A recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggests that we’ve probably lost our chance to keep the planet’s temperature within a safe zone for humanity, which would require limiting global warming to just 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times. Doing so would mean entirely transforming the world’s diet, agriculture practices and energy infrastructure ...

IBM just made the cloud-computing war far more interesting. International Business Machines Corp. announced that it’s buying Red Hat Inc., one of the most successful pioneers of a software movement known as open source, which allows programming instructions to be accessible to anyone to view and alter. Red Hat’s version of the Linux open-source software became widely used in companies’ ...

Europe’s leaders are engaged in a high-stakes standoff with Italy, trying to coerce the populist government to drop its budget-busting spending plan. But how far can they go? Can they risk pushing Italy out of the currency union? Judging from the exposures of French and German banks, they have a strong incentive to seek a compromise. Looking at what banks ...

Pity Philip Hammond, the UK’s chancellor proposed a budget amid political chaos, faltering public services, simmering anger, and, in the background, the specter of Brexit. Also: He’s supposed to simultaneously cut taxes, end austerity and reduce debt. It’s an impossible task. And this budget — the last before Brexit — will be a premonition of bigger debates to come. Start ...

Despite efforts by the Trump administration to turn it, a supertanker is bearing down on drivers, oil majors, and even Amazon.com Inc. We are 14 months away from a shake-up in the global oil market lacking the drama of, say, Iranian sanctions. It involves a UN-mandated crackdown on air pollution from ships. Still awake? Good, because this could mean some ...

Long-simmering discord between the Indian central bank and the government is turning into a very public brawl. The timing couldn’t be more awful for markets. In a hard-hitting speech on central-bank independence, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Deputy Governor Viral Acharya startled his audience by invoking Argentina of 2010. Back then, the Argentinian central bank chief quit after being coerced ...

If governments, companies and markets needed any further reminders that their operating environment is changing, they got it last week. Despite weakening economic momentum and volatile financial markets, a second systemically important central bank, the European Central Bank (ECB), reiterated its intention to stop using large liquidity injections to support economic activity and asset prices. The change in this ‘global ...

Bloomberg US stocks reversed early losses as investors shook off disappointing earnings from General Electric and tech shares reversed a sell-off despite fresh data raised conc-ern about the strength of the housing market. Treasuries fell and the dollar rose. The S&P 500 Index climbed, although its drop from a September record still hovers near 10 percent, putting it on the ...

Bloomberg Italian bonds dropped as disappointing economic growth and a tepid debt sale damped investor enthusiasm. The securities snapped a three-day rally after the nation’s growth stagnated in the third quarter and sale prices for 10-year debt at the Treasury auction were below market levels. The weaker average sale price reflected fragile investor sentiment after rating agencies cut their view ...

Bloomberg The ultimate guarantor of job security for presidential whipping boy Jerome Powell may lie not in Washington, but on Wall Street. President Donald Trump could confront a huge blow back from the financial markets — with stocks, bonds and the dollar all going down — if he made a serious move to oust the Federal Reserve chairman, market professionals ...