August, 2017

• 20 August

  The US missed its chance to make China play fair

  

  Generals, the old saying goes, always fight the last war. A similar (though less pithy) principle is that politicians always propose solutions to the last decade’s problems. In the US, there are two main areas where we see this principle at work. The first is immigration—net illegal immigration stopped a decade ago, but President Donald Trump and his supporters are ...

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• 20 August

  Did you hear that?: Google moves into ‘thought control’ business

  

  Vaclav Havel, the Czech dissident-turned-president, wrote a famous essay about the life of the mind under a system of totalitarian control. He invoked the example of a greengrocer who puts a sign in his window saying, “Workers of the world, unite!”— not believing in it and perhaps not even knowing what it meant, but ritually accepting it as the officially ...

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• 20 August

  Households won’t trip up the bull market

  Facts are facts, but their interpretation is often subject to preconceived notions that can be easily misunderstood. Households have been net sellers of stocks for some time, which is a fact. The interpretation of this fact, however, can go badly awry. The dangerous implicit assumption is that households are selling because they want to reduce their exposure to equities. That ...

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• 20 August

  Standing up to Trump is good for business

  Merck chief executive Kenneth Frazier deserves congratulations for resigning from a White House business council to protest President Donald Trump’s shameful response to last weekend’s white supremacist riot in Charlottesville, Virginia. So do two other CEOs who followed his example. More corporate leaders should do the same. It’s in their interest to do so. Corporate leaders lend credibility to a ...

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• 20 August

  Actually, US needs China trade deals, not ‘remedies’

  

  China is the largest market for General Motors, but there is no GM China. Instead, there is SAIC-GM, a joint venture between China’s largest state-owned auto company and GM.All auto companies operating in China have a similar partner, such as SAIC-Volkswagen, GAC-Toyota and Changan-Ford. And the partners are typically state-owned companies, and their names come first. Doing business in China ...

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• 20 August

  China’s ballooning debt unnerves IMF

  

  China’s budget and trade scolds should pause for reflection. Debt racked up by China’s government, companies and households will likely balloon to almost 300 percent of gross domestic product by early next decade, the International Monetary Fund projected in its annual review of the country’s economy. Big, for sure, and a risk to global financial stability. But anything less would ...

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• 20 August

  Red-hot tech stocks lose some big supporters

  

  The rally this year in US stocks has been defined by its lack of breadth. Put another way, without the eye-popping returns of a few high-flying technology stocks, the performance of the market would look very different—and not in a good way. So it’s more than a bit concerning when the so-called smart money starts to pull away from this ...

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• 20 August

  Philippines courts China, Japan for $135 billion power push

  

  Bloomberg The Philippines is seeking investment from China and Japan for $135 billion worth of power projects that President Rodrigo Duterte’s government is ready to fast-track. The Southeast Asian nation has held discussions with China, Japan, Russia and other countries about helping it boost generation capacity by 43 gigawatts in the coming decades to stabilize its power supply as the ...

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• 20 August

  New law to allow firms register within hours in Egypt

  

  CAIRO / Reuters Egypt is hoping that long-awaited regulations approved to its new investment code will draw in fresh and needed cash from abroad as the country pushes ahead with reforms. Investment Minister Sahar Nasr told Reuters in an interview that the law could now be active within days. “Establishing (a company) will literally now take hours. It used to ...

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• 20 August

  Sempra, the ‘mystery third bidder’ for Oncor Electric

  

  Bloomberg Sempra Energy is the mystery third bidder for Oncor Electric Delivery Co. that’s competing with Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and Paul Singer’s Elliott Management Corp., according to people familiar with the matter. San Diego-based Sempra has made a $9.3 billion offer for the Texas utility, said the people, who declined to be identified because the matter is not ...

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