December, 2017

• 11 December

  Australian Donut King owner plunges

  Bloomberg Donut King owner Retail Food Group Ltd. slumped by the most on record on Monday amid reports the company squeezed franchisees with high fees and offered limited management support. Shares in the company fell as much as 27 percent in Sydney trading, the steepest drop since listing in 2006, and wiping as much as $163 million off its market ...

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• 11 December

  Trump to ready public-works plan in Jan 2018

  

  Bloomberg President Donald Trump plans to keep pushing his legislative agenda in 2018 by releasing his long-promised infrastructure proposal in early January, a senior administration official said. Infrastructure advocates question whether a Republican-led Congress will be able to pass a spending plan with enough federal funding if it’s already approved a tax measure that official estimates say would bloat the ...

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• 11 December

  Uber to stay on London streets until April 2018

  

  Bloomberg Uber Technologies Inc.’s London fate won’t be decided until mid-way through 2018 after a judge said that she will schedule an appeal hearing in either April or June, meaning the company can operate in its busiest European market until then. Judge Emma Arbuthnot proposed two starting dates, April 30 or June 25, for the five-day trial at a short ...

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• 11 December

  Britain Serious Fraud Office gets reprieve

  

  Bloomberg The UK government u-turned on campaign promises to disband the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), with the white-collar prosecutor remaining independent under the Conservative Party’s newest plans for tackling economic crime. The decision was expected to be announced on Monday by Home Secretary Amber Rudd, according to a statement from the Home Office. The National Crime Agency, which the government ...

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• 11 December

  Maersk sees falling freight rates in bearish sign for trade

  

  Bloomberg The world’s largest container shipping line says international freight rates are reversing after climbing for most of this year, raising questions about the sustainability of the global trade recovery. Decade-old oversupply issues swamped demand for containerised sea trade in the third quarter, a senior official at Maersk Line Ltd. said. Over 90 percent of trade is routed through ships, ...

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• 11 December

  The aging monster

  

  No one can say we weren’t warned. For years, scholars of all shapes and sizes — demographers, economists, political scientists — have cautioned that the populations of most advanced countries are gradually getting older, with dramatic consequences for economics and politics. But we haven’t taken heed by preparing for an unavoidable future. The ‘we’ refers not just to the United ...

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• 11 December

  Valuing bitcoin means revisiting internet startups globally

  

  Bitcoin’s meteoric rise is forcing analysts to look for a method to estimate a fundamental value for cryptocurrencies. So far, there is no agreement on a global standard, but bitcoins are unlikely to lose their leading role anytime soon. However there is plenty of room for downside if crypto-technologies do not deliver anticipated economic value, or if that value is ...

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• 11 December

  Retail sector’s job apocalypse

  

  You may remember, early this year, a spate of gloomy reportage about the coming collapse of retail jobs due to automation and online shopping. This wasn’t just a dystopian forecast: Employment in the retail sector fell for seven straight months starting in January. A streak like that hadn’t happened outside of a recession since the early days of World War ...

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• 11 December

  Europe’s yield curve may hold key to markets in 2018

  There’s a lot of discussion these days about the US bond market’s yield curve, or more specifically how it has shrunk to the narrowest levels since 2007 — a movement that has historically presaged an economic slowdown. What hasn’t been talked about as much is how Europe’s yield curve has failed to follow the same path. And while there are ...

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• 11 December

  America is getting the make-work jobs it needs

  

  A year ago, I argued that lots of people don’t just want material goods — they crave the dignity that comes from working for a living. Even jobs that economists might deride as make-work can yield meaning, self-respect and social status. For this reason, I suggested that the government should establish a program to give work to everyone who wants ...

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