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Elizabeth Warren is progressivism’s Trump

Elizabeth Warren was supposed to be the thinking person’s Bernie Sanders, impeccably progressive but with realistic arithmetic connecting aspirations to resources. Then came her explanation of how she would finance “Medicare for All.” Before Republicans wearied of pretending to care about fiscal rectitude, they pretended that they could eliminate budget deficits by eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse,” a pledge that ...

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Shun Black Friday and save world

On London’s Oxford Street, you could almost forget we were in the midst of a retail apocalypse. Christmas lights and a slew of special offers marking an ever earlier start to the imported bargain frenzy, Black Friday, brought out the crowds. Similar holiday cheer and promotions have spread elsewhere in Europe too. But European retailers face a new worry: shoppers ...

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Media megamergers can be good for the local news

Local news is in steep decline. A recent report from Pen America finds that the US has lost more than 1,800 newspapers since 2004. The consequences include a decline in civic engagement and an increase in corruption. The report mentions how government officials in Bell, California, a city without a newspaper, were able to get rid of caps on their ...

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With bad growth, India needs more than luck

With India’s growth tumbling to 4.5% from 8.1% in little more than a year, you’d be surprised to know that Shaktikanta Das has one of the easiest jobs in central banking. He just has to keep doing what he’s been doing since becoming governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) last December: cut interest rates. Fortunately, political will is ...

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Susan Rice’s memoir prompts nostalgia for the Obama years

Reading Susan Rice’s new memoir, “Tough Love,” is a reminder of two things: what a remarkably gifted, subtle and perhaps tragic man President Obama was; and how people like Rice who served him endured ceaseless public attacks in a country that was already on the ragged edge, though we didn’t yet know it. Washington memoirs are most valuable for the ...

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Bankers aren’t ready to start sharing yet

Three years ago Tidjane Thiam stirred hopes that the banking industry was looking at new ways to tackle its bloated cost base. The chief executive officer of Credit Suisse Group AG said his company was working on a common platform with another lender to share expenses. The project has made little visible progress since then, and it’s not because the ...

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Dear Alibaba, thank you for the $10 trillion gift

Has the golden age of asset management finally arrived in Asia? For years, Asia’s hottest unicorns left their homelands to list in New York for one simple reason: a deep pool of US money. And they have been rewarded. From Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to JD.com Inc., more than a dozen Chinese companies listed there have a market capitalization of ...

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United places $7 billion order for long-range Airbus A321s

Bloomberg United Airlines Holdings Inc. ordered its first long-range Airbus SE A321neo jets, dealing a new setback to Boeing Co. as the US planemaker struggles through the grounding of its 737 Max. The carrier said it would take 50 of Airbus’s A321XLR jets, with deliveries to begin in 2024 — a year after the model’s planned debut. Valued at $7.1 ...

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Lufthansa faces $6.4m fine over US violations

Bloomberg Deutsche Lufthansa AG was hit with a proposed $6.4 million fine by US aviation authorities over accusations that the carrier operated about 600 flights into San Diego and Philadelphia without proper approval. The Federal Aviation Administration said Lufthansa knew it lacked authorisation to fly to the two cities from March 22, 2018, through May 27 of this year, the ...

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