What is striking about the latest bouts of financial turmoil — the recent wild swings in global stock and bond markets — is that they provide a sobering reminder of the potential hazards of economic instability. There are parallels between the present tumultuous situation and past episodes of economic disruption, including the Great Depression of the 1930s. Just for the ...

It’s hard not to see HSBC Holdings Plc’s exclusion from China’s interest-rate reform as a snub. Hong Kong’s biggest bank wasn’t included in a list of 18 lenders that will participate in pricing for a new loan prime rate that the People’s Bank of China will start releasing on Tuesday. The roster includes foreign lenders Standard Chartered Plc and Citigroup ...

Two 100-year bonds for countries that start with the letter A. Other than that, there’s pretty much zilch in common between the century maturity debt issued by Austria and Argentina, as we’ve seen over the past few weeks. Nothing illustrates the desperate hunt for yield among high-quality global issues better than Austria’s 100-year bond. The debt was issued at just ...

As the financial world’s movers and shakers hunker down at Jackson Hole this weekend, one pressing question will be who’s next to cut interest rates. The People’s Bank of China has already decided: It isn’t joining the global race to the bottom. Over the weekend, the PBOC took a long-awaited step in interest-rate reform, which aims to give markets more ...

Don’t you wish you had a dollar for every beleaguered official who cried “fiscal policy must do more”? Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo actually seems to mean it. Fresh from re-election, Jokowi, as he’s known, is aiming to cushion Southeast Asia’s largest economy from a slowdown and make much-needed investments in infrastructure like roads, ports and airports, and even a new ...

It looks like SoftBank Group Corp.’s Masayoshi Son may be struggling to start his next epic journey. A month after announcing an eclectic mix of investors for its Vision Fund 2, SoftBank is leaning on its own employees for cash, planning to lend them as much as much as $20 billion to buy stakes in the venture-capital vehicle, the Wall ...

If India is such a bright hope for global coal demand, why can’t investors see it? The country will experience the largest increase in coal burning through 2023, according to the International Energy Agency, with a 3.9 percent annual pace of growth that should be enough to offset falling consumption in developed countries. BloombergNEF, whose forecasts tend to be less ...

Bloomberg US index futures drifted with stocks in Europe as investors digested developments in trade talks and comments from a Federal Reserve official about the strength of the biggest economy. Treasuries climbed and a gauge of the dollar held close to the year’s high. Contracts on three main American equity indexes all struggled for traction after the underlying benchmarks rose, ...

Bloomberg Nigerian stocks may be among this year’s worst performers, but that’s at least boosting the appeal of their yields. The benchmark index in Africa’s biggest oil producer has fallen 14 percent this year, making it the fourth-worst among 94 major bourses tracked by Bloomberg. The slump underscores foreign investors’ frustration over a lack of policy progress since President Muhammadu ...

Bloomberg A senior official at the European Central Bank (ECB) warned that banks embracing external data storage and other digital technology need to face an uncomfortable truth: there’s a good chance they’ll get hacked. “There will be accidents, especially in the cloud,” Korbinian Ibel, a director general at the ECB’s supervisory arm, said in an interview. “It’s not that clouds ...