April, 2019

• 24 April

  China’s spying on the US that’s a good thing

  

  Even as the US and China seem headed towards a truce on trade, their rivalry is heating up in other areas. The threat of espionage taking place under the cover of routine activities appears to be a particular concern. As many as 30 Chinese academics and policy experts have had their US visas cancelled or reviewed in the past year, ...

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• 24 April

  Trump makes Cuba problem worse

  

  President Trump and his officials have taken steps lately to make things harder for Cuba, aiming to persuade its government to stop helping Venezuela’s embattled tyrant, Nicolas Maduro. That’s a worthy goal, and Cuba’s material support for Maduro is certainly objectionable, but this is the wrong way to get results. The administration just announced that US citizens will be able ...

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• 24 April

  New York City is creating jobs but losing people

  After adding more than 1.3 million inhabitants since the early 1990s, New York City has been shrinking since mid-2016. According to estimates released last week by the US Census Bureau, the New York-Newark-Jersey City metropolitan area lost population in the 12-month periods ending July 2018 and July 2017 as well. This raises an important question: Is New York shrinking because ...

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• 24 April

  Big data won’t help us build a better robot

  Artificial intelligence (AI) is going to boost human productivity in a thousand ways, transforming everything from transportation to health care to agriculture. Some enthusiastic computer scientists even think we will find a “master algorithm” that will fix our politics and make lives “longer, happier and more productive.” In the grandest of these visions, smart computing machines could automate all of ...

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• 24 April

  Rebuilding Notre Dame is no mere vanity project

  

  Is it a waste of money to spend the billions of euros that will be needed to rebuild Notre-Dame de Paris? A lot of people seem to consider the whole thing no more than a “vanity project” for the uber-rich. I disagree. One reason is that I’m not so keen on telling other people how to spend their money. Another ...

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• 24 April

  Kraft Heinz’s problems run deeper than its CEO

  

  Kraft Heinz Co.’s problems stem not from a single manager but rather an ethos brought to the company by its private equity owner, 3G Capital, and championed by billionaire Warren Buffett. And so it remains to be seen whether replacing the packaged-food giant’s CEO is enough to right the ship. Kraft Heinz announced on Monday that Bernardo Hees, 49, will ...

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• 24 April

  Perishable money: An old tool to fight a new recession

  

  Almost 10 years after the Great Recession ended, the growing threat of a new economic slowdown raises a troubling question: When the next recession strikes, what can the world’s central banks do? With interest rates low and their balance sheets still loaded with assets bought to fight the 2008 crisis, do they have the tools to respond? This column is ...

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• 24 April

  US stocks drift near record as dollar rallies to six-week high

  

  Bloomberg US equities were little changed as investors assessed corporate earnings and economic data. Treasuries joined a global rally in sovereign bonds and the dollar extended its rally to a six-week high. The S&P 500 Index fluctuated between small losses and gains after closing at a record. AT&T Inc and Caterpillar Inc fell after reporting first-quarter results, while Boeing Co ...

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• 24 April

  Sensex, Nifty snap ‘losing streak’ on earnings optimism

  

  Bloomberg India’s benchmark stock index advanced for the first time in four days as earnings optimism outweighed concerns that Asia’s third-biggest economy may be crimped by higher oil prices. The S&P BSE Sensex climbed 1.3 percent to 39,054.68 in Mumbai, its steepest daily gain in more than six weeks. The NSE Nifty 50 Index rose by the same magnitude, its ...

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• 24 April

  RBI set to join global central banks’ gold buying spree

  

  Bloomberg India’s central bank is likely to join counterparts in Russia and China scooping up gold this year, adding to its record holdings and lending support to worldwide bullion demand as top econ-omies diversify their reserves. The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) purchases are part of a wider picture across developing economies that are looking at de-dollarising their foreign-exchange reserves, ...

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