Two 100-year bonds for countries that start with the letter A. Other than that, there’s pretty much zilch in common between the century maturity debt issued by Austria and Argentina, as we’ve seen over the past few weeks. Nothing illustrates the desperate hunt for yield among high-quality global issues better than Austria’s 100-year bond. The debt was issued at just ...

As the financial world’s movers and shakers hunker down at Jackson Hole this weekend, one pressing question will be who’s next to cut interest rates. The People’s Bank of China has already decided: It isn’t joining the global race to the bottom. Over the weekend, the PBOC took a long-awaited step in interest-rate reform, which aims to give markets more ...

Don’t you wish you had a dollar for every beleaguered official who cried “fiscal policy must do more”? Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo actually seems to mean it. Fresh from re-election, Jokowi, as he’s known, is aiming to cushion Southeast Asia’s largest economy from a slowdown and make much-needed investments in infrastructure like roads, ports and airports, and even a new ...