February, 2018

• 26 February

  Merkel picks Conservative flag bearer to cabinet

  

  Bloomberg Angela Merkel nominated an up-and-coming conservative to a post in Germany’s new cabinet, part of a bid to reassert control of the party by placating critics while still maintaining her centrist approach to policy. Jens Spahn, the 37-year-old flag bearer for the party’s right wing, will become health minister if Merkel succeeds in securing her fourth term. His appointment ...

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• 26 February

  Congo security forces kill two protesters in anti-Kabila march

  Bloomberg Security forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo killed at least two protesters and injured 47 others partici- pating in anti-government marches around the country, the UN said. A group of Catholic activists, the Lay Coordination Committee, organized the protest against President Joseph Kabila’s continuing rule of the central African nation. It was the third rally they’ve organized since ...

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• 26 February

  China faces rule by Xi for decades with repeal of term limits

  

  Bloomberg China’s Communist Party is set to repeal presidential term limits in a move that would allow Xi Jinping to rule beyond 2023, completing the country’s departure from a political system based on collective leadership. The party’s Central Committee announced it was seeking to end a constitutional provision that bars the head of state from serving more than two consecutive ...

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• 26 February

  Big companies are getting a chokehold on economy

  

  A recent report by Goldman Sachs’ global research team highlights a new study showing that large, dominant superstar companies are paying lower wages and earning higher profits. I’ve flagged that research myself, but when Goldman says it’s worried, you know things have really gotten serious. American industry is increasingly dominated by a shrinking handful of giant companies. Why is Goldman ...

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• 26 February

  A passage to India for Toyota’s Lexus

  

  Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitions to turn his country into a powerhouse of high-tech manufacturing via the ‘Make In India’ campaign just received one hell of a boost. Toyota Motor Corp.’s Lexus is considering assembling its ES brand in the nation to take advantage of lower import tariffs on auto parts, the Asahi newspaper reported, citing an unidentified official. To ...

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• 26 February

  Barclays isn’t back to normal yet, whatever the promises

  

  Barclays Plc CEO Jes Staley reckons he will keep his side of the bargain he struck with shareholders back in 2016. Back then, he cut the dividend to give him more space to speed up his overhaul of the bank. A bet on that effort paying off still needs a fair amount of faith. On February 22, Barclays reported a ...

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• 26 February

  Trump’s team finds a new way to wreck Obamacare

  The Trump administration’s latest strike on the Affordable Care Act is to expand the availability of so-called short-term health insurance. Don’t be misled by the seeming modesty of this idea. It’s an impressive combination of bad policy and bad faith. First, these aren’t short-term plans at all. They’d provide coverage for up to a year, much longer than required for ...

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• 26 February

  New York’s booming housing market splits the city in two

  

  New York City has added an estimated 488,478 housing units since 1991. For a city that has added 1.1 million jobs over that same period, that’s not great, but it’s not terrible, either. Where things get complicated — and in some ways less encouraging — is in exactly what kind of housing it has added. These numbers are from the ...

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• 26 February

  Imagine a world with no bank bonuses. It wouldn’t be so bad

  In the financial world, bonus disappointment is cause for anguish, outrage, and sometimes a job change. Rather than enjoy guides on how to splurge on a foreign bolt-hole, victims are left instead to write pseudonymous columns about how Jeremy Corbyn’s views now pervade the corner office. When even Deutsche Bank AG pays bonuses, it seems unfair not to get what ...

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• 26 February

  Vaping is new ‘chewing gum’ in Singapore’s nanny state

  

  Back in 1992, Singapore feared that its gleaming new subway would be wrecked by people using something sticky to disable automatic train doors — so it banned chewing gum. Twenty-six years later, the prohibition on the import, manufacture and sale of gum is still in place, even though the utility of that harsh curb has never really been proved: Hong ...

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