March, 2020

• 14 March

  Ivory Coast PM named preidential candidate

  

  Bloomberg Ivory Coast’s ruling party named Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly as its candidate for this year’s presidential election. The 61-year-old had been widely expected to succeed President Alassane Ouattara, who last week ruled out seeking a third term as head of the world’s biggest cocoa grower. Opposition parties have yet to announce their candidates for the October 31 ballot. ...

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• 14 March

  After toppling Mahathir, Malaysia’s leader needs allies

  

  Bloomberg For a week, he patiently waited in the shadows as Malaysia’s two political giants — Mahathir Mohamad and Anwar Ibrahim — vied for the numbers to become the nation’s prime minister. But when the dust settled earlier this month, it was little-known Muhyiddin Yassin who bested his former allies to emerge on top, shifting power back to Malay-dominated parties ...

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• 14 March

  US diplomats scored a quiet win against China

  

  China advances its campaign for global influence stealthily, partly by winning control of little-known but influential UN agencies. The State Department decided last summer to push back hard — and just won a potentially important victory in protecting global technology rights. The US diplomatic success came recently, when the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) voted 55 to 28 to back ...

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• 14 March

  Covid-19: Airlines sounding alarms

  

  The last thing anyone needs in this coronavirus situation is more panic, but there’s a notable gap between the alarms emanating from the airline industry and the sanguine attitude among the companies that supply their spare parts and maintenance work. Last week brought a flood of fresh warnings from US carriers on cancelled flights, with Delta Air Lines Inc and ...

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• 14 March

  Best virus response? QE plus infra spending

  The economic threat from the coronavirus pandemic is profound. Stocks have plunged, oil prices have tumbled, the entire yield curve has fallen below 1% for the first time in history, and the country may already be in recession. Boosting the economy will be difficult, because macroeconomic theory and policy are not set up to deal with pandemics. The US economy ...

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• 14 March

  Bond buyers won’t like coronavirus stimulus

  Treasury yields have plunged to record lows as investors brace for the impact of the worldwide spread of the coronavirus. With interest rates low or negative around the world, and with central banks struggling to hit their inflation targets even before this evolving public-health shock, it’s understandable that investors are ready for another prolonged bout of central-bank deflation fighting. But ...

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• 14 March

  Joe Biden is almost US’s Democratic nominee

  

  Even with plenty of votes remaining to be counted in Michigan and returns from two other states not yet in, it’s clear that Joe Biden had another very good day on March 10. He’s essentially wrapped up the Democratic nomination. Yes, Bernie Sanders technically still could pull ahead, but realistically, the race is over. There are three stories — all ...

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• 14 March

  Lagarde should worry less about the Germans now

  

  The stakes couldn’t be higher for Europe. With the US Federal Reserve aggressively cutting interest rates to buoy the US economy in the face of the Covid-19 crisis — and the Bank of England following suit — a “too little, too late” policy on the part of the European Central Bank risks sending the euro soaring to uncompetitive levels and ...

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• 14 March

  Coronavirus: Britain reaches for the financial bazooka

  

  Governments’ economic policy response to the coronavirus has been a mess of one-off rate cuts, a little bit of liquidity provision and a bunch of disparate spending promises. A coordinated fiscal and monetary effort is sorely needed — if not at the supranational level (which would be ideal), then at least at the individual country level. More important still will ...

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• 14 March

  Driverless cars look like ‘loaves of bread’

  

  Bloomberg Do automakers investing billions in the self-driving cars of tomorrow risk repeating the same mistake they made with electric cars a decade ago? Cutting-edge robotic people-movers from the likes of General Motors Co, Toyota Motor Corp and Jaguar Land Rover all share similarly rectangular dimensions with more of an eye towards engineering practicality. Even Waymo, the self-driving arm of ...

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