August, 2019

• 18 August

  Macron meets Putin, but not as ‘Trump’s messenger’

  

  Bloomberg French President Emmanuel Macron hosts Russian leader Vladimir Putin at his summer residence on Monday and his office is adamant about what the get-together is not. France isn’t playing the role of go-between with Russia and other world powers, Macron’s office says, after being stung by a tweet from President Donald Trump earlier in August that suggested Paris was ...

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• 18 August

  Oxymorons in ‘national conservative’ policies

  

  Regimes, however intellectually disreputable, rarely are unable to attract intellectuals eager to rationalise the regimes’ behaviour. America’s current administration has “national conservatives.” They advocate unprecedented expansion of government in order to purge America of excessive respect for market forces, and to affirm robust confidence in government as a social engineer allocating wealth and opportunity. They call themselves conservatives, perhaps because ...

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• 18 August

  Ukraine enjoys a hopeful moment

  

  Nobody expected Ukraine’s economy to grow as fast as it did in the second quarter. Though the growth was driven, in large part, by a bumper wheat harvest, the optimistic numbers can become a self-fulfilling prophecy as newly elected President Volodymyr Zelenskiy promises a new kind of politics and investment-friendly change. Ukraine’s real gross domestic product increased by 4.6 percent ...

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• 18 August

  OCBC, do you have Jakarta’s blessing?

  “Do you have Jakarta’s blessing?” That’s the first question Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. CEO Samuel Tsien will be asked by investors about his plan to buy Indonesia’s PT Bank Permata. OCBC is weighing a bid for Standard Chartered Plc’s Indonesian bank, Bloomberg News has reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter. Deliberations are still at an early stage and may ...

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• 18 August

  UK’s inverted yield curve is nothing like America’s

  Inverted yield curves are the hot topic of the summer, especially as UK gilts have followed US treasuries by offering more interest on two-year maturities than you’ll get on 10-year notes. When the sovereign bond world is flipped on its head like this it’s often seen as an indicator of looming recession as investors scramble for the relative safety of ...

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• 18 August

  Trump is not crazy to want to buy Greenland

  

  Former Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen called US President Donald Trump’s reported idea of buying Greenland, a self-governed Danish territory, an out-of-season April’s Fool joke. Trump’s idea may be outlandish (and impossible) but that doesn’t mean there’s no benefit in thinking about reviving the market in sovereign territories, which once made America great. Besides acquiring Louisiana from France, Florida ...

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• 18 August

  Touch-screens in cars don’t make us safer

  

  Two years ago, 10 sailors died when the US Navy’s guided missile destroyer USS John S. McCain collided with a chemical tanker off Singapore. An investigation has determined that insufficient training and inadequate operating procedures were to blame, and both factors were related to a new touch-screen-based helm control system. The Navy has decided to revert its destroyers back to ...

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• 18 August

  How Asian nations can protect their crazy riches

  

  With support for globalisation and free trade declining in much of the world, Asia has a historic chance to break out of its traditional role as a capital exporter to the West and to instead redirect flows to improve its own economies and financial industries. According to some estimates, the region’s pool of wealth at $110 trillion exceeds those of ...

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• 18 August

  Investors should hold their stocks, says Invesco’s Levitt

  

  Bloomberg Investors should stick with their stocks despite the sell-off this week because it would be harder to time the market and get back in, according to Brian Levitt, global market strategist for North America at Invesco. US equities suffered one of the deepest sell-offs of the year as mounting signs of a global economic slowdown stoked fears of a ...

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• 18 August

  Facebook’s Libra in focus as American group visits Bern

  

  Bloomberg Facebook Inc’s Libra cryptocurrency will be discussed as a delegation of American lawmakers visits Switzerland in the coming days. The group of six will hold a meeting with the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner Adrian Lobsiger, NZZ am Sonntag reports, citing his spokesman. It will be led by Democrat Maxine Waters, who has previously spoken critically about ...

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