A 15% tariff that went into effect September 1 on about $112 billion of goods imported from China will start pushing up prices of clothing, shoes and other consumer goods arriving at US ports this week. That should start taking a serious toll on shopping in the US. While 82% of intermediate inputs are already affected by tariffs, just 29% ...
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WeWork’s balance sheet looks ugly
How to make sense of the whopping $47 billion in lease liabilities that WeWork disclosed ahead of its planned IPO? That figure makes WeWork one of the world’s largest lessees, according to Bloomberg data, which is pretty astonishing considering the flexible office space provider was founded less than a decade ago, bleeds cash, and doesn’t plan to become profitable any ...
Read More »China’s auto stimulus won’t delight gridlocked cities
Is China’s 14-month car crash at an end? After more than a year of declining sales, the country’s auto industry has relief in sight. Beijing’s ruling State Council told city governments to loosen or cancel restrictions on new car sales designed to limit congestion, as part of a package of measures to get sputtering economic growth back on track. The ...
Read More »Germany’s obsession with fiscal prudence
You can have too much of a good thing — even, as Germany proves, financial self-discipline. With the economy on the verge of recession and growth in the wider euro area sputtering out, a strong fiscal stimulus is needed from Berlin. Under conditions like these, fear of public borrowing is the opposite of prudent. The government is running a budget ...
Read More »Bank mergers are no silver bullet for India
With every passing day, India’s economic indicators are turning a little bleaker. The situation is bad enough to warrant using the word “crisis,†arriving just as the government’s fiscal ammunition is spent. The announcement of 5% GDP growth in the June quarter showed the economy growing at its weakest pace in six years. On Sunday, the top six carmakers reported ...
Read More »Blackstone Tallgrass bid reminds us why pipelines are unloved
One could almost feel sorry for that decidedly unloved crowd known as pipeline operators. Except they keep finding ways to make it really hard. Tallgrass Energy has received a buyout offer from an investor group led by Blackstone Group. This follows a deal in March in which the group took a controlling stake in Tallgrass. Things haven’t gone well since ...
Read More »Jack Ma saves us from Elon Musk’s AI dystopia
Tech billionaires Jack Ma and Elon Musk can’t agree whether artificial intelligence (AI) is going to take over the world. Only one of them is what we might think of as a tech guy, and it’s that difference that means the other is likely to be right. Musk, a physicist by training, is a well-known AI radical who sees the ...
Read More »Stocks rise as risks recede from Hong Kong to Britain
Bloomberg US equity-index futures rallied alongside European and Asian stocks as traders cheered a reduction in political tension from Italy and Britain to Hong Kong. Treasuries and gold retreated, while the dollar slipped. Contracts on the three major American share gauges jumped, signalling stocks will rebound from declines. All industry groups in the Stoxx Europe 600 index advanced, almost erasing ...
Read More »Pound advances after Johnson’s ‘defeat’ dims no-deal Brexit risk
Bloomberg The pound rallied 1 percent and gilts slid as investors saw a lower risk of a no-deal Brexit following a defeat for the government in parliament. Sterling led gains among Group-of-10 peers and UK stocks also gained as lawmakers were expected to vote on Wednesday to force Prime Minister Boris Johnson to delay Brexit by three months. Johnson retaliated ...
Read More »Deutsche Bank and UBS CEOs criticise negative rates impact
Bloomberg Europe’s top banking executives ratcheted up criticism of negative interest rates ahead of a key European Central Bank (ECB) meeting, warning of severe consequences to asset prices and the broader economy. Deutsche Bank AG Chief Executive Officer Christian Sewing warned that more monetary easing by the European Central Bank, as widely expected next week, will have “grave side effects†...
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