March, 2018

• 14 March

  Japan explores possibility of Abe-Kim summit

  

  Bloomberg The Japanese government is exploring the possibility of a meeting between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Japanese media reported. Japan is considering a new way of dealing with Pyongyang after US President Donald Trump’s decision to meet Kim, Kyodo News said, citing unidentified government officials. The surprise move by Trump, which followed a ...

  Read More »
• 14 March

  Graft inquiry to summon Zuma’s son, Gupta’s

  Bloomberg South African lawmakers said they will summon the Gupta family and the son of former President Jacob Zuma to appear before an inquiry that is investigating the mismanagement of public funds at state-owned enterprises. The former chairwoman of South African Airways, Dudu Myeni, will also be subpoenaed after failing to heed two invitations to give testimony at the hearings ...

  Read More »
• 14 March

  Merkel seals fourth term in parliament vote

  

  Bloomberg German Chancellor Angela Merkel was formally elected to a fourth term in a parliamentary vote, extending her 12 years in office at the helm of Europe’s biggest economy. Merkel, 63, was backed by a majority of 364 lawmakers in the 709-member lower house on the strength of a coalition deal between her Christian Democratic-led bloc and the Social Democrats, ...

  Read More »
• 14 March

  White House hosts meeting on Gaza crisis without Palestinians

  Bloomberg The White House hosted 19 nations, including Israel and Arab Gulf states, to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but the Palestinian Authority boycotted the meeting, angered by the Trump administration’s policies on Jerusalem. US President Donald Trump reversed decades of US policy in December, when he decided to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the US embassy ...

  Read More »
• 14 March

  Italy’s center-right leaders agree to talk to Five Star

  

  Bloomberg Italy’s center-right alliance led by the euroskeptic League has taken the first step toward negotiating with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, raising the prospect of a populist administration which investors regard with alarm. League leader Matteo Salvini has been given a mandate by his partners in the bloc to talk to Five Star and the center-left Democratic Party, spokesmen ...

  Read More »
• 14 March

  House Russia probe dissolves into fight over public transcripts

  Bloomberg Now that Republicans have terminated the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia probe, the biggest outstanding question is whether the public will ever see transcripts from dozens of its closed-door witnesses. Republicans on the Intelligence panel are reversing their earlier plans to release those transcripts, while Democrats say they plan to attach the documents to their final report. With Republicans and ...

  Read More »
• 14 March

  How powerful is the Fed?

  

  It is March 2009. The American economy is rapidly collapsing. The previous month, payroll jobs had dropped by a staggering 650,000. The grim outlook stokes gallows humour. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke receives a call from a top Fed official. “Do you want some good news?” the official asks. “Please,” Bernanke responds. “Call somebody else.” In this desperate climate, the ...

  Read More »
• 14 March

  Artificial Libor threatens Hong Kong

  

  How much have benchmark US interest rates risen lately? You may think the correct answer is 25 basis points, or 0.25 percentage point. That’s the amount by which the US Federal Reserve raised its target for overnight interbank rates in December, the only official increase in the past nine months. Unofficially, though, borrowing costs have gone up by another 35 ...

  Read More »
• 14 March

  Volkswagen is dreaming if it thinks diesel is coming back

  

  With the threat of city driving bans looming across Europe, people who want to know whether it still makes sense to buy a diesel vehicle shouldn’t count on any help from the autos industry’s biggest beast. That’s the only conclusion to draw from comments by Volkswagen AG’s boss on Monday that diesel cars would soon enjoy a “renaissance” as people ...

  Read More »
• 14 March

  Brexit may stunt Europe’s low-fee ETF revolution

  The exchange-traded fund juggernaut that’s transformed the US investing landscape is just starting to accelerate into Europe. But there’s a risk that misguided efforts by European Union regulators to deal with the aftershocks of Brexit will stunt the market’s potential. After growing by more than 40 percent last year, Europe’s ETF industry added another 7 percent in January alone. It ...

  Read More »