March, 2018

• 5 March

  Steel and aluminum jobs don’t add up to that much

  

  Steel tariffs work! That is, when President George W. Bush levied tariffs of 8 percent to 30 percent on steel imports in March 2002, it did seem to have a detectable positive impact on steel industry employment. For about a year after the tariff was imposed, steel industry employment stopped falling. Yay! Then the decline resumed amid a brewing global ...

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• 5 March

  Indian banks can’t stop mobile juggernaut

  

  Smug in the belief that their own payment apps would be enough to take on the threat from mobile, India’s banks underestimated the risk to their lucrative cards business. A recent Bernstein survey has some sobering news for them: They may have already lost Bollywood, and they can’t hope to win the neighbourhood grocer. Almost 30 percent of tickets in ...

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• 5 March

  Beware fintech firms trying to get you hooked on bitcoin

  

  Fintech startups have long had trouble turning feel-good rhetoric into profitable growth. Competition is intense, consumers tend to want things for free, and dinosaur banks are far from extinct. To make matters worse, finance just isn’t as addictive as messaging or catching up with friends. That counts in an era where billions are made through monetizing attention. Enter, Bitcoin. Back ...

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• 5 March

  May’s Brexit speech was good and changed nothing

  UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s long-awaited speech on Brexit last week was admirably frank, impressively argued — and about 18 months too late. As it is, the country’s choices remain now just as they were before her address to the nation: Britain either stops this process in its tracks, or must prepare itself for dire consequences. May was right to ...

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• 5 March

  Russia’s pipeline power is looking well overhyped

  

  Russia and Ukraine may be practically at war with each other, but they are joined at the hip by Ukraine’s gas transit system, business partners in one of the world’s biggest energy export channels. On February 28, the company that owns the Ukrainian system, Naftogaz Ukrainy, won a $2.56 billion verdict that ends a four-year arbitration fight in Stockholm. The ...

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• 5 March

  Stocks are more similar to bonds than you think

  

  Historical data show that stocks tend to post strong performances during periods of rising interest rates but only below-average results when inflation is rising or above average. This counterintuitive dynamic was explained by Warren Buffett in 1977 in “Why Inflation Swindles the Equity Investor,” which he wrote as the US was experiencing some of the worst price increases in its ...

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• 5 March

  Will Apple become America’s first trillion-dollar company

  

  During the dot-com-crazed 1990s, Cisco Systems Inc. became the world’s most valuable company. Widely expected to become the first company to hit a trillion-dollar capitalization, it made it barely halfway there. When the technology sector peaked in March 2000, Cisco had a market capitalisation near $550 billion. From that peak, the entire technology sector imploded. Cisco fared even worse than ...

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• 5 March

  Bank of Japan has tools for stimulus exit in stable manner

  

  Bloomberg The Bank of Japan has the tools to eventually exit its record monetary easing without disrupting markets, according to Masayoshi Amamiya, a nominee for one of the two deputy governor positions at the central bank. The BOJ can adjust bond yields in a stable manner when the time comes for it to start normalizing its policy, Amamiya said at ...

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• 5 March

  IDB to launch $2.5bn benchmark sukuk soon

  

  LONDON / Reuters The Islamic Development Bank (IDB), the largest development organisa-tion in the Muslim world, will launch a $2.5 billion benchmark-sized sukuk, its largest since inception, “soon”, its president Bandar Hajjar said on Monday. Speaking at a sukuk conference at the London Stock Exchange Hajjar said the sukuk would support spending on infrastructure, education and health. The IDB is ...

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• 5 March

  Barclays’ partnership with India post office pays off

  

  Bloomberg Barclays Plc’s attempts to scale up its cash management business in India via a tie-up with the country’s post office are starting to bear fruit, according to the UK bank’s local corporate banking head. The deal with the 164-year-old mail service, first agreed in 2015, allows Barclays to offer its cash management services via some 8,000 postal branches spread ...

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