Australia’s miracle economy has delivered 26 years of uninterrupted growth, a record among developed nations. So how come its financial sector is riven with scandal and deceit? In truth, the two things are connected. Imagine you had two teenage children. Both have a habit of taking your credit card to spend on clothes and going out, but do it stealthily ...

The outlook for US debt and deficits isn’t pretty. The latest projections from the Congressional Budget Office are for $1 trillion annual budget shortfalls. On top of that, Treasury debt held by the public will almost double to $27.1 trillion over the next 10 years as the US steps up its borrowing to finance the deficits. Perhaps the worst part ...

A popular trade that worked for years is losing its shine. US multinationals – the missionaries of globalization that sell toothpaste, fast food and smartphones to consumers from China to India – have been investor darlings since the 2013 taper tantrum. Buying large diversified companies offered a smart way to gain exposure to these fast-growing young markets, removing the need ...

I’ve long been a critic of Apple, but today I give up: It’s the perfect tech company for this day and age, an example to the rest of Silicon Valley. After Apple’s latest results announcement, one could knock it yet again for its stable dependence on a single mature product — the iPhone. That product delivered 62.2 percent of the ...

Bloomberg A series of high-profile accidents involving self-driving cars are slowing the mad rush into the autonomous vehicles business, according to a report issued. The accidents, some of them fatal, have ignited a debate about how to regulate the safety of self-driving vehicles and tempered the public’s expectations, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said. They’ve also exposed the downside of rushing ...

Bloomberg Google is secretly building a social-gaming startup, part of its effort to create fledgling companies within the internet-search giant. The founder and co-owner of the new firm, called Arcade, is Michael Sayman, according to people familiar with the matter. Sayman is the 21-year-old wunderkind who started as a Facebook Inc. intern at age 17 and left that company for ...

Bloomberg Axon Enterprise Inc., the police technology company best known for its Taser stun guns, agreed to purchase its main competitor in the body camera industry, Vievu LLC. The combination of the two largest providers of the recording devices will create a dominant force in police surveillance. The companies declined to disclose financial details; Axon said it would discuss them ...

Bloomberg Twitter Inc. advised users to change their passwords after the company found a bug in its systems that exposed passwords in plain text internally. The company said it removed the non-encrypted passwords from its system, and is working to avoid such an issue happening again. An internal investigation “shows no indication of breach or misuse by anyone” and there’s ...

Bloomberg After President Emmanuel Macron scrapped plans for a high-speed rail connection to Limoges, a city in central France, local entrepreneur Fabien Thibaut picked up his phone to call Elon Musk and talk about the Hyperloop — Musk’s idea for superfast trains zooming in tubes. “This kind of project is essential for a city like ours,” said Thibaut, one of ...

Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG is literally leaving Wall Street, moving its New York headquarters to midtown Manhattan as the German investment bank embarks on a broad shakeup of its US operations. The company will lease 1.1 million square feet of office space at Columbus Circle, slashing its footprint in the city by 30 percent, the head of Deutsche Bank’s Americas ...