September, 2016

• 21 September

  EU scraps time limits on free mobile roaming plan

    Brussels / AFP The EU on Wednesday scrapped a controversial plan to limit its landmark free mobile phone roaming policy to 90 days a year, after an outcry from angry consumer groups. While doing away with time limits for roaming across the currently 28-nation bloc, the European Commission said it will instead impose checks to curb abuse of the ...

  Read More »
• 21 September

  Almost 5,500 UK-based firms use European passporting

    London / AFP The ‘passport’ rights allowing 5,500 British-based financial firms to operate freely across the European single market are at stake, the country’s financial watchdog has revealed in highlighting potential fallout from Brexit. Some 8,000 financial firms based elsewhere in the European Union also do business in Britain via passporting, and their rights are likewise threatened, data from ...

  Read More »
• 21 September

  Brazil Real rises as carry trade lures traders in low-rate world

  

    Bloomberg The real strengthened as traders kept close watch on the U.S. Federal Reserve for signs regarding the timing and pace of interest rate hikes that could reduce the appetite for Brazil’s world-beating carry trade. The currency appreciated 0.5 percent to 3.2431 per dollar at 9:31 a.m. in Sao Paulo. One-month implied volatility on the real dropped for the ...

  Read More »
• 21 September

  Denmark eyes looming skills shortage as economy picks up

  

    Copenhagen / AFP After a lacklustre recovery from the 2008 financial crisis, Denmark’s central bank has warned that the labour market faces a squeeze as unemployment falls, the population ages and young people shun vocational jobs. At Technical Education Copenhagen, traineeships for another 20 to 30 lorry drivers could probably have been found if only people were interested in ...

  Read More »
• 21 September

  Deepen Charleston’s port, and the big ships will come

  

    Technology has put powerful computers in billions of pockets, but an invention much more mundane than the smartphone — the shipping container: a rectangular steel box — also has changed the world. Because of it, two of today’s preoccupations — infrastructure and globalization — are connected by a chain of events that began more than 60 years ago and ...

  Read More »
• 21 September

  Poll debacles won’t deter brave Merkel

  

    Many people seem to expect Chancellor Angela Merkel to apologize. Her party, the Christian Democratic Union, keeps underperforming in regional elections. Most recently, the CDU took a drubbing in parliamentary elections in Berlin on Sept. 18. The reason: the backlash against the kindness Merkel showed toward refugees last year. There have been five defeats this year, in every state ...

  Read More »
• 21 September

  Don’t kill the driverless revolution with regulation

    In publishing new guidelines for automated vehicles this week, the U.S. Transportation Department tacitly acknowledged two important truths: This technology will probably be great. And no one knows what will happen. The regulators took a restrained approach, offering a safety checklist for manufacturers and better guidance for state officials but stopping short of issuing restrictive new rules. That’s prudent: ...

  Read More »
• 21 September

  Mellowed BoJ adopts prudent flexibility

    Bank of Japan (BoJ) comprehensively reviewed the sustainability of a series of daring policy decisions that it had taken since January at its meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday. The mellowed central bank weighed the effectiveness of these decisions and unveiled a massive overhaul of monetary policy. The latest steps to commit itself to stoking inflation over the longer term ...

  Read More »
• 21 September

  Making ‘Africa Rising’ a reality in Nigeria

  

    Until a few years ago, Africa Rising was a dominant theme in conversations about the global economy. That enthusiasm has since cooled, so that in newsrooms and think tanks and conference panels, “Africa Rising!” has given way to a more questioning “Africa Rising?” While some of that pessimism may be justified, we do not have the luxury of distracting ...

  Read More »
• 21 September

  Official nudging works. Now, do more with it

    Last Wednesday was a historic day for behavioral science. The White House released the annual report of its Social and Behavioral Sciences Team. The U.K.’s Behavioural Insights Team released its own annual report on the same day. With the recent creation of similar teams in Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and Qatar, the two reports deserve careful attention. Outlining dozens ...

  Read More »