November, 2019

• 24 November

  Romanians set to re-elect president

  Bloomberg Romanians are set to re-elect president Klaus Iohannis, who’s promising to bring normality after years of political chaos. Voting ran from 7 am to 9 pm on Sunday in Bucharest, after which exit polls were expected to be released. Iohannis, 60, easily won a first round two weeks ago and is widely expected to defeat his runoff opponent, ex-prime ...

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• 24 November

  Bolsonaro dismisses any chances of protests in Brazil

  

  Bloomberg Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro said his government is prepared for any unrest, as he expressed his concern about the wave of protests across South America. He said though he didn’t expect trouble in Brazil. “We always have to be prepared so that we are not surprised by events,” he told reporters at a military ceremony in Rio de Janeiro. ...

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• 24 November

  Boris Johnson is getting a free pass on Brexit

  

  To understand what’s so very odd about this British election campaign, it’s worth recalling where we were a month ago in the Brexit saga. Prime Minister Boris Johnson had returned from Brussels triumphant with a new withdrawal deal. All he needed was Parliament to give its okay — the same Parliament that had rejected his predecessor Theresa May’s deal three ...

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• 24 November

  Italy plays a risky game with euro

  

  Germany has long stood accused of being the main obstacle on the road to complete Europe’s monetary union. Yet, after a constructive proposal from Finance Minister Olaf Scholz over the creation of some form of joint deposit insurance, it is hard to treat Berlin as the grudger-in-chief of the euro region. In fact, Italy could soon become a bigger hurdle ...

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• 24 November

  General Motors declaring corporate war on Chrysler

  The racketeering lawsuit brought by General Motors Co. against cross-town rival Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV is a legal bombshell for the US car industry. GM’s broadside lays out in forensic detail how Fiat allegedly conspired over many years to funnel payments to United Auto Workers’ officials, corrupt the collective bargaining process on wages and thus secure a competitive advantage. In ...

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• 24 November

  Christine Lagarde can face down ECB skeptics

  Christine Lagarde has taken the helm of the European Central Bank (ECB) at a time of rising skepticism over the power of monetary policy. Critics say that the central bank has no tools left to bring inflation back to its target of close to, but below, 2%. The ECB is now a helpless bystander, they claim, as the power to ...

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• 24 November

  Debt investors are cutting off financing for fossil fuels

  

  Investors are turning their back on fossil fuels. Sweden’s central bank sold its holdings of sovereign debt issued by Canadian and Australian local governments dependent on fossil fuel extraction, the Riksbank said. A day later, the European Investment Bank said it would stop providing funding for conventional fossil fuels by 2022. One response might be to yawn. Divestment has “reduced ...

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• 24 November

  Trump, Powell agree on monetary policy

  

  Although President Donald Trump and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell have been at odds on Twitter and in official statements, the two share remarkably similar views about the economy and what needs to be done to improve it. The trick for the chairman will be to carry out monetary policy without appearing to cave to the president — and the ...

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• 24 November

  Amazon throws spaghetti at the grocery wall

  

  Amazon.com Inc. loves to tinker and test. Sometimes projects that seemed like mindless fiddling — the Kindle e-reader, the Prime shopping club, its Amazon Web Services cloud-computing operation — turned out to be important advances for the company, its customers and the technology industry. Despite that history, I have to ask: Does Amazon know what it’s doing in groceries? When ...

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• 24 November

  Italy stuck with Alitalia as Lufthansa, Atlantia balk

  

  Bloomberg Italy risked failure in its latest attempt to bail out bankrupt airline Alitalia, after two companies involved in the rescue got cold feet, raising the prospect of at least a temporary nationalisation of the carrier. State rail operator Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane SpA (FS) said that conditions aren’t in place to form a group to save the airline from ...

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