There is good news when it comes to China’s scary and still-growing pile of debt: At least the government recognizes the problem. Its attempts to mitigate those risks, however, seem doomed to fall short. The government’s recent decision to create a market for credit default swaps is a case in point. The idea, as elsewhere, is to give banks ...

  Will Italy follow the U.K.’s example and leave the European Union? Far-fetched as it may seem, capital flows suggest that some people aren’t waiting to find out. To keep the euro area’s accounts in balance, Europe’s central banks track flows of money among the members of the currency union. If, for example, a depositor moves 100 euros from Italy ...

  If, as polls are indicating, Hillary Clinton is the next U.S. president — the election forecaster Nate Silver says there’s an 86 percent chance — her initial years in office will depend less on the size and shape of her victory than on which party controls the Senate. Although the battle for control of the chamber, where Republicans currently ...

Bloomberg After disease ravaged his cocoa farm, Philippe Zongo walked into one of West Africa’s last remaining rainforests to hack out new acreage. Like thousands of young men from Ivory Coast and more arid neighboring countries, Zongo set out to find the best soil to plant new cocoa trees. He found it in the western Cavally forest, an area bigger ...

  Panama City / DPA Residents of Panama City are unlikely to say anything good about Henry Morgan, the well-known pirate who planned to stage his biggest raid there in 1671. With 1,800 men, he went from the mouth of the Chagres River, in the Caribbean, to Panama City on the Pacific Ocean, hoping to steal the gold and silver ...

  AFP China’s growth slipped to a seven-year low of 6.6 percent in the third quarter, according to a survey, despite ample stimulus and a red-hot property market in the world’s second-largest economy. The median forecast for expansion in gross domestic product (GDP), based on a poll of 18 economists, represents an easing from the second quarter’s 6.7 percent. It ...

  Bloomberg China will continue to relax policies designed to shrink its coal production capacity by allowing some mines to boost output to cool rising prices, according to Australia’s Whitehaven Coal Ltd. The world’s biggest producer and user of the fuel may increase the number of days of production allowed at “better mines” while limiting activity at less efficient ones, ...

  Bloomberg Zinc, this year’s best performing metal, has the potential to extend gains to the highest level since 2011 because of a shortfall in ore production, assuming that Glencore Plc doesn’t restart idled mines, according to Japan’s biggest producer. Prices could advance to $2,500 a metric ton by March because of “super tight” ore supply after companies cut output, ...

  Bloomberg China plans to plug a regulatory gap and begin overseeing low-speed electric vehicles used mainly in the country’s rural areas, legitimizing a market segment that dwarfs sales of regular battery-electric cars made by the likes of BYD Co. and Tesla Motors Inc. Under the current regulatory framework, there are no rules governing the production and sale of electric ...

  Bloomberg United Continental Holdings Inc., longtime laggard of US airlines, is up 41 percent since late June as investors buy into the troubled carrier’s promise of an imminent turnaround. The next five weeks may tell if that faith is well-placed. United’s new president, Scott Kirby, an airline industry star — plucked soon after he parted ways with American Airlines ...