Bloomberg In the middle of a brand-new four-lane highway cutting through southern Sri Lanka’s jungle, Vijitha Gamage and his family left large piles of freshly harvested rice paddy to dry on the baking asphalt. They didn’t need to dodge traffic. On a recent afternoon, the barely used highway built with Chinese money through a rural stretch of the island nation ...

Bloomberg Two days of US-China trade discussions ended in Beijing with an agreement to keep on talking, and little else. China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported that both sides reached a consensus on some trade issues while acknowledging major disagreements on some matters. It said they would continue discussions, without providing specifics for when they would start again. Neither side ...

Bloomberg Shares of CBS Corp. and Viacom Inc. surged on speculation that a long-awaited merger between the two companies may finally be close. CBS Chief Executive Officer Leslie Moonves helped kick off the rally with stronger-than-expected results, signaling that his management team should stay in control in the event of a Viacom deal. The upswing gained additional momentum afternoon, when ...

Bloomberg The European Union is leaving open the option of a settlement with President Donald Trump over his controversial metal tariffs on the basis of US import quotas, according to officials from the bloc. An EU condition for such a deal would be that any US limits on steel and aluminum from the 28-nation bloc be set at levels no ...

Bloomberg Apple Inc. shares hit a record after Warren Buffett told CNBC he bought an additional 75 million shares of the iPhone maker in the first quarter. The Apple purchase, costing between $11 billion and $14 billion, adds to the almost 170 million shares that Buffett-run Berkshire Hathaway Inc. owned at the end of 2017, when it was already his ...

Bloomberg The US unemployment rate dipped below 4 percent for the first time in 17 years, but other details of the April jobs report kept any celebration in check. Despite reports of firms struggling to find skilled workers, average hourly earnings showed a deceleration, rising 0.1 percent from the prior month and 2.6 percent from a year earlier, both less ...

Most of economics is pretty healthy as a discipline. But one branch has really been thrown for a loop — business cycle theory. The financial crisis of 2008 and Great Recession taught macroeconomists that they didn’t really understand the sources of recessions. The long, grinding stagnation that followed demonstrated that economies sometimes don’t bounce back as quickly or automatically as ...

The 10-year US bond yield breaking through the 3 percent danger level worries India, as it does every emerging market. Still, the price that sends policy makers in New Delhi and Mumbai into paroxysm isn’t that of global capital, but of a commodity: oil. With Brent crude flirting with $75 a barrel, the panic is already beginning to show. Crucial ...

The pound saw it coming, and now it’s pretty much confirmed — Britain’s economic growth has slowed. And that’s probably killed the Bank of England’s rate hiking cycle before it even got started. Weaker than expected purchasing managers surveys published last week have turned out to be the last straw before the May 10 policy decision. These reports are the ...

Australia’s miracle economy has delivered 26 years of uninterrupted growth, a record among developed nations. So how come its financial sector is riven with scandal and deceit? In truth, the two things are connected. Imagine you had two teenage children. Both have a habit of taking your credit card to spend on clothes and going out, but do it stealthily ...