Hong Kong led the world in adopting helicopter money. Now the city’s long-term wage subsidies have again put it at the forefront of global efforts to blunt the impact of the coronavirus. Other economies should pay attention. The government said that it will fund 50% of affected workers’ salaries for six months, capped at the equivalent of $1,160 a month. ...

In the US, the headline gross domestic product number reported every quarter by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) is the percentage change in GDP from the previous quarter, annualised. Other countries, and international economic-statistics compilers such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, tend to report just the quarterly percentage change and skip the annualising. I don’t know ...

A US housing crisis is coming and although it won’t be anything like the last one, that won’t make it any less painful. Even though there has been no rampant speculation or subprime mortgage fraud, housing is still overvalued. And the dearth of inventory that’s plagued the current cycle will reverse in violent fashion once the worst of the virus ...

Those photos of famous public spaces in Paris or Manhattan in the age of corona-lockdown convey an eerie absence. The eyes search the frame for the people who aren’t there. The empty Main Street of my hometown will never be mistaken for the Tuileries or Times Square. Outside the new Vietnamese restaurant, which opened just before the coronavirus swept all ...

“Allow me to say as I told her personally today, the governor of Oregon, Governor Kate Brown — her unilateral decision to send 140 ventilators … to New York, to me was in the very highest American tradition of loving your neighbor. And when I talked to Governor Cuomo, Mr. President, he said they never asked Oregon for the ventilators ...

The Covid-19 epidemic has exposed poor leadership and governance worldwide. From Spain to the UK to the US, politicians have waited far too long before taking the dramatic steps needed to protect their citizens. Greece has been one noticeable — and perhaps surprising — exception to this trend. The government imposed severe social distancing measures at a much earlier stage ...

Bloomberg Global stocks began the week on the back foot as investors readied for the start of an earnings season marked by unprecedented uncertainty over the corporate impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Oil pared earlier gains after a historic deal to cut output. Futures on the three main US equity indexes all dropped, while stocks fell in Asia’s main financial ...

Bloomberg Famed investor Mike Novogratz says this is the time for Bitcoin, citing greater adoption around the globe and unprecedented actions by central banks battling the fallout from the spreading coronavirus. “The risk on any store of value, if it’s gold, is that enough people believe in it,” Novogratz said in a Bloomberg TV interview. “It’s still a question of ...

Bloomberg India’s most ambitious attempt to influence how foreigners trade its currency slipped through with little fanfare two weeks ago. On a day when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executed an emergency rate cut and pledged $50 billion of liquidity, it also opened the way for local banks to trade non-deliverable forwards (NDFs), a currency derivative often blamed as ...

Bloomberg A “new wave of consolidation” among global investment banks could be triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new report by Oliver Wyman and Morgan Stanley. Some banks may find their lack of scale and the short term pressure “too acute” to survive the crisis, particularly in Europe where returns are lower compared to bigger, more profitable global ...