The question of whether to prioritize jobs or economic efficiency is always difficult. Nowhere is this more of a dilemma than in the construction industry. In a world of rapid technological disruption, construction is a rock of solidity to which many blue-collar workers can cling. The industry still employs about 7 million workers in the US. The job doesn’t change ...

Riots, drought, social instability: Emerging markets are never easy. Now investors face a potentially bigger test—they must decide whether President Xi Jinping’s determination to remain in power in China is a risk-on or risk-off moment for the whole asset class. The Communist Party is set to repeal presidential term limits this month in a step that would allow the 64-year-old ...

Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s choice of a new central bank governor is a clear signal that the campaign for next year’s election has begun in earnest. It’s hard to find another way to explain the promotion of Bank Indonesia Deputy Governor Perry Warjiyo to the top job. With campaigning for municipal elections in June under way and a tough presidential ...

Something was missing on a trip to East Asia a few weeks ago. And on separate visits to Mideast and India toward the end of last year. Took me a while to figure what it was. You know that feeling where you get that you left something behind, but you just can’t quite remember what? Ah, yes! Brexit! Britain’s decision ...

“There is one and only one social responsibility of business — to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.” So wrote Milton Friedman, the great economist and Nobel laureate. Someone should tell today’s corporate leaders, who are responding to the age of Trump in part by spending energy on activities other than directly increasing profits. ...

For most of the past half century, the yen has either been severely undervalued or severely overvalued against the dollar, resulting in a highly destructive boom-bust supercycle in Japan’s economy. But now, the currency is finally showing signs of stabilizing at somewhere close to fair value as defined by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s measure of purchasing power ...

Detroit’s auto giants are on the cusp of what looks like a major victory. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is considering making drastic cuts to fuel-efficiency targets for future vehicles that were set under President Barack Obama in 2012. US automakers would like easier mileage standards because improvements from here will raise the cost of vehicles and require selling ...

Bloomberg If Mario Draghi had to design the way his colleagues get picked, it would probably be a bit different from how it is now. The European Central Bank president twice stopped short of praising the process for board appo- intments — aside from a mention of safeguards to independence — when asked this week about how his future vice ...

Bloomberg The chief of India’s biggest bank called for an industry-wide review of risk controls in day-to-day operations, comparing a $2 billion fraud at one of his rivals to the 1995 Barings Plc rogue trading debacle that ended the 233-year-old British merchant bank’s independence. “The Punjab National Bank fiasco is something similar to the fall of Barings Bank, where one ...

Bloomberg Jerome Powell opened the door to the Federal Reserve raising US interest rates four times this year as he acknowledged stronger economic growth may prompt policy makers to rethink their plan for three hikes. “My personal outlook for the economy has strengthened since December,” the Fed chairman said in response to a question about what would cause the central ...