The big guns are coming out in the battle over infrastructure spending. Larry Summers, a celebrated Harvard economist and veteran policy adviser, has a new article making the case for spending more. Ed Glaeser, a brilliant and versatile colleague of Summers’ who studies urban economics, has an article making the opposite case. Though both make many good points, I think ...

During the past two years, we have seen signs that wage pressure is building as the economic recovery grinds on. Enough evidence has now accumulated to suggest that it is already happening. The latest data, courtesy of the Census Bureau, which released its annual update on incomes and poverty yesterday, showed that median household income increased a whopping 5.2 percent ...

  Two back-to-back stinging defeats have rattled German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The internal splits are palpable now. Even though Merkel has dropped the “we can do it” rallying cry on migrants, she has refused to put a cap on migration. This is a bold and righteous move, but to convince her coalition partners about her stand ...

  From Erie in the west to Scranton in the east, Pennsylvania is flecked with casualties the stubborn economic sluggishness and relentless globalization have inflicted on industrial communities. But in this middle-class Philadelphia suburb, Tom Danzi knows that the economy is denting even his business repairing damaged cars. His Suburban Collision Specialists once had 27 employees kept busy by drivers ...

  For many years, China’s authorities took a Goldilocks approach to housing prices: They wanted a market that was neither too hot nor too cold, and took measures as needed to control prices. Although an explicit asset-price target was never announced, it was widely assumed that the government wanted home prices to grow in line with the rate of economic ...

  In the years since the 2008-09 financial crisis, cracks have appeared in the global hegemony of neoliberalism. The pressure to favour free markets and reject the social-welfare model has moderated somewhat. In the U.S., President Barack Obama succeeded in installing the first general health-insurance system in the country’s history. Thus Washington has moved closer toward the European welfare state ...

  Bloomberg The appetite of China’s wealthy to diversify from a weakening yuan is helping European finance companies boost capital to prepare for the next financial crisis. Global fund managers are urging caution. Since Aug. 1, seven issuers opened order books for their Basel III bond sales in Asian hours, raising $11.9 billion selling instruments that count as capital under ...

  Dubai / Reuters Qatar’s central bank is offering 3 billion riyals ($824 million) of government bonds in its second domestic bond sale this year, according to a circular seen by Reuters. The central bank only issued its first domestic bonds this year in August when it sold 4.6 billion riyals of conventional and Islamic government bonds. Bids for the ...

Bloomberg Danske Bank A/S named Jesper Nielsen its head of personal banking, as Denmark’s largest lender reshuffles its management after creating a $200 billion wealth management unit. Nielsen, 47, will be responsible for all of Danske’s personal customer business in the Nordic region from Oct. 1 , the Copenhagen-based bank said in a statement on Monday. Nielsen, who will also ...

  Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG extended losses as analysts signaled that the German lender’s capital position will be eroded by mounting legal costs such as charges for a U.S. penalty tied to faulty securities. The shares fell as much as 2.6 percent in Frankfurt trading and were 0.9 percent lower as of 11:44 a.m., pushing the loss for this year ...