Ten months ago, I warned that storm clouds were brewing over the global technology industry. The situation today is much worse. Back then, a US-China trade war was more risk than reality, Apple Inc.’s pending iPhone update held promise, and central banks were still in tightening mode. Yet inventories at the end of June 2018 had climbed to the highest ...

When Volkswagen AG admitted rigging diesel emission tests in September 2015, its German rival Daimler AG sounded pretty dismissive in defending the compliance of its own Mercedes-Benz vehicles. “We categorically deny the accusation of manipulating emission tests regarding our vehicles,” the luxury car giant said. If Daimler shareholders concluded from that statement that the company wouldn’t have to recall any ...

Mario Draghi has worked nothing short of monetary miracles over his eight-year term as European Central Bank (ECB) President through a sequence of unconventional policy interventions. As we count down the days to Draghi’s departure, expectations are building once again that he will be able to pull one final rabbit out of the hat. Whether long-term loans to banks, a ...

Since the days of Thomas Malthus, we’ve worried that overpopulation is about to overwhelm our planet. Those fears haven’t gone away. A further two billion people will be added to the current world population of 7.7 billion by 2050, the United Nations Population Division said in a report. Numbers will still be rising as the total approaches 11 billion people ...

Viral Acharya’s departure as a deputy governor of the India’s central bank is worrisome, though not altogether surprising. Last October, Acharya delivered a hard-hitting speech on central bank independence. While that ostensibly dealt with Argentina in 2010, the thinly veiled similarity with New Delhi’s plan to raid the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) balance sheet didn’t fool anyone, least of ...

FedEx Corp. may finally be waking up to the threat Amazon.com Inc. poses to its business model. The logistics company is offering big discounts to help fill the planes in its Express delivery network with more e-commerce shipments, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited people familiar with the matter. The deals are being used to woo customers away ...

Bloomberg Three big Chinese banks extended their drop on Wednesday, after a US media report suggested they could face fallout from an investigation into North Korean sanctions violations. China Merchants Bank Co., Bank of Communications Co. and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Co. fell in Shanghai and Hong Kong trading after the Washington Post said that a US judge found three ...

Bloomberg The Czech central bank took a step back from Europe’s most aggressive campaign of interest-rate increases as global risks to the export-oriented economy overshadow domestic price pressures. After raising borrowing costs last month for the eighth time in two years, the central bank left the benchmark rate at 2 percent on Wednesday, in line with expectations. Policy makers have ...

Bloomberg HDFC Bank Ltd., India’s biggest lender by market value, has picked Bank of America Corp. and Morgan Stanley to manage an initial public offering of its non-bank finance unit, people with knowledge of the matter said. The bank plans to sell the shares in HDB Financial Services Ltd. before March 31 in a deal that may raise about 100 ...

Bloomberg Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the downside risks to the US economy have increased recently, reinforcing the case among policy makers for somewhat lower interest rates. “Crosscurrents have reem-erged, with apparent progress on trade turning to greater uncertainty and with incoming data raising renewed concerns about the strength of the global economy,” Powell told the Council on Foreign ...