Bloomberg Iraqi authorities halted key financial transactions with the country’s Kurdish region, deepening its isolation after last week’s overwhelming vote in favor of independence. The central bank banned lenders with headquarters in the northern Kurdistan region from taking part in dollar auctions, according to a central bank official who asked not to be named. Banks based in Baghdad are also …

Bloomberg Brazilians may be a year away from voting for their next president, but investors are already plenty worried. Measures of implied volatility for the currency show traders pricing in big swings around the October 2018 vote, even as calm pervades in the near term. The split has taken the ratio between one-year and six-month implied volatility to the highest …

Donald Trump will always tell you that he is a “great builder.” “You can go ahead and speak to the guys who have 400-pound wives at home who are jealous of me,” he told me several years ago. “But the guys who know me know I’m a great builder.” A month before he announced his presidential candidacy in 2015, Trump …