September, 2019

• 17 September

  BOJ expects no market backlash if rate cut is necessary

  

  Bloomberg Bank of Japan (BOJ) officials think lowering the negative interest rate, if they chose to do so in the coming months, wouldn’t backfire in financial markets because investors are aware of the possibility, according to people familiar with the matter. While most officials wouldn’t be drawn on when the BOJ might act, some of the officials see little need ...

  Read More »
• 17 September

  $11b green-energy initiative taking shape in South Africa

  

  Bloomberg A plan to establish the world’s largest green-energy financing initiative is being threshed out in South Africa, which needs to reduce its environmental footprint and find innovative ways to fund debt-stricken state power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. The plan being formulated by Meridian Economics, a Cape Town-based think tank, is under consideration by the government. It envisions the ...

  Read More »
• 17 September

  Lebanon’s gas stations to shut to protest dollar crunch

  

  Bloomberg Lebanon’s gas station owners will stage a nationwide strike on Wednesday to protest the government’s failure to provide enough dollars to pay suppliers. The businesses say local banks lack hard currency they need, forcing them to buy dollars at exchange houses above the fixed rate of 1,507.5 Lebanese pounds to the greenback. The Energy Ministry prices gasoline and diesel ...

  Read More »
• 17 September

  Dunford was a steady hand during Trump-era turmoil

  

  Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who will retire this month, is that rare senior official in Donald Trump’s Washington whose career and reputation don’t seem to have been tarnished by his dealings with the president. The explanation is simple: The low-key, Boston-Irish Marine maintained the distance and discipline of a professional military officer. He ...

  Read More »
• 17 September

  Google, Facebook get ‘bad news’

  

  Margrethe Vestager, famous for slapping vast fines on the likes of Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google during her tenure as the European Union’s top antitrust official, has been given the chance to do it all over again. She’s been handed the same job in Ursula von der Leyen’s proposed European Commission. Lest it be seen as some kind of ...

  Read More »
• 17 September

  Aston Martin is shopping for the expensive junk

  The maker of Aston Martin sports cars is considering raising cash from an expensive corner of the bond market. The hope must be that this is just one part of a more radical attempt to strengthen its finances — and not the last resort. Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings Plc is looking at issuing an unsecured junk bond that’s rated ...

  Read More »
• 17 September

  Can Europe’s $130b tech giant avoid Yahoo’s fate?

  Europe is getting its own version of Softbank Group Corp. with the Amsterdam listing of tech investment firm Prosus NV. The move will likely help it avoid the fate of Yahoo Inc., the erstwhile Silicon Valley titan which has since fizzled away as a holding company. South African media and internet firm Naspers Ltd. has spun most of its technology ...

  Read More »
• 17 September

  Taxing the robots is a great way to make people poor

  

  Of all the ideas that presidential candidates are offering to address the country’s economic woes, here’s one of the worst: Taxing, or even outlawing, automation. Many people worry about the prospect of automation causing mass unemployment. This might be justified in the science-fiction future, if machines learn to do anything a human can do. But there’s no sign that the ...

  Read More »
• 17 September

  For airlines, making money is a big mistake

  

  In the airline business, there’s nothing more damaging to a company’s internal harmony than making a profit. The pilot strikes that have grounded almost all British Airways flights for the next two days are a case in point. Unlike most industrial sectors, the usual state of affairs for airlines is spending vast sums of money for little return. In one ...

  Read More »
• 17 September

  Will the real poverty rate please stand up?

  

  It has always been hard to measure poverty, because poverty is as much a state of mind as a condition of material well-being. Still, we seem to have made a bad situation worse. Consider the Census Bureau’s latest estimates. In 2018, the official poverty rate was 11.8%, down from 12.3% in 2017 and the lowest rate since 2001. This translates ...

  Read More »