September, 2018

• 19 September

  Bannon seeks European upset with appeal to populist forces

  

  Bloomberg Steve Bannon helped upend the political order in the US before falling out with President Donald Trump. Now he’s looking to recreate his former glories in Europe. Bannon is planning a roadshow across half a dozen European countries this week to organise a loose alliance of populist leaders and parties in a bid to gain a bigger foothold for ...

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• 19 September

  Losing faith in the future?

  

  It has long been an accepted axiom in the United States — and also in many advanced democracies — that the future would be better than the past. People took it for granted that living standards would rise and that life would be more comfortable and stable. Well, kiss that optimism goodbye. A new survey of 27 countries finds that ...

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• 19 September

  Three more reasons to worry about Italy

  

  It feels good again to be an investor in Italian government debt. Since the start of September, the yield on the benchmark 10-year bond has fallen from 3.24 percent to 2.79 percent, and the spread with German bunds has narrowed sharply. Bondholders seem confident that Italy’s finance minister Giovanni Tria will get his way in passing a prudent budget, despite ...

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• 19 September

  Here’s one likely cause of the next financial crisis

  

  Now that everything has been said about the 10th anniversary of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, it’s worth asking how close we are to the next crisis. In the market for corporate loans, investors have fulfilled at least one prerequisite: They’re dropping their guard. The financial cycle has a lot to do with inattention. When something bad happens, people are careful ...

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• 19 September

  Global trade is thriving for emerging markets

  The West has turned hostile to open markets, but trade isn’t in retreat everywhere. In other parts of the world, it’s flourishing. The fashionable label “deglobalisation” misses the shift in import and export patterns that has seen emerging markets account for an increasing share of global trade in goods. Not the least of these is China’s expanding role as customer, ...

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• 19 September

  AI threatens to devastate jobs in developing world

  

  Most studies of the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on jobs and the economy have focused on developed countries such as the US and Britain. But through my work as a scientist, technology executive and venture capitalist in the US and China, I’ve come to believe that the gravest threat AI poses is to emerging economies. In recent decades, China ...

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• 19 September

  China Inc. is hurting for a corporate tax cut

  

  An escalating trade war, rising oil prices and a bear market in stocks — China Inc. is struggling. A multibillion-yuan windfall from corporate tax cuts might be the only way to revive animal spirits. Yet Beijing is walking the other way, preparing to break the camel’s back. Starting in January, China’s tax offices will collect companies’ social-security contributions as part ...

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• 19 September

  This Indian bank merger must put strategy before size

  

  He may have struggled to mend India’s broken banking system, but at least Prime Minister Narendra Modi is shrinking the number of state-run banks to 19 from 26. Although that’s nowhere close to the original idea of ending up with just six, it’s a good start. The next step will be to nudge most taxpayer-funded banks away from me-too corporate ...

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• 19 September

  Ma warns Alibaba, China to prepare for 20-year trade war

  

  Bloomberg Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. co-founder Jack Ma cautioned China’s business and political leaders to prepare for the trade war with the US to last longer and have a bigger impact than most people think. China’s richest man said the dispute could last 20 years and persist beyond the presidency of Donald Trump, as the world’s two strongest economic powers ...

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• 19 September

  Beijing decreases US Treasury holdings as trade war intensifies

  

  Bloomberg China’s holdings of US Treasuries fell to a six-month low in July, just as a trade war between the world’s two largest economies began heating up. China’s ownership of US bonds, bills and notes slipped to $1.17 trillion, the lowest level since January and down from $1.18 trillion in June, according to data released by the Treasury Department. Japan, ...

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