On January 2, China successfully landed its Chang’e-4 spacecraft on the moon’s far side — an impressive technological accomplishment that speaks to China’s emergence as a major space power. Understandably, some Chinese scientists are taking a victory lap, with one going so far as to gloat to the New York Times that “We Chinese people have done something that the ...

Imagine if you could predict recessions, years in advance, more accurately than professional economic forecasters, just by looking at a few data points. Well, according to a 2008 paper by economists Glenn Rudebusch and John Williams, you can. The data you have to look at is what’s known as the yield curve — a technical term for the different interest ...

The Hong Kong IPO of China Tobacco International (HK) Co. is looking like a hard sell. The offshore unit of China National Tobacco Corp. is not only in a sunset industry that’s been under attack globally because of smoking’s link to cancer, it’s also found itself in the crosshairs of the US-China trade war. Add to that a forecast slump ...

Regulating speech is difficult even under the best of conditions, and the internet is far from the best of conditions. Its patchwork system of regulation by private entities satisfies no one, yet it is likely to endure for the foreseeable future. By way of explanation, consider a case in which authority is (mostly) centralised and the environment is (mostly) controlled: ...

Bloomberg Saudi Arabian banks may report double-digit earnings growth this year as rising interest rates and increased government spending offset the risk of higher bad-debt charges. Even loans may expand faster after four years of declines led to a contraction in 2017. The government’s 2019 budget increased spending in the face of plunging oil prices. “More stimulus, business confidence, privatisation ...

Bloomberg The biggest Nordic bank is starting to feel a lot smaller. Nordea Bank Abp joined the euro zone in October by moving its headquarters to Helsinki from Stockholm. A month later, it learned it was losing its status as a global systemically important bank. Now, it appears Nordea is also too small to make it into the Euro Stoxx ...

Bloomberg Ghana completed a cleanup of its banking industry in which lenders were required to raise their capital and improve governance, with two-thirds of them meeting the new requirements, Bank of Ghana Governor Ernest Addison said. The West African nation has “23 well-capitalised” banks, compared with 34 previously, which raised their holdings to at least 400 million cedis ($81.1 million), ...

Bloomberg South African Reserve Bank Deputy Governor Francois Groepe has resigned, leaving only five people on the central bank’s rate-setting panel. He will leave at the end of the month, which is after the Monetary Policy Committee’s next interest-rate decision on January 17. Groepe has been a deputy governor and member of the MPC since January 2012. The MPC increased ...

Bloomberg Jerome Powell has been sucked into a one-sided communication fight with Donald Trump, who blames the Federal Reserve chairman for losses in the stock market. Powell can’t match the president’s megaphone on social media. But he can try to prevent equity prices becoming the barometer of Fed success by reminding the public that Congress gave it a different mandate: ...

Bloomberg Sears Holdings Corp is preparing to potentially wind down the iconic retailer after Chairman Eddie Lampert’s bid to buy several hundred stores out of bankruptcy fell short of bankers’ qualifications, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The retailer started laying the groundwork for a liquidation after a series of meetings in which its advisers weighed the merits ...