Italy’s populist dream team has a radical plan to revive the country’s economy. Successive drafts of the coalition agreement between the League and the Five Star Movement, seen over the past few days, show the two parties are keen to press ahead with their lavish tax cuts and spending pledges, in spite of Italy’s mammoth public debt. There’s a double ...

Whatever one might think about the US political situation, it’s hard to deny that the economy is doing just fine. In April, the unemployment rate dropped to 3.9 percent, a 17-year low. At this point, there’s a job opening for every unemployed person in the country. Not bad. In the spirit of seeing the glass as half empty, though, it’s ...

What do people think economic theorists do? The pundits who regularly criticize the profession, particularly in the pages of British magazines, seem to think that they spend all their time making abstruse, unrealistic theories about how free markets are the best of all possible worlds. And it’s true that there are still a few economists out there who are essentially ...

Bloomberg US equity futures followed Asian shares higher on signals an America-North Korea summit is back on track, but risk appetite waned in Europe as Italy’s political outlook darkened. The region’s stocks and common currency both surrendered gains. S&P 500 futures advanced, as did South Korean stocks, after President Donald Trump appeared to confirm that his June meeting with Kim ...

Bloomberg Chaos ruled Italian markets as the nation plunged deeper into political turmoil. Yields on the nation’s two-year bonds surged to the highest in four years in holiday-thinned trading, while stocks slumped for a fourth day as President Sergio Mattarella asked economist Carlo Cottarelli to form a government. Earlier League leader Matteo Salvini said that it made no sense for ...

Bloomberg This isn’t the inflation the European Central Bank is looking for — but it is inflation. Figures this week are forecast to show euro-area consumer-price growth could have reached its fastest since early 2017 on the back of more expensive oil and a rebound in travel costs. The cost of crude and a weaker euro are also set to ...

Bloomberg From trade talks and scrapped deals to elections and government infighting, “uncertainty” has emerged as the biggest obstacle for Canada, according to the head of the nation’s largest lender. “It’s all this uncertainty we’re looking at,” Toronto-Dominion Bank Chief Executive Officer Bharat Masrani said in a BNN Bloomberg interview when asked what’s the biggest risk to his bank’s Canadian ...

Bloomberg Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and other top central bankers defended their use of unconventional policies during and after the financial crisis, but said more work was needed before they could declare the experiments successful. “The test is not over,” Powell said, less than three weeks before the Fed is expected to raise its policy interest rate for a ...

Bloomberg National Australia Bank Ltd. said it will ensure no customers suffer financial losses after a nationwide system outage left Internet banking, ATMs and EFTPOS terminals out of service. The event was “incredibly rare” and no personal data was compromised, Cindy Batchelor, NAB Business executive general manager, told reporters in Melbourne, according to a transcript. She said all customers were ...

Bloomberg Interest rate decisions across Africa in the next two weeks are likely to confirm the continent’s biggest economies have mostly ceased a wave of easing that’s been going since last year. Factors from sticky inflation to rising crude prices may persuade central bankers to freeze borrowing costs. Institutions in Nigeria, South Africa, Angola, Kenya and Mauritius will probably keep ...