January, 2019

• 13 January

  PG&E may give workers notices on bankruptcy

  

  Bloomberg PG&E Corp, the California utility giant facing billions of dollars in wildfire liabilities, may notify employees as soon as Monday that it’s preparing a potential bankruptcy filing, according to people familiar with the situation. The San Francisco-based utility owner is planning to send the notice to fulfill a state law that requires the company to alert workers at least ...

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• 13 January

  Denmark tests extreme ‘mortgage pricing’

  

  Bloomberg Danes may soon be able to get 30-year home loans at just 1.5 percent. That’s considerably less than many sovereign states pay to borrow for that period, including the US government. It’s not the first time Denmark’s mortgage-backed covered-bond market — the world’s biggest — has tested such extreme levels. It tends to occur when investors from Germany to ...

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• 13 January

  AfD is a Rorschach test for Germany’s politics

  

  Armin-Paulus Hampel, a former journalist and commentator who now is a member of the Bundestag, is ebullient, affable, opinionated, voluble and excellent company at lunch. But because his party is Alternative for Germany (AfD), one wonders whether he is representative of it, and whether he is as congenial politically as he is socially. AfD is a Rorschach test for observers ...

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• 13 January

  Sainsbury becomes UK’s sick grocer

  

  Britons tucked into J. Sainsbury Plc’s value-priced turkey crowns, costing 9 pounds, over the festive period. But its disappointing performance risks turning the group itself into the feast for Britain’s other big supermarkets. Sainsbury said like-for-like sales across the group fell 1.1 percent in 15 weeks to January 5, missing analysts’ expectations for a 0.3 percent decline. True, the reporting ...

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• 13 January

  Trump is losing the shutdown argument

  The recent presidential address and the response from Democratic Party’s leaders in Congress offered little prospect that the stand-off over President Trump’s wall will be quickly resolved. As yet, neither side looks ready to back down or seek compromise. For this to change, public opinion may need to shift. Encouragingly, last night’s exchange suggests it soon might — against Trump. ...

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• 13 January

  In 2019, aluminum is the market to watch closely

  On the long list of leading indicators that market participants attempt to use to figure out where the economy may be headed, don’t overlook aluminum. Despite the many market-soothing words uttered by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and former chairs Janet Yellen and Ben S. Bernanke at the American Economic Association’s annual meeting in Atlanta, economic and market risks have ...

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• 13 January

  A trade deal between US, China is only half the fight

  

  Equity markets have been rallying on the prospect that the trade-related cloud hanging over the global economy could be lifting. The S&P 500 index is up more than five percent, buoyed both by last week’s strong US jobs figures and the sense of momentum in talks between US and Chinese negotiators. The two countries can reach a deal they “can ...

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• 13 January

  Google knows you better than doctor

  

  Thanks to a combination of Google, WebMD and the $6,000 deductible on my health insurance, I haven’t been to a doctor to talk about an illness in years. Millions of Americans have similar habits; in fact, one in 20 Google searches are for health-related information. “Dr. Google” may not have an MD or a board certification, but it does have ...

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• 13 January

  The story of mutiny, surrender in India’s banking elite

  

  Chandra Shekhar Ghosh is a new arrival on India’s banking scene. Billionaire Uday Kotak is a seasoned campaigner and Asia’s richest banker. No wonder then that Ghosh is falling in line with a central bank command, while Kotak is suing. The disputes concern the founders’ maximum permissible ownership. The Reserve Bank of India is pushing the largest shareholders of Ghosh’s ...

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• 13 January

  Cutting economic outlook kept growth risks balanced: ECB

  

  Bloomberg European Central Bank (ECB) officials agreed that a cut to their 2019 growth projection in itself acknowledged that risks to the outlook for the euro-area economy had increased. That effectively allowed President Mario Draghi to avoid saying in December that the balance of risks was to the downside, which would have jarred alongside a decision to halt bond buying ...

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