Several developments last week indicated that the recent panic in the market for US Treasury bonds was a false alarm. The increase in average hourly earnings has slowed appreciably, reducing the risk of aggressive monetary tightening by the Federal Reserve. Inflation moderated from levels recorded at the beginning of the year. Retail sales dropped for a third month, belying expectations ...

A funny thing happened after Amazon invited cities to compete for its second North American headquarters. Somehow other corporations got the idea that they would be the winners. There’s been a disturbing trend in corporations seeing the tax breaks offered to Amazon and deciding they’re entitled to the same when they pursue their own expansions or relocations. There’s nothing inherently ...

This week at the Bloomberg Ideas conference in San Francisco I had the pleasure of meeting a bunch of smart, friendly artificial intelligence (AI) researchers. Being the Gadfly that I am, I figured it would be a great chance to ask what, to my mind, was an incisive question. Is China or the US better at artificial intelligence? Turns out, ...

Central bankers devote a huge amount of time and resources to communicating with markets, companies and the public. So why do the Bank of England’s (BOE) communications still end up confusing markets and distorting decisions in the real economy? The BOE’s latest inflation report marked a new low on the communication front. The bank explains how the outlook for interest ...

Bloomberg Most Asian central banks will stand pat for now, even with the Federal Reserve poised to raise borrowing costs this week. While previous tightening cycles in the US prompted many Asian nations to move in lockstep, things are different this time. Subdued inflation and healthy foreign reserves reduce the need to move quickly and the risk of a trade ...

Bloomberg China will now permit foreign companies to access its $27 trillion payments market, which will further open up the world’s second-largest economy. Foreign players can start applying for payment licenses and will be treated the same as local firms, the People’s Bank of China said in a statement on Wednesday. Applicants must set up local units, establish payment infrastructure ...

Bloomberg Hoist Finance AB of Sweden is gearing up to buy non-performing credit portfolios from Greek banks as they prepare to offload loans that soured during the country’s debt crisis. “There’s been a lot of talk about Greece for a long time, but now it’s actually happening,” Klaus-Anders Nysteen, the chief executive officer of Hoist, said in an interview in ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank is on a slow walk towards concluding four years of quantitative easing, and that challenge might look easy compared with what comes next. While policy makers are comfortable with market expectations for bond purchases to end this year, the bigger specter of 2019 looms large. That’s when the Governing Council might dare to actually withdraw ...

Bloomberg Nordea Bank AB may be cutting thousands of jobs to go digital, but in its wealth management business, it’s hiring. The bank, which is moving its headquarters to Finland from Sweden for regulatory reasons, has hired about 75 people over the past year to help run its $400 billion wealth unit, according to its head, Snorre Storset. “Wealth management ...

Bloomberg Airbus SE is considering building a freighter version of its slow-selling A330neo wide-body, spurred by requests from potential customers Amazon.com Inc and United Parcel Service (UPS) Inc., according to people familiar with the matter. The interest from Amazon and UPS could rekindle a competition between Airbus and Boeing Co. as the global air-cargo market rebounds from a decade-long slump. ...