August, 2017

• 12 August

  North Korea, on the brink

  

  The North Korean nuclear threat is a “hinge” moment for the US and China, and for the new international order both nations say they want. If Washington and Beijing manage to stay together in dealing with Pyongyang, the door opens on a new era in which China will play a larger and more responsible role in global affairs, commensurate with ...

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• 12 August

  Trump’s immigration plan is half-right and half-wrong

  

  President Donald Trump endorsed a plan to change the way the US immigration system operates. Half of the plan is very good. The other half is bad and counterproductive. The plan, known as the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment (RAISE) Act, was developed by Republican senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia. It would do two ...

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• 12 August

  Can the commodities bounce be end of Noble?

  It’s customary for companies reporting a horror-show result to blame the general trading environment, rather than anything within control of management. Commodities trader Noble Group Ltd. is no exception. In declaring that it had been holed below the waterline with a $1.9 billion net loss over the June quarter, the company declared the problem was not with the crew, but ...

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• 12 August

  Britain’s housing market kings are still living it large

  Ten years after risky mortgages helped spark a global financial crisis, lenders and policymakers have lost none of their talent for helping people make big-ticket purchases they couldn’t otherwise afford. True, 100 percent mortgages are rare now, let alone the 125 percent loan-to-value deals offered by Northern Rock. Fibbing about your income to get a loan is more difficult, though ...

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• 12 August

  Statistical analysis and Donald Trump don’t mix

  

  The Trump administration has taken on three ambitious statistical projects: tracking down cases of voter registration fraud, identifying racism in college admissions and developing an algorithm for “extreme vetting” of visa applications. These would all be very tricky even for a trained professional. I doubt the president’s people are up to the task. Let’s start with voter fraud. It’s actually ...

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• 12 August

  They are growing older without getting richer

  

  Latin America, a region maligned by recent crises that nonetheless boasts a $4.6 trillion economy, needs urgent policy shifts to bring growth rates back to where they were during years of high commodity prices. Time is running out because its demographic advantage — when active workers outnumber retirees — will peak in 2020, according to a report from the Inter-American ...

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• 12 August

  Japan buries our most-cherished economic ideas

  

  Japan is the graveyard of economic theories. The country has had ultralow interest rates and run huge government deficits for decades, with no sign of the inflation that many economists assume would be the natural result. Now, after years of trying almost every trick in the book to reflate the economy, the Bank of Japan is finally bowing to the ...

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• 12 August

  As robots take the wheel, driving skills hit the skids

  

  Bloomberg If your car can hit the brakes in an emergency and check your blind spots, will that make you a worse driver? Increasingly, automakers are worrying it may. Driver-assist technology that keeps cars in their lanes, maintains a safe distance from other vehicles, warns of unseen traffic and slams the brakes to avoid rear-end crashes are rapidly spreading from ...

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• 12 August

  Nintendo’s Chinese rival rethinks games for West

  

  Bloomberg Chances are few outside of China have heard of NetEase Inc., though it makes more money from games than Nintendo Co. Now it wants recognition, but first it’ll have to learn what makes Western gamers tick. The company is on a global hiring campaign and exploring acquisitions or investments in foreign studios, so it can earn 30 percent of ...

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• 12 August

  Next generation battery seen powering space projects, cars

  

  Bloomberg Researchers in Japan are closing in on a safer generation of batteries that could weather extreme temperatures in outer space. At least that’s what Hitachi Zosen Corp. is betting on. The Osaka-based company, better known for building plants that convert waste to energy, is developing a new strain of solid-state lithium-ion battery that’s been capturing the attention of industry ...

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