January, 2019

• 28 January

  Flying-car future looks like a dystopia

  

  Flying cars! So futuristic! A world in which they’re buzzing around the skies must be dazzling – like a Popular Mechanics feature come to life! Well, yeah. About that. It seems increasingly likely that aerospace companies and startups are rushing to embrace a world of vertical take-off robotaxis. Just don’t be surprised if it looks a lot more like “Blade ...

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• 28 January

  Singapore’s office market is buzzing

  What’s not to like about Singapore’s office property market? Take a look at CapitaLand Commercial Trust’s 2018 results. Singapore’s biggest office landlord, owner of $7.4 billion of the city-state’s commercial buildings, finished the year with a record-high occupancy rate of 99.3 percent. To achieve this, the real-estate investment trust didn’t have to compromise on pricing, at least not too much. ...

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• 28 January

  Don’t hold your breath for Venezuelan oil industry

  The longest a human has held their breath is 24 minutes and 3.45 seconds, according to Guinness World Records. Even if every minute were three months, Venezuela’s oil industry won’t be back on its feet by the time you have to come up for air, no matter how the current political chaos plays out. I’m not going to try to ...

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• 28 January

  Climate change probably hurting German growth

  

  Greg Fuzesi, an economist at JPMorgan, estimated that the low level of the Rhine and other important German rivers shaved off 0.7 percentage points of economic growth in 2018. The phenomenon, caused by a year of extraordinarily warm and dry weather, was almost certainly related to human-driven climate change. The damage to the economy makes it even more urgent for ...

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• 28 January

  China is cooling across Asia region

  

  Remember when proximity to China was an unalloyed positive? That worked great when China was in an upswing or chugging along; it’s not so great now that China is cooling. Across Asia, the slowdown is forcing export-dependent economies to lean more on domestic motors and contemplate juicing growth through either monetary or fiscal easing. China’s gross domestic product numbers showed ...

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• 28 January

  This bloated Maharajah needs to get hitched

  

  To have one airline limping forward on the brink of bankruptcy may be regarded as a misfortune. To have two looks like carelessness. That’s the fundamental problem for India’s aviation industry, home to the critically ill Jet Airways India Ltd. and its state-owned rival Air India Ltd., which more or less died in 2012 but has been kept on life ...

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• 28 January

  ECB can sound confident in economy by cutting forecasts

  

  Bloomberg The European Central Bank’s (ECB) pessimism over its economic outlook might not last long even if the euro area fails to pick up speed — instead it’ll just revise the projections to reflect the heightened risks. Governing Council members Francois Villeroy de Galhau and Vitas Vasiliauskas said that policy makers expect to cut their 2019 growth prediction in March ...

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• 28 January

  ECB’s Knot says recession concerns are ‘premature’

  

  Bloomberg The European economy doesn’t show any signs of falling into a recession, ECB Governing Council member Klaas Knot said. “The European economy is doing pretty well,” and even though capacity utilisation is high and unemployment low, this isn’t leading to inflation, the Dutch central bank president said in Dutch television show Buitenhof. “I do find talk about a crisis, ...

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• 28 January

  S&P Global enters China rating market

  

  Bloomberg Chinese regulators have allowed S&P Global Ratings’ Beijing-based wholly owned unit to conduct credit rating business on the mainland, according to a statement from the People’s Bank of China (PBOC). The credit assessor is now allowed to register for bond rating service in China’s interbank market. The PBOC didn’t mention Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings in its announcement ...

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• 28 January

  Carney: Hitting bank pay is regulators’ best tool

  Bloomberg Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said tough oversight of bankers and threats of jail aren’t enough to prevent talent from joining the industry. Carney was discussing the UK’s Senior Managers’ Regime, a response to the “relatively limited consequences” for senior bankers in the wake of the financial crisis. It works on the basis that ignorance is no defense, ...

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