The untold story of the world economy — so far at least — is the potentially explosive interaction between the spreading trade war and the overhang of global debt, estimated at a staggering $247 trillion. That’s “trillion” with a “t.” The numbers are so large as to be almost incomprehensible. Households, businesses and governments borrow on the assumption that they ...

I lost 120 Twitter followers overnight. President Donald Trump lost 340,000, the New York Times 732,000, former President Barack Obama 3 million or so. Even Twitter’s chief executive officer, Jack Dorsey, lost 200,000 in his company’s much-hyped crackdown on dubious accounts. But what looks like a major purge is more like a public relations onslaught, as Twitter and Facebook try ...

The world’s biggest bond market just doesn’t know what to do with the prospect of an all-out trade war instigated by the US. On one side, there’s a strong argument that tariffs among the largest economies will stifle the global expansion and push yields in the $15 trillion Treasury market lower. Those concerns are appearing in the price of copper, ...

Many Americans still think of the US economy as increasingly dominated by knowledge and technology workers. In fact, when it comes to jobs growth in this decade, blue-collar industries have outpaced service industries, and the trend is accelerating. Tariffs may amplify this trend — making the US economy more like China’s economic model. Throughout the economic expansion in the 1980s ...

Antibiotics might be the most important medicines we have. They treat everything from dirty cuts to rapidly mutating superbugs that make a stay at a hospital an increasingly scary proposition. With new strains of drug-resistant and potentially deadly bacteria continuing to emerge, it’s essential from a public-health perspective that the antibiotic pipeline remains robust. But instead, big pharmaceutical companies are ...

A tiny subsection in the UK takeover code has shot from the margins to the center. The Takeover Panel prompted more controversy over an arcane rule and its application to the battle for Sky Plc. The rule book’s so-called chain principle determines what happens if a bidder takes control of a publicly traded company by buying a firm that owns ...

Corporations are easy to hate. They are big, they are impersonal, and they operate by profit-driven rules that can sometimes seem cruel. When corporations are accused of wrongdoing by a community led by a plucky plaintiffs lawyer, there is a natural tendency to believe the latter over the former. Chevron Corp, which is ranked 13th on the Fortune 500 and ...

Bloomberg It was supposed to be the best of times for the biggest US banks: Rising interest rates and corporate tax cuts would boost profitability and spur lending, while deregulation lowered costs. The optimism didn’t last. Loan books probably expanded only slightly last quarter while revenue failed to match the acceleration posted in the first three months of the year, ...

Bloomberg Pakistan’s central bank increased its key rate for a second straight meeting as economic pressures build ahead of a tense national vote. The target policy rate was raised to 7.5 percent from 6.5 percent, State Bank of Pakistan Governor Tariq Bajwa said in a Karachi briefing. The increase by 100 basis points was predicted by nine economists in a ...

Bloomberg Blackstone Group LP plans to start raising its next global private equity fund three years after gathering about $18 billion from investors for its last pool. The firm is expected to seek more than $20 billion when it starts marketing its eighth buyout fund later this year, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be ...