January, 2018

• 22 January

  China’s push into western Pacific alarms American allies in Asia

  

  Bloomberg With the Trump administration warning of a possible war with North Korea, US allies in Asia are sounding the alarm on another risk: a clash with China in the western Pacific. China has recently accelerated air and naval excursions in sensitive areas near Japan and Taiwan, part of a longstanding quest to expand its military presence further from its ...

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• 22 January

  US lawmakers fail to negotiate an end to shutdown

  Bloomberg Lawmakers failed to negotiate an end to the government shutdown despite a bipartisan effort to broker a deal, raising the political stakes as federal agencies begin closing at the start of their normal workweek. Many more Americans will begin feeling the repercussions of a shutdown that officially began at 12:01 am after most government offices had stopped work for ...

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• 22 January

  Pence hails Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in Netanyahu meeting

  

  Bloomberg US President Donald Trump believes his decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital — a step that antagonised Palestini-ans — will ultimately provide new momentum to Middle East peace talks, Vice President Mike Pence said. Pence expressed confidence that Trump’s approach will help resolve the 70-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict as he opened a two-day visit to Israel at a meeting ...

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• 22 January

  Germany’s Merkel closes in on fourth term

  

  Bloomberg Chancellor Angela Merkel moved forward in her bid to form a fourth-term government after her prospective coalition partner agreed to shelve its misgivings and enter negotiations on a common policy platform for Germany. Merkel, 63, welcomed the outcome of vote by Social Democratic Party delegates in Bonn following what she termed an “intensive and contentious” debate. The chancellor’s Christian ...

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• 22 January

  6 killed as Congo security forces, protesters clash

  Bloomberg At least six people died when security forces clashed with anti-government protesters in the Democratic Republic of Congo capital, the United Nations said. Police and soldiers fired teargas and live rounds to disperse thousands of Catholic Church worshipers as they left morning services in Kinshasa and attempted to march to protest President Joseph Kabila’s refusal to step down. Similar ...

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• 22 January

  Help companies avoid layoffs in recessions

  

  One of the hardest questions in economics is mobility versus stability. What happens to workers who are displaced by recessions, technological and industrial change, regional shifts, or corporate failure? Can humans move fluidly from occupation to occupation, industry to industry, and city to city, like interchangeable parts in a well-oiled economic machine, always going to where their contributions will be ...

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• 22 January

  China didn’t implode under debt

  

  China’s economic performance is all about what hasn’t happened. That’s huge. The world’s No. 2 economy didn’t implode under a mountain of debt, nor did trade tensions with the US bring exports undone. And there certainly hasn’t been the trade war many feared a year ago. The country’s growing reliance on services and consumption as an engine of growth — ...

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• 22 January

  Low economic volatility won’t keep markets calm

  Many predicted that the beginning of last year would finally bring an uptick in volatility. Instead, 2017 was one of the least volatile periods on record for the stock market. The S&P 500 was up every month. The largest peak-to-trough drawdown was slightly more than 3 percent, the lowest on record since at least the mid-1990s. And this phenomenon isn’t ...

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• 22 January

  US needs an improved higher education act

  There’s little doubt that the Higher Education Act, which affects more than $120 billion in annual federal spending, needs an update. Less clear is whether Republicans’ proposed reforms will do more harm than good. The law, last revised a decade ago, sets the conditions under which federal student financial aid is disbursed. It is the government’s primary tool for preserving ...

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• 22 January

  Amazon looks to advertising for consistent, healthy returns

  

  For more than two decades, Jeff Bezos has famously sacrificed profit for growth, persuading Wall Street that Amazon.com Inc. was best served pouring money into the logistical nuts and bolts that have turned his company into the Wal-Mart of the web. More recently, investors have found solace in the company’s profitable cloud services business, which has helped offset losses in ...

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