France and Germany have agreed on an idea for improving euro-zone budget policy, and other governments have said they can support it. The plan falls short of what’s needed, but it’s progress nonetheless. The greatest weakness of the euro zone is that it lacks a way to support member states that fall into recession: Monetary policy isn’t enough, because the ...

India’s finance industry is letting a good crisis go to waste by not learning from it. The sudden $12.8 billion bankruptcy of infrastructure lender IL&FS Group, currently sequestered under a government-blessed, out-of-court process, underscores India’s lack of preparedness to handle a big shift in lending in recent years — away from banks. Before I illustrate that challenge with a little ...

Watch out: Jack Ma’s Singles Day is going to make Black Friday a lot less alluring. There’s trepidation in the air this holiday season. In just a few brutal trading days, the whipsawing US stock market wiped out its entire 2018 gain. Meanwhile, the US economy is heading for a 10th year of expansion, by far the longest in history. ...

Occam’s razor is a principle that says when something happens that can be explained in multiple ways, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. The same is true of solutions: the simplest, most straightforward solution is usually the best way to solve a problem. In the US, social media giant Facebook Inc. has become a problem. It makes its ...

Bloomberg European leaders gave Theresa May her Brexit deal but warned that the UK Parliament must vote for the plan as it stands because negotiations will not be reopened if British politicians reject it. On Sunday, the prime minister got her agreement on the UK’s divorce from the European Union at a special summit in Brussels, when the leaders of ...

Bloomberg Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte pledged to keep “revolutionising” Italy after a working dinner with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker failed to break a long-running standoff over the populist government’s push to follow through on expensive election promises. At a Brexit summit of European Union leaders in Brussels on Sunday, Conte clearly had other concerns preying on his mind. The ...

Bloomberg Emmanuel Macron swept aside France’s traditional parties to win the presidency. He tamed unions as he reformed the labour market and income tax, all without much mass protest. Now though, his presidency is being shaken by a grassroots movement with no real leadership. Organised through social media, the so-called yellow jackets have shut down key transport links at times ...

Bloomberg Taiwanese voters delivered President Tsai Ing-wen’s party a resounding defeat in local elections Saturday, ousting it from several key strongholds. Opposition Kuomintang candidates claimed victory in mayoral races in the major cities of Kaohsiung and Taichung as well as the governor positions in Yilan, Changhua and Yunlin counties, traditionally seen as bastions of support for Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party. ...

Bloomberg Donald Trump said Mexico would be “very smart” to stop groups of Central American migrants before they reached the southern US border, and again laid the blame for US immigration problems on Democrats. The president took to Twitter a day after reports that his administration has struck a deal with Mexico’s incoming government that would mean Washington could use ...

Bloomberg Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and his colleagues are likely to turn more wary about marching interest rates higher after delivering a widely anticipated quarter percentage-point increase in December. Prospects for slowing global economic growth, fading US fiscal stimulus and volatile financial markets all argue for more caution once officials lift rates next month near or into neutral territory, ...