Last week, China said it plans to build a ‘Polar Silk Road’ that will open shipping lanes across the largely pristine region at the top of the world. It’s an ambitious idea for a country that lacks an Arctic border, and it has raised concerns around the world about China’s ultimate intentions and its capacity for environmental stewardship. Although these ...

Is it a blip, a correction or the end of days? Stock markets in Asia tumbled on Monday, extending the biggest global selloff in two years. Equity investors are fretting as Treasury yields approach 3 percent. On Friday, 10-year returns touched 2.85%, and the dollar rallied 0.9 percent. Some context, however. While the MSCI Asia ex-Japan Index’s 7.5% return in ...

Political dysfunction is unquestionably aggravating the UK’s Brexit nightmare. But the resignation of Prime Minister Theresa May, as some in her own party are calling for, would only make matters worse. The Tories will never agree about the European Union. What they need to do is get their divisions under some kind of control. At the moment, the increasingly assertive ...

India remains a land of missed opportunities. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi came into office in 2014, he raised hopes that he would reform administration, fix regulations, super-charge the economy and reinvigorate private investment. One can debate how much he’s accomplished on those fronts. But his record on one issue—fiscal restraint—had seemed impeccable. Helped by low crude oil prices, which ...

The best news Deutsche Bank CEO John Cryan had for shareholders is that, if you take out the whole banking part, there’s a really good business there. Deutsche Bank’s asset-management business, which accounts for about one-tenth of the company’s revenue, was the only unit to report a return on equity of more than 2 percent for 2017. Across the firm, ...

Almost every report, news account and comment on the 148,000 rise in payroll hiring in December characterized the increase as weak, mediocre or somehow disappointing. None described it as strong or solid. As a result, fears of more interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve receded. Yet all of these responses to that data were backward, and it has taken ...

Bloomberg US stocks remained down after recovering from steeper early losses, while European and Asian equities slumped. Treasuries and the dollar stabilised. Oil fell and copper rose. The S&P 500 Index and Dow Jones Industrial Average each fell more than 1 percent at the open on Monday, before a rally in utility and consumer shares pulled them back up somewhat. ...

Reuters Most Middle Eastern stock markets fell on Monday in line with a weak global trend, with Saudi Arabia seeing profit-taking in cement shares, but Egypt rose on the back of several blue chips, The region had already dropped on Sunday in response to Wall Street’s plunge on February 2, so Gulf markets far outperformed other bourses in Asia, where ...

Bloomberg The Bank of England’s (BoE) first policy meeting of the year is also the first test of the market’s newly aggressive interest-rate forecasts that emerged in recent weeks. Investors have ramped up bets that the follow-up to November’s tightening — the first in a decade — will come as soon as May, and economists in the latest Bloomberg survey ...

Bloomberg Australia is emerging as an outlier in the developed-world story of faster economic growth and inflation, pushing the central bank to the sidelines as flat wages and a strengthening currency keep prices in check. Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Philip Lowe and his board will keep interest rates unchanged at a record low for an 18th month at Tuesday’s ...