The most important trait of any Covid-19 contact-tracing app is that people actually use it. Without widespread adoption, we may all be locked down for a lot longer. Just how widespread? In the UK, at least 80% of smartphone users, covering 56% of the total population, will need to use the app to be effective in tracing contacts with those ...

Whether working from home has been a productivity and wellness-enhancing revelation or a burden to be shouldered with stoic resolve depends on your job, your home setup and your personality. It may even depend on the day. But just as air travel changed beyond recognition after 9/11, traditional offices appear set to become safer, cleaner and less pleasing environments too. ...

If IMF estimates are accurate, this will be the first time since the Great Depression that both advanced and emerging economies could be in recession. The potential of unemployment rising to double digits is also reminiscent of the depression of the 1930s. Some of the great economic ideas of our time were forged in the experience of that previous economic ...

So orderly, so nit-picking, so German. This week, Germany’s constitutional court in Karlsruhe finally delivered its verdict on the European Central Bank’s (ECB) most prominent bond-buying program. Weighing in at 110 pages, this ruling was historic. For the first time, a national court in effect overruled the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. Well spaced out because of the new ...

Asia has a new public emergency: breathing life into moribund economies. Months after severely curtailing social and commercial activity in a bid to contain Covid-19, governments are scrambling to reboot activity. They confront a coronavirus that isn’t out of business but economies that very nearly are. The policy priority is shifting from suppressing infections at almost any cost to combating ...

President Donald Trump is a liar — hardly the first but certainly the worst among US presidents. By one count, he has made about 18,000 false or misleading claims, an unmistakable sign of his willingness to deceive. His supporters do not seem especially bothered. They focus on what Trump does, not on whether he tells the truth. Which raises a ...

As America’s economic reopening fitfully proceeds, it is becoming clear that it will require a precious resource often in short supply: trust. Americans are about to see a new referendum on how strong is the glue that holds them together. Should you show up again for work? It depends how much you trust the pronouncements of your employer that the ...

Bloomberg US equity-index futures gained on Wednesday after President Donald Trump pushed again to reopen the economy, while stocks in Europe drifted amid mixed corporate earnings and more dismal economic data. The dollar steadied and Treasury yields edged higher. The Stoxx Europe 600 index struggled for direction after advancing the most in almost three weeks on Tuesday, with gains for ...

Bloomberg Indian stocks rebounded from their lowest level in almost two weeks as data showing record contraction in the nation’s services industry in April underlined the need for more support measures from the government. The S&P BSE Sensex jumped 0.9% to 31,728.72 as of 11:47 am in Mumbai, reversing losses of as much as 0.9%. The NSE Nifty 50 Index ...

Bloomberg Australian shares are slowly recovering from the March sell-off even as the global economic outlook gets gloomier with the fresh trade discord between the US and China. This week the stock benchmark Down Under is on track to record best gain in about a month. The prospects of the first recession in almost 30 years and little-to-no corporate earnings ...