Classic Layout

Renegade general shows perils in South Sudan’s peace plans

Bloomberg As South Sudan’s main combatants prepare to join forces to end a brutal five-year civil war, recent fighting involving a renegade military officer suggests the conflict may be far from over. Thousands of civilians have fled their homes in Yei state in the southwest of the country this year, witnesses to alleged murders and looting as government troops battle ...

Read More »

Low interest rates might be what is hurting growth

Economists tend to think of central-bank interest rates purely in terms of their effect on macroeconomic benchmarks such as inflation, output and unemployment. The Federal Reserve’s dual mandate, for instance, directs it to seek stable prices and maximum employment. Mainstream macroeconomic models, such as the dominant New Keynesian models used by most central banks, support this view. Occasionally, economists or ...

Read More »

The pound might survive Brexit

Once British lawmakers finally decide what kind of Brexit they want, the pound surely ought to break out of the tight range in which it has traded against the euro since Britain voted to leave the European Union (EU). Just don’t expect too sharp a collapse if it really comes to a messy, no-deal Brexit. It helps that the pound ...

Read More »

The future of energy is looking pretty sunny

The newly published 2019 US Energy & Employment Report reveals that the fuels and electric-power-generation sectors employ nearly 2 million people. It’s a wealth of data not just on what people do in energy, but also on where employers foresee growth and hiring tightness. A few trends jump out — including that, even in the oil patch, services jobs are ...

Read More »

EU needs a plan to fight Putin’s trolls

Europe is bracing for a Russian propaganda onslaught in the run-up to this May’s parliamentary elections. The European Commission predicts the Kremlin’s disinformation operations will be “systematic, well-resourced and on a different scale to other countries.” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s goal is to expand the Euroskeptic bloc in the next European Parliament in order to weaken EU cohesion and accommodate ...

Read More »

PetroChina’s $45b can’t actually feed a dry well

It’s remarkable what a little money can do. Faced with a declining reserve base and a government mandate to increase domestic production, PetroChina went on a spending splurge last year. Its 256 billion yuan ($38 billion) in capital expenditures in 2018 was more than was spent by BP Plc, Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips put together. It was also about 10 ...

Read More »

Samsung’s profit warning is infact tech’s inverted yield curve

Tougher times are ahead for the technology industry. A downturn sparked by excess inventories and weakened demand, signs of which were evident back in August, could drag on longer than expected. Samsung Electronics Co. said that first-quarter results will fall short of estimates. The rare profit warning came about a fortnight before the company was scheduled to give preliminary sales ...

Read More »

Searching for meaning in Tesla’s stock price

Tesla Inc.’s stock price has sunk below $260 for the first time since late October. What does that mean? Trying to discern meaning in the particular set of numbers next to the TSLA ticker on any given day is often futile. With a little context, however, that $260 level takes on some interesting dimensions. Most notably, it takes the stock ...

Read More »

Stocks fall as Treasuries rally on global outlook

Bloomberg The rally in bonds gained momentum as traders turned their focus to a worrying economic outlook. Stocks fell, while the dollar rose. Treasury 10-year yields slid below 2.4 percent and rates on benchmark German bunds sank deeper under zero after European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said that an accommodative policy stance is still needed. Energy shares led losses ...

Read More »

China’s stock traders pay most in decade for same banks

Bloomberg China’s financial sector is dividing opinion across its borders in a way not seen since the global credit crisis. Traders on the mainland are paying the most in more than a decade for shares of Chinese banks, brokerages and insurers relative to their offshore-based counterparts, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The same firm is now on average 54 ...

Read More »
Send this to a friend