If working from home during the pandemic has shown anything, it’s that apartments and houses are our castles, like it or not. Hong Kong is emerging from a semi-lockdown (restaurants open, schools shut, workers everywhere on the home-office spectrum) and it’s clear that investors see refuge in housing, too. The world’s least-affordable residential prices look likely to keep floating in ...

It’s not all sunshine and roses being Europe’s benchmark borrower. Germany has a unique problem in that its AAA-rated debt is so revered as collateral that it’s very expensive to actually buy. The country’s debt agency has sharply increased its second-quarter borrowing program to 130 billion euros ($140 billion) to help pay for the Covid-19 crisis. Given that investors already ...

In the midst of the constant up-and-down of coronavirus news, both from science and the markets, it’s easy to lose sight of the scariest scenario of them all: the one where there’s no magic bullet. In this entirely plausible situation, there would be no effective Covid-19 vaccine or transformative therapy; the combination of testing and contact tracing wouldn’t successfully suppress ...

The instruction given by Boris Johnson to the British people on March 23 was dead simple: “You must stay at home.” The pithiness and urgency of that message, the alarming rise in deaths, and the UK prime minister’s subsequent hospitalisation with Covid-19 all reinforced the instruction. People got it. Some say it was too successful. Many Britons don’t seem to ...

As states relax shelter-in-place orders, the economy should bounce back a bit this month and next. Continued fears among consumers and businesses mean the US won’t be back to February’s levels any time soon, but the early April collapse might mark a low as we adjust to our new pandemic normal. The bigger worry might be July, as three key ...

05 May 2020, Northern Ireland, Magherafelt: Workers manufacture Personal protective equipment (PPE), including face shields, for health workers at the Bloc Blinds factory. Photo: Peter Morrison/PA Wire/dpa[/caption Suppose you’re working in an essential industry and your employer hasn’t provided you with adequate personal protective equipment. Maybe you say to yourself, “Okay, there’s a shortage, they’re trying.” Then you discover that ...

Bloomberg The US delayed an annual report to Congress assessing Hong Kong’s autonomy, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said, amid signals that China’s top agency in the city could take a more hands-on role. The postponement will “allow us to account for any additional actions that Beijing may be contemplating in the run-up to the National People’s Congress that would ...

Bloomberg An overnight gas leak at an LG Chem Ltd polymer plant in southern India has killed at least 11 people and forced the evacuation of thousands in the city of Visakhapatnam after the company tried to restart operations following the partial easing of the country’s coronavirus lockdown. “The unfortunate event took place past midnight when they tried to restart ...

Bloomberg The World Health Organization (WHO) is considering a new mission to seek the source of the coronavirus in China, amid growing controversy over the origin of a pandemic that has killed more than a quarter of a million people. “Without knowing where the animal origin is, it’s hard to prevent it from happening again,” Maria Van Kerkhove, a WHO ...

Bloomberg France will lay out its plan to roll back lockdown measures, joining countries including Germany, Italy and the Netherlands in easing restrictions as the economic pain from the fallout of the coronavirus intensifies. French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe was expected to unveil final details of his plan to end curbs on public life on Thursday. The country is preparing ...