Bloomberg Brazil’s new central bank chief Ilan Goldfajn suggested it’s too early to think about cutting rates as inflation remains above target and the government has yet to implement budget cuts. Short-dated swap rates rose. Consumer prices will increase 4.7 percent next year, still above the target set by the government, the central bank said in its quarterly inflation …

  Bloomberg The widening rich-poor divide in America has robbed the economy of a year’s worth of consumption, according to the International Monetary Fund. Middle-class households declined as a share of the population between 1970 and 2014, while the proportion in high- and low-income brackets expanded, according to new research by IMF economists Ali Alichi, Kory Kantenga and Juan Sole. …

  “See that little stream? We could walk to it in two minutes. It took the British a month to walk to it — a whole empire walking very slowly, dying in front and pushing forward behind.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Tender Is The Night” WASHINGTON The walk began at 7:30 a.m., July 1, 1916, when British infantry advanced towards German …