In the late 18th century, French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote about the existence of a “social contract” between citizens and the government. A similarly unwritten set of rules exists between generations: Children promise they’ll take care of their parents, because they expect to be treated the same in the future. A new report by the Intergenerational Commission, a group of ...

UK house prices fell the most in eight years in April. That hasn’t stopped the parent company of shouty British tabloid the Daily Mail securing a 14-fold return from the property industry. Daily Mail & General Trust Plc says it will have pocketed 890 million pounds ($1.2 billion) from its 30 percent stake in ZPG Plc – owner of popular ...

The best reality TV show in Australia right now is the televised hearings of the Royal Commission into Australian banks. The formal public inquiry, led by a retired judge with broad coercive powers, has uncovered a litany of wrongdoing including bribery and fraud rings, poor lending practices, and pervasive lying to regulators. The most startling revelations relate to financial planning ...

As scientific terms go, ‘climate change’ is failing. Good terms are specific, descriptive and help people to understand complex concepts. Climate change is ambiguous, referring perhaps to the most pressing human-generated environmental problem of the century, or to other kinds of changes that happen through natural forces and have been going on since long before humans arose. Last week I ...

Banks have become too safe. That is a chief justification cited by lawmakers to roll back the Dodd-Frank banking regulations and loosen other financial rules. The Senate passed a bill in March, and Speaker Paul Ryan said earlier this week that he had a deal to push the measure through the House. But at least one layer of protection that ...

Germany’s new government is composed of the same two parties as its previous one, but many in Germany and outside expected one major change: more government spending. Olaf Scholz, the new finance minister, comes from the Social Democratic Party, which heavily campaigned on a promise of more investment and growth in Germany. And yet Scholz’s first budget suggests those hopes ...

Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has approached a Saudi state-owned entity about a multibillion-dollar deal, according to the bank’s chief executive officer for the Middle East and North Africa. “We’re very keen on deploying our principal capital in the region in both forms: credit and equity capital,” Wassim Younan said in an interview in Riyadh. “We continue to prospect for ...

Bloomberg Australia’s banking probe could see job cuts in the finance and real estate sectors equivalent to losses during the 2008 global financial crisis, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPMorgan analysts led by Sally Auld see three main channels for the Royal Commission to exert influence on the Australian economy: tighter lending standards and slower credit growth; wealth effects ...

Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG’s new chief executive officer pledged to keep the struggling lender “strong” in Asia even as he prepares to overhaul operations worldwide. “We can only be relevant to our clients if we continue to be strong in Asia,” CEO Christian Sewing said on Monday at an investor forum in Singapore on his first visit to the region ...

Bloomberg The pound may have sold off into the Bank of England meeting but its recent drop is bringing back the bulls. Sterling slid almost 6 percent in the three weeks leading up to the May BOE policy announcement, as traders slashed bets on a hike in borrowing costs. Now they’ve been proven right as the central bank opted to ...