February, 2018

• 4 February

  Italian poll campaign sours as shooting targets migrants

  Bloomberg Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni condemned a drive-by shooting in the city of Macerata that targeted migrants, and asked all political parties to act responsibly ahead of national elections on March 4. “I trust in the sense of responsibility of all political forces,” Gentiloni said during a news conference in Rome after the incident. “Criminals are criminals and the ...

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• 4 February

  Free incense clouds fate of Japan’s economy minister

  

  Bloomberg Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s point man for a massive Pacific trade pact is defending his job after giving incense sticks to voters, the latest example of how even the whiff of scandal can threaten policy-making in Japan. Toshimitsu Motegi, the economy minister who last month shepherded the revised Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal to an 11-way agreement, is facing calls ...

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• 4 February

  Peru opposition parties plan motion to impeach Kuczynski

  Bloomberg Peru’s Pedro Pablo Kuczynski may face a new opposition attempt to force him from office after one party shifted its position and said it would now support an impeachment motion of its own. New Peru, which chose not to vote in December’s impeachment ballot, told reporters that new information has emerged about Kuczynski’s ties to Brazilian builder Odebrecht SA. ...

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• 4 February

  S Africa’s Zuma meets with ANC

  Bloomberg Top officials of the ruling African National Congress were expected to meet on Sunday with President Jacob Zuma to discuss his departure from office, the Johannesburg-based Sunday Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The meeting, to be held at the president’s official residence in Pretoria, will be led by the party’s Deputy President David Mabuza and could ...

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• 4 February

  Commonsense immigration policy for the 21st century

  

  We are a nation of immigrants who are uneasy about immigration. There is a long history of resentment against immigrants, dating to the Irish immigrants in the 1840s and the Chinese a few decades later. This contrasts with our demonstrated ability to absorb newcomers. It’s time to overcome this two-headed legacy with an immigration policy for the 21st century. What ...

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• 4 February

  Its better to call your tax lawyer first before investing in India

  

  Just as foreign stock investors in India try to come to terms with a rudely reimposed 10% tax on long-term capital gains, a bigger shock awaits them. The grandfathering of past returns promised by Indian finance minister Arun Jaitley in his budget speech last week is missing from the fine print of the bill. Well, it’s not completely missing. The ...

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• 4 February

  A better way to disrupt the healthcare system

  Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase say they’re putting their heads together to make health care better and less expensive for their employees. Just possibly, it’s a partnership that could disrupt the US health-care system — in a good way. The market value of insurance companies and pharmacy-benefit managers dropped on the announcement, a sign that investors think the alliance ...

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• 4 February

  Bank of Japan is missing a big opportunity

  It’s almost as though there’s too much good news in Japan. So much that some investors are starting to expect the Bank of Japan (BoJ) to lay groundwork for easing off its stimulus — and the central bank is falling over itself to convince them that policy is not going to change anytime soon. My, how things have changed! Instead ...

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• 4 February

  Bitcoin is the new gold for the cryptocurrency age

  

  I hate to say I told you so, but … well, I told you so. Bitcoin, while still a popular financial asset, is looking less and less like a currency. Online payments company Stripe is ending Bitcoin support. It cites several reasons for doing so: “[Bitcoin] transaction confirmation times have risen substantially; this, in turn, has led to an increase ...

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• 4 February

  Facebook makes it tougher to gauge its popularity

  

  There’s an evolving mystery about Facebook: How are we supposed to measure its popularity now? On January 31, Facebook initially spooked investors by disclosing the slowest growth rate of daily users in its history and a 5 percent decline in the amount of time people spent on the social network in the final quarter of 2017. The company’s stock price ...

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