May, 2019

• 28 May

  Europe court deals a blow to Catalan secessionists

  

  Bloomberg The European Court of Human Rights delivered a blow to the Catalan secessionist movement, ruling that in 2017 Spanish judges legally suspended a regional parliamentary session in the wake of a controversial independence vote. The complaint brought by 76 people living in Barcelona was “manifestly ill-founded” and the Spanish judges’ move was legal, the Strasbourg, France-based human rights court ...

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• 28 May

  Tech cold war will force global leaders to choose

  

  The US-China tech cold war is about to spread, and that will force leaders to make some difficult decisions. I wrote last week that a digital Iron Curtain had been drawn when President Donald Trump moved to isolate Huawei Technologies Co. Within a week, global corporations were caught in this divide. Alphabet Inc.’s Google said it would cease some ties ...

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• 28 May

  Why are wage gains so weak?

  

  After correcting for inflation, wage gains remain sluggish. In April, average weekly earnings for nonsupervisory workers were up 3% from a year earlier, to $785.55. Meanwhile, prices as measured by the consumer price index were up 2%. Considering that the economy has been expanding for nearly a full decade, this is perplexing, even allowing that wages are growing faster at ...

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• 28 May

  Italy is the canary in the ECB’s coalmine

  It’s become depressingly familiar to watch Italian government bonds yields push higher, with the spread over German bunds getting close again this week to its widest point of the year. For that, you can thank more political posturing by the country’s populist leaders ahead of the May 23 European elections. Matteo Salvini, leader of the League and deputy prime minister, ...

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• 28 May

  What Britain needs from its next PM

  Theresa May’s departure as Britain’s prime minister won’t heal the country’s divisions or end its Brexit nightmare. This drawn-out crisis is so far from being resolved, her successor might soon regret winning the top job. But the task isn’t hopeless, and the right kind of leadership could move Britain and the European Union to a better outcome. The main contenders ...

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• 28 May

  Modi’s win is a populist warning to the world

  

  It’s a terrible feeling to discover that your country is full of strangers. For some in India, the election of Narendra Modi in 2014, with a majority that India hadn’t seen in three decades, was that moment. Everyone knew there was discontent with the status quo; everyone knew that Modi was doing well, better than anyone had expected before he ...

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• 28 May

  Amazon-Deliveroo alliance would eat Uber for dinner

  

  Amazon.com Inc. and British food delivery startup Deliveroo make in some ways cosier bedfellows than Uber Technologies Inc. does with its own competing service, Uber Eats. The US e-commerce giant led a $575 million financing round in London-based Deliveroo. One can’t help but wonder whether the investment is an amuse-bouche for a broader tie-up, a chance for Amazon to get ...

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• 28 May

  BMW looks for the ultimate driving machine

  

  Norbert Reithofer chose a good moment to step down as BMW’s chief executive (he’s now the supervisory board chairman, a less high-profile role). When Reithofer made way for Harald Krueger in May 2015, the US Environmental Protection Agency hadn’t yet publicly accused Volkswagen AG of cheating on diesel emissions, which would imperil an entire technology. That same year Trump announced ...

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• 28 May

  US stocks steady, Treasury yields touch 19-month low

  

  Bloomberg US equity futures steadied with European stocks as traders returned from American and UK holidays with a cautious outlook. The dollar advanced with Treasuries. Contracts on the S&P 500 fluctuated alongside those on the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq 100. The Stoxx Europe 600 index was steady, erasing earlier losses after better-than-forecast economic confidence data and as ...

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• 28 May

  Calm returns to China’s stock market after $1.3 trillion rout

  

  Bloomberg Investors are taking a breather from the recent market rout that has wiped out almost $1.3 trillion from China’s stock market. The CSI 300 Index hasn’t moved more than 2 percent in either direction in the past seven sessions, the longest streak of calm since February. The index closed 1 percent higher on Tuesday. Volatility has dropped too, with ...

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