In economic terms, Americans have a lot to be thankful for this year. Unemployment is at record lows, more people are actually working (as opposed to dropping out of the workforce), and wage growth is improving for workers on the low end of the scale. Other countries, when recovering after a big financial crisis, have suffered though a “lost decade” ...

A corporate battle at Telecom Italia SpA shows why it’s tough to be an investor in Italy these days. The government is interfering with a private company to get hold of its most prized asset: the country’s phone and broadband network. The opposition tacitly supports the plan. Italy is playing fast and loose with property rights and no one seems ...

How did Facebook Inc., mere distributor of clicks and likes, become the nexus of so many crises? And why does it always seem to make things worse? Facing global criticism over privacy breaches and the Russian disinformation campaign, according to the New York Times, Facebook dissembled publicly, stifled dissent internally, called in political favors, and hired a consulting firm to ...

The collapse of a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders last weekend in Papua New Guinea isn’t the end of the world. In fact economic relations between the 21 nations won’t change much. Most need both China and the US — and that’s what they will continue to get. For the first time since leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) group ...

Many of us will have breathed a sigh of relief as, after a marathon eight-hour meeting on Monday, it looked like India’s government and its central bank had finally made peace with each other after weeks of very public sniping. Reports after the meeting stressed that the tone had been “conciliatory.” (The Reserve Bank of India’s own readout of the ...

Sometimes you just have to play to your strengths. While Xiaomi Inc. proclaims its status as an internet player, the Chinese company has been unable to shed its reputation for being basically a smartphone maker. Its inability to convince investors has been a major reason the stock has fallen 20 percent since Xiaomi’s July IPO. So it makes sense for ...

If you depose a king, you’d best have a plan for what to do in the aftermath. That’s the challenge confronting Nissan Motor Co. CEO Hiroto Saikawa after the remarkable palace coup in which Chairman Carlos Ghosn was dethroned after almost two decades bestriding the global auto industry. The man who’s widely seen as indispensable to the collective functioning of ...

Bloomberg When it comes to US banks’ lending risk, it doesn’t get much bigger than General Electric Co. The five biggest Wall Street firms have committed to lending at least $3.5 billion each to the industrial giant facing concerns about the sustainability of its debt. GE has almost $41 billion in credit lines it can draw from, according to its ...

Bloomberg Investors in Deutsche Bank AG have added the lender’s role in Danske Bank’s money laundering scandal to their growing list of worries. A management shakeup, weak earnings and political turmoil saw Deutsche Bank shares hit multiple lows this year. Now, concerns about its involvement in Europe’s biggest money-laundering scandal are weighing on the stock after the key whistle-blower pointed ...

Bloomberg Big US banks that are already smashing profit records will soon get a $5 billion windfall, courtesy of the federal government. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp announced that lenders will no longer have to pay quarterly surcharges that cover some of the costs of insuring their customers’ deposits. Megabanks such as JPMorgan Chase & Co and Bank of America ...