December, 2018

• 23 December

  Yellow Vest protests abated across France

  

  Bloomberg Protests led by the grassroots Yellow Vest movement abated across France on December 22, a signal that a call to mobilise for a sixth straight weekend failed to maintain the momentum. An estimated 23,800 protested nationwide, down from 33,500 at the same time a week ago, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported, citing the interior ministry. Authorities stopped 109 people ...

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• 23 December

  Mystery filing appears to ask court to act in Mueller probe

  Bloomberg A new legal filing appears to ask the US Supreme Court to intervene for the first time in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 election. The document, which is under seal, stems from a December 18 federal appeals court ruling that required an unidentified company, owned by an unidentified foreign country, to turn over information to a ...

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• 23 December

  Senators aim to claw back trade power from Trump

  

  “You’re the top! You’re an Arrow collar. You’re the top! You’re a Coolidge dollar. You’re the nimble tread of the feet of Fred Astaire, You’re Mussolini, You’re Mrs. Sweeny, You’re Camember.” A version of “You’re the Top,” Cole Porter (1934) In the early 1930s, when Benito Mussolini was one of the world’s most admired political figures, Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed in ...

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• 23 December

  Crypto’s terrible year performs ‘well’

  

  It was one year ago that Bitcoin reached an intraday peak of almost $20,000. Since then, it’s been all downhill. The market value of all cryptocurrency assets have fallen to about $100 billion from about $800 billion at the start of the year. That looks bad, but if you look at the market’s fundamentals, 2018 gets a B+ grade. To ...

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• 23 December

  When tech dreams run into finance, Ofo ensues

  

  When you’re trying to build that tech dream, reality can really suck. Ofo Inc. founder Dai Wei apparently just discovered this, and the results were displeasing. His bike-rental company has immense cash flow problems and he’d even considered applying for bankruptcy, the Financial Times reported, citing a letter to employees. “For the whole of this year we’ve borne immense cash ...

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• 23 December

  Fed is weighing 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 markets’ reaction ...

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• 23 December

  America, get used to the idea of not being No.1

  

  What a difference two decades makes. In 1997, China’s gross domestic product (GDP) was about 11% of the US’. By 2017, it was up to 63%. But this overstates the difference in living standards between the two countries, since prices are generally lower in China. In purchasing-power-parity terms, China’s economy became the world’s largest in about 2013: So which country’s ...

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• 23 December

  Superstar cities aren’t only ones getting richer

  

  There has been a ton written over the past few months — some but far from all of it inspired by Amazon.com Inc.’s “second headquarters” search — about the diverging economic fortunes of America’s metropolitan areas. A lot of it has been very interesting and informative. Taken as a whole, though, it can be pretty confusing. Are we, for example, ...

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• 23 December

  Europe is playing with fire on Italy contagion

  

  Italy’s populist rulers may have been hoping for some market contagion fear to help them win their budget standoff with Brussels, but so far it’s been a dog that didn’t bark. The economic program of the League and Five Star spooked investors in Italian government bonds, but failed to affect any other member state of the monetary union, barring Greece. ...

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• 23 December

  Wall Street trading explodes as stock rout sparks angst

  

  Bloomberg If you asked investors a few months ago what they’d remember about this year’s market, it would’ve been the storm of volatility that laid everything low in February. That episode is starting to seem quaint. Maybe nothing out of the ordinary is happening to stocks by historical standards, but try telling that to traders, who instead of relaxing for ...

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