week alone, the volume of negative-yielding euro-zone debt surged 30 percent, to a record 2.6 trillion ...

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Watch what indexing does for public pensions

  The unfunded liabilities of public pensions are out of control across the country. My state, Illinois, is the most severe case, with only 40 percent of those liabilities funded. Given the magnitude of the problem, and the political and legal obstacles to fixing it, it remains tempting to underplay the importance of straightforward financial changes that could put the ...

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Trump slams air-traffic system, privatization backers cheer

  Bloomberg President Donald Trump called the US air-traffic system ‘obsolete’ in comments that were cheered by proponents of taking the job of monitoring the skies away from government. Trump, speaking at a meeting of airline executives and other aviation industry officials, made the strongest comments to date from the White House on problems with the air-traffic system. He echoed ...

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