November, 2018

• 3 November

  Don’t expect robots to take away everyone’s job

  

  How many jobs are vulnerable to automation? Plenty of people ask that question, and plenty of people try to give numerical answers. A recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said that about 46 percent of jobs have a better-than-even chance of being automated. A 2016 study by Citigroup Inc. and the University of Oxford reported that ...

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• 3 November

  What is scarier than climate change?

  

  What’s so scary about climate change? The term is not scary — at last not in a visceral, skin-crawling sense. Scientists have shown that the likely 2 degrees of global warming to come this century will be extremely dangerous, but, you know, “2 degrees” is hardly a phrase from nightmares and horror films. How about “rat explosion”? As the climate ...

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• 3 November

  Exxon did great, but something’s missing

  Exxon Mobil Corp. needed a good quarter, and it got a good quarter. It beat the consensus earnings estimate in the third quarter, having missed in the previous three. Sure, the margin of victory owed a bit to disposals and favorable tax treatment, but there were big underlying gains in both the upstream and downstream businesses. In particular, Exxon notched ...

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• 3 November

  Indians abroad can ease liquidity crunch at home

  Those who are awash in cash lack capital. Those who have adequate capital are thirsty for liquidity. That, in a nutshell, is the story of India’s financial crunch, and the surest way to ease it will require tapping Indians living overseas. In the past, New Delhi has resorted to such special hard-currency deposit programs to tide over balance-of-payment difficulties. A ...

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• 3 November

  Can central banks survive onslaught of populists?

  

  Is central bank independence the next casualty of the age of populism? In the US, President Donald Trump has declared that the Federal Reserve is “going loco.” He blames Fed Chairman Jerome Powell for threatening “his” recovery and for market volatility caused in part by uncertainty over the trade war Trump himself started. In India, reports emerged this week that ...

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• 3 November

  Nomura should try to be more Japanese

  

  Nomura Holdings Inc. will have to sharpen its focus and develop a more pronounced Japanese flavour overseas to move ahead. That means bulking up at home and cutting costs elsewhere. The 2016 profit recorded by Nomura’s international business is a distant memory after the securities firm shuttered much of its European stock trading. The company posted a rare quarterly loss ...

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• 3 November

  Facebook and Apple know their users will stay

  

  Facebook has faced so much criticism lately that it’s tempting to see its unexciting earnings release as another sign of trouble. More likely, however, the company is merely turning into an Apple lookalike, profiting from network effects rather than from disruptive innovation or any kind of residual positive vibe from its brand. It’s no accident that on the earnings call, ...

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• 3 November

  Aston Martin and Jaguar’s continuation cars are ‘pricey’

  

  Bloomberg Earlier this fall, Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings Plc announced it would make 19 new continuations of its classic DB4 Zagato GT from the 1960s. They’ll be built at Aston Martin Works in Newport Pagnell, England, the company’s in-house classic-car department, and will have the same all-aluminum bodywork of an original DB4 GT Zagato, digitally scanned from the original ...

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• 3 November

  Baidu sees hotpot, backseat karaoke in driverless future

  

  Bloomberg Baidu Inc.’s making a concerted effort to catch up in the driverless car race. The search giant showcased its “Apollo” self-driving technology in Beijing, unveiling a partnership with Hongqi — the “Red Flag” brand created to serve late Communist leader Mao Zedong — to develop a near-full autonomous vehicle in 2019. It’s also inked a deal to install the ...

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• 3 November

  Amazon chief says robots replacing humans unlikely

  

  Bloomberg Did Bill Ackman, John Overdeck and David Siegel give a bunch of money to get kids building robots, only to see those kids displaced by machines when they grow up? At a benefit for FIRST, the science and technology nonprofit they’ve supported, the answer was a resounding no, and it came from an authoritative source, Jeff Bezos, the guy ...

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