October, 2018

• 30 October

  Homes slipping beyond grasp of buyers in US

  

  Bloomberg This is how housing markets turn. Slowly. Six years of home-price gains outpacing wage growth; bidding wars replaced by sales at the asking price; days or weeks on the market turning into months; rising mortgage rates. First-time shoppers start to get priced out, making it harder for move-up buyers to sell, and the slowdown ripples gradually up the real ...

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• 30 October

  Ignoring climate change dangers is only human

  

  A recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggests that we’ve probably lost our chance to keep the planet’s temperature within a safe zone for humanity, which would require limiting global warming to just 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times. Doing so would mean entirely transforming the world’s diet, agriculture practices and energy infrastructure ...

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• 30 October

  IBM, Red Hat are much better together

  

  IBM just made the cloud-computing war far more interesting. International Business Machines Corp. announced that it’s buying Red Hat Inc., one of the most successful pioneers of a software movement known as open source, which allows programming instructions to be accessible to anyone to view and alter. Red Hat’s version of the Linux open-source software became widely used in companies’ ...

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• 30 October

  Europe is too exposed to Italy to let it go

  

  Europe’s leaders are engaged in a high-stakes standoff with Italy, trying to coerce the populist government to drop its budget-busting spending plan. But how far can they go? Can they risk pushing Italy out of the currency union? Judging from the exposures of French and German banks, they have a strong incentive to seek a compromise. Looking at what banks ...

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• 30 October

  Damage control is all the UK budget can do

  Pity Philip Hammond, the UK’s chancellor proposed a budget amid political chaos, faltering public services, simmering anger, and, in the background, the specter of Brexit. Also: He’s supposed to simultaneously cut taxes, end austerity and reduce debt. It’s an impossible task. And this budget — the last before Brexit — will be a premonition of bigger debates to come. Start ...

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• 30 October

  The winners and losers from a sea change in oil

  

  Despite efforts by the Trump administration to turn it, a supertanker is bearing down on drivers, oil majors, and even Amazon.com Inc. We are 14 months away from a shake-up in the global oil market lacking the drama of, say, Iranian sanctions. It involves a UN-mandated crackdown on air pollution from ships. Still awake? Good, because this could mean some ...

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• 30 October

  Don’t cry for India? A central bank’s lament

  

  Long-simmering discord between the Indian central bank and the government is turning into a very public brawl. The timing couldn’t be more awful for markets. In a hard-hitting speech on central-bank independence, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Deputy Governor Viral Acharya startled his audience by invoking Argentina of 2010. Back then, the Argentinian central bank chief quit after being coerced ...

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• 30 October

  Central banks no longer cushion economies, markets

  

  If governments, companies and markets needed any further reminders that their operating environment is changing, they got it last week. Despite weakening economic momentum and volatile financial markets, a second systemically important central bank, the European Central Bank (ECB), reiterated its intention to stop using large liquidity injections to support economic activity and asset prices. The change in this ‘global ...

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• 30 October

  US stocks turn higher as tech shares reverse slump

  

  Bloomberg US stocks reversed early losses as investors shook off disappointing earnings from General Electric and tech shares reversed a sell-off despite fresh data raised conc-ern about the strength of the housing market. Treasuries fell and the dollar rose. The S&P 500 Index climbed, although its drop from a September record still hovers near 10 percent, putting it on the ...

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• 30 October

  Italian bonds slide as economy slows, debt auction underwhelms

  

  Bloomberg Italian bonds dropped as disappointing economic growth and a tepid debt sale damped investor enthusiasm. The securities snapped a three-day rally after the nation’s growth stagnated in the third quarter and sale prices for 10-year debt at the Treasury auction were below market levels. The weaker average sale price reflected fragile investor sentiment after rating agencies cut their view ...

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