The news media have been abuzz for a few weeks about the proliferation and effect of fake news. Facebook Inc. is changing how it handles news from dubious sources, while Twitter Inc. is rethinking how to respond to bots promoting fabricated articles. Alphabet Inc. (Google) has rejiggered its algorithms to fight phony stories. All of which raises some very ...

  Hong Kong property investors thought they could pick up pennies in front of the steamroller called the Federal Reserve. No longer. US short-term rates were climbing hard even before Donald Trump’s victory. Interbank liquidity in the city was more than abundant, however, thanks to capital fleeing a weakening Chinese currency to the safety of the pegged Hong Kong dollar.All ...

  The unemployment rate is down to 4.6 percent, which sounds pretty good. But the unemployment rate doesn’t count people who’ve given up looking for jobs, which is why the employment-to-population ratio, especially the ‘prime-age’ ratio for those 25 through 54, may be a better measure of the health of the labor market. After I wrote about this metric, several ...