April, 2019

• 17 April

  Why does Trump want to turn America Japanese?

  

  Asia expert Ezra Vogel published his influential book “Japan as Number One” 40 years ago. At the time, he argued that the US needed to adopt aspects of Japan’s supposedly superior economic system if it wanted to compete with the East Asian powerhouse. Policymakers in Washington were wise to ignore him. While Japan sank into a financial crisis and three ...

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• 17 April

  Fed must fight next recession now

  

  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? The US economy ...

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• 17 April

  Notre Dame fire unites Paris, world in dismay

  Grief is not too strong a word for the emotion that hundreds of millions of people around the world felt as they saw the Cathedral of Notre Dame in flames. It wasn’t just that one of Europe’s most beloved buildings was burning, terrible as that was to watch; it was knowing how much this astonishing creation has meant to Parisians, ...

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• 17 April

  Indonesia’s next leader can’t afford to shun China

  Nationalism has been a feature of political discourse in Indonesia since the republic’s inception after World War II. It’s taken on more of an edge since the Asian Financial Crisis and return to democracy. Now, in every election, candidates compete to trumpet their economic patriotism. In the current campaign, challenger Prabowo Subianto has gone further and accused elites of selling ...

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• 17 April

  What Jet Airways near collapse says about India

  

  It looks like Jet Airways Ltd.’s luck has finally run out. India’s oldest privately owned airline is on the verge of shutting down all its flights — it already has perhaps fewer than 10 aircraft active — because it simply doesn’t have enough working capital. It’s more than a billion dollars in debt and has lost money for the last ...

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• 17 April

  Targets of Citigroup are easy to question

  

  Citigroup Inc. executives appear optimistic about the momentum they see across the firm’s businesses, from branded credit cards to M&A and treasury services. Whether the modest revenue expansion they expect for this year will enable the US bank to get closer to its financial targets is another question. The bank’s new CFO, Mark Mason, presented his first set of earnings ...

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• 17 April

  Why is Zuckerberg relaxed about UK speech rules?

  

  Britain’s plans to regulate online content have triggered an unsurprising furore about censorship. But that’s largely fine with the technology giants – because it distracts attention from a bigger problem that goes to the heart of their business model. The white paper on online harms is an effort to curb the online spread of dangerous content, such as incitement to ...

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• 17 April

  Earnings whipsaw US stocks; Treasuries rise

  

  Bloomberg The latest batch of corporate earnings whipsawed US stocks as investors sought clues on the strength of the economy after a likely slowdown in the first quarter. The 10-year Treasury yield pushed above 2.6 percent. The S&P 500 Index erased early gains, with healthcare shares again under pressure as concerns mount over potential policy changes. Netflix Inc advanced even ...

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• 17 April

  Malaysian ringgit reels after index, fund

  

  Bloomberg It was a one-two punch that’s turned the Malaysian ringgit into Asia’s worst performer this month. FTSE Russell said it may drop Malaysian debt from the FTSE World Government Bond Index because of concern about market liquidity, roiling the nation’s currency and bonds. And less than two weeks ago, Norway said its sovereign wealth fund will cut emerging-market debt ...

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• 17 April

  Powell adopts whites-of-the-eyes inflation stance Yellen shunned

  

  Bloomberg Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and his colleagues have made an important shift in their strategy for dealing with inflation in a prelude to what could be a more radical change next year. The central bank has backed off the interest-rate hikes it had been delivering to avoid a potentially dangerous rise in inflation that economic theory says could ...

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