June, 2019

• 9 June

  Kazakhs vote to elect their first new ruler in 3 decades

  

  Bloomberg Kazakhs are voting in presidential elections that were called after longtime ruler Nursultan Nazarbayev stepped down following three decades in power. Seven candidates are competing to become only the second president of central Asia’s largest energy producer since it gained independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991. Polling, which began on Sunday and was expected to close at ...

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• 9 June

  Pelosi slams Trump’s Mexican foreign policy

  

  Bloomberg President Donald Trump’s deal with Mexico to get help on the border in exchange for withdrawing the threat of US import tariffs got a quick thumbs-down from Nancy Pelosi. The House Speaker released a statement saying Trump had “undermined America’s preeminent leadership role in the world” by hanging the threat of tariffs over Mexico. “We are deeply disappointed by ...

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• 9 June

  Biden leads among in poll of Iowa voters

  

  Bloomberg Former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont led the field of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates in a poll of Iowa voters likely to participate in the first nominating contest, still almost eight months away. Biden has the support of 24 percent of likely participants in the Iowa caucuses. He’s followed by Sanders at 16 percent. ...

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• 9 June

  Justice Ginsburg hints at sharp divides as Supreme Court term nears closure

  

  Bloomberg Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg hinted that sharp divisions will mark the final weeks of a Supreme Court term that will include major rulings on the census and partisan gerrymandering. Speaking before the annual conference of federal judges in New York, Ginsburg suggested that more than a quarter of the court’s remaining 27 rulings will be decided by a single ...

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• 9 June

  Green Party extends its lead over Merkel

  

  Bloomberg Germany’s Green Party has a three-point lead over Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats in the first national opinion poll since the country’s junior coalition chief resigned. The Greens stayed at 27 percent, while Merkel’s CDU-CSU alliance lost three percentage points at 24 percent, according to the Forsa GmbH poll, reported by German broadcasters RTL and n-tv. The country’s Social ...

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• 9 June

  The brave new world of rival trading blocs

  

  We may be on the cusp of an upheaval in global trade. Since World War II, the international trading system has operated on the premise of “most favoured nation (MFN),” meaning that concessions granted to one country must be extended to all countries in the system. The trade standoff between the United States and China suggests that this approach is ...

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• 9 June

  Draghi demands a lot of trust

  

  There’s a question that anyone who watched Mario Draghi’s press conference must ask themselves: Should we look at the European Central Bank’s (ECB) slightly guarded official position or listen to the more dovish messages from the president? The answer will determine one’s confidence about central bank’s ability to fight a new euro zone slowdown. It might also influence whether that ...

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• 9 June

  Modi’s key woman needs strongman-handling skills

  Partly by default, and partly by design, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has managed to assemble a newish-looking team for his second term. Hopefully, the freshness will carry over to ideas. The top job in the finance ministry opened up as Arun Jaitley, who held the position during Modi’s first five-year term, made himself unavailable for health reasons. The prime ...

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• 9 June

  Europe needs a smarter kind of fiscal discipline

  The European Union’s (EU) move to discipline Italy for excessive public borrowing poses an awkward question: What use are rules that lack credibility against a member that acts in bad faith? The answer is not much. The EU’s fourth largest economy hasn’t just fallen short of complying with the bloc’s budget rules — its populist government has openly and repeatedly ...

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• 9 June

  After big victory, Indian PM needs to get basics right

  

  When running for reelection, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ministers stressed that, under his administration, India had become the world’s “fastest-growing large economy.” This was never much of an achievement; after all, the People’s Republic of China was in the midst of a significant slowdown even before the trade war. But even that no longer seems to be ...

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