December, 2018

• 24 December

  World will pay for not reining in debt growth

  

  Markets, to paraphrase Nobel prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling, often forget that they keep forgetting. That’s especially true when it comes to the intractable challenges posed by global debt. Since 2008, governments around the world have looked for relatively painless ways to lower high debt levels, a central cause of the last crisis. Cutting interest rates to zero or below made ...

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• 24 December

  Theresa May’s other option on Brexit

  

  A conventional view is forming about what happens next in Brexit. If, as expected, parliament rejects Theresa May’s deal in January, a second referendum becomes inescapable. But there is an alternative: A general election. While calls for a second referendum have some logic, two big problems explain why May has so far ruled it out. First, it would be seized ...

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• 24 December

  The US risks blinding itself to the next crisis

  After the 2008 financial crisis, Congress created a new federal entity with an important mission: to ensure that regulators would never again be caught off-guard. The Financial Stability Oversight Council brought together different agencies to watch for threats within the banking system and beyond. The Trump administration is now undermining those efforts — at the very point in the economic ...

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• 24 December

  Gatwick’s drone debacle should be a wake-up call

  Season’s greetings, travelers! Here’s something new to worry about: Your trip may be disrupted by drones. London Gatwick, Britain’s second-busiest airport, had to be shut twice after unmanned aerial vehicles entered its airspace in what police called a “deliberate act.” Some 10,000 passengers were diverted, hundreds of flights were delayed, and chaos reigned on the ground. The army had to ...

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• 24 December

  India may finally race forward in electric cars

  

  This hasn’t been the best of years for those of us who worry about climate change. The US administration has firmly turned against emissions controls. State backing for construction pushed China’s emissions higher. And, far from peaking or even stagnating, worldwide emissions actually increased at the fastest rate in the past seven years, according to the Global Carbon Project. The ...

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• 24 December

  Valuations of stocks don’t matter much in emerging markets

  

  Like the Nasdaq, emerging markets are no strangers to booms and busts. Unlike the US market, valuations no longer matter much outside the developed world. That’s because sell-side analysts’ earnings estimates are unreliable. The 10% correction in the Nasdaq 100 Index shouldn’t have surprised US analysts — they’ve been revising down earnings estimates since April, when trade tensions started to ...

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• 24 December

  The Fed weighs growth against market fragility

  

  Resisting unusual pressure from both politicians and notable market participants, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell and his colleagues on the Open Market Committee raised interest rates by 25 basis points and slowed the path for future hikes by less than markets hoped. In doing so, the central bank reaffirmed that its focus remains firmly domestic and economic. But the markets’ ...

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• 24 December

  US stocks tumble 19-month low over Washington tumult

  

  Bloomberg US stocks tumbled to a 19-month low as the turmoil in Washington kept investors on edge after the worst week for American equities in almost a decade. The S&P 500 slid for a fourth straight day, edging ever closer to a bear market as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin unnerved investors by calling a crisis meeting with financial regulators. The ...

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• 24 December

  India stocks fall on weak global cues

  

  Bloomberg Indian stocks declined for a third day in holiday-thinned trading as the threat of slower global growth and its impact on corporate earnings added to uncertainty at the end of a tough year. The S&P BSE Sensex dropped 0.8 percent to 35,470.15 in Mumbai, with bulk of the losses coming in the last hour of the session. Volumes were ...

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• 24 December

  Trading optimism in banks fades as bad volatility strikes

  

  Bloomberg Financial-market turbulence is supposed to be a good thing for Wall Street trading desks — not so this quarter. Banks are struggling to capitalise on tumult across stock, bond and currency markets, in part because many investors are staying on sidelines as year-end approaches. Another culprit: dramatic but short-lived swings in asset prices that are striking some of their ...

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