Bloomberg Spaniards went to the polls on Sunday for the second time this year as the country strives to break a political logjam that’s threatening economic momentum and allowing disputes over national unity to fester. Polling booths opened at 9 am and were expected to close at 8 pm with voters choosing 350 deputies and 208 senators. It’s a procedure ...
Read More »Pressure grows on UK to return last African colony
Bloomberg From a one-story house with mustard-colored walls off a bustling road in Mauritius, Olivier Bancoult is defying the UK by plotting a return to the tiny tropical island where he was born. A 55-year-old native of the remote Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean, Bancoult heads a group of mostly elderly women who, like him, were expelled shortly after ...
Read More »Hong Kong ‘panel’ raises doubts over police inquiry
Bloomberg Hong Kong’s police watchdog has neither the authority nor the resources to effectively investigate the ongoing protests in the city, according to the Independent Expert Panel brought in to advise it. The panel saw “a shortfall†in the powers of the Independent Police Complaints Council, according to a statement posted on the Twitter account of panel member Clifford Stott, ...
Read More »Singapore’s Lee seeks support ahead of poll
Bloomberg Singapore’s leaders need strong backing from voters to weather uncertain times, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said as he called on members of the ruling party to prepare for a “tough fight†at the next general election. Speaking at the People’s Action Party (PAP) convention, Lee pointed to some economies around the world where public faith in governments has ...
Read More »European depositors get a boost from German politics
Germany’s dismal coalition politics may help unlock progress in talks on the European banking union. Finance Minister Olaf Scholz’s apparent mandate to negotiate a common deposit reinsurance scheme for Europe could help him win the leadership of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and keep the shaky government, in which the SPD is the junior partner, going for another two years. ...
Read More »Fed may not keep its inflation promise
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell virtually promised last week to hold off on raising interest rates until faster inflation is not just a forecast, but a reality. With this dovish assurance, the Fed becomes less of a threat to the economic outlook – assuming he is able to keep that promise. With the Fed looking to stop cutting rates, the ...
Read More »Xerox deal for HP would be a license to print money
In what universe can a tiring, $8.8 billion maker of photocopiers even think about acquiring a $27 billion, moderately sexier maker of printers and PCs? This one, apparently. Xerox Holdings Corp. is contemplating a cash-and-stock bid for HP Inc., the Wall Street Journal reported. While the size of the discrepancy in market values makes a deal seem hard to digest, ...
Read More »Wind, solar power have now become affordable
In the midst of otherwise depressing developments in the progress of climate change, one bit of good news shines through: The economics of renewable energy have been improving fast — especially those of onshore wind and utility-scale solar power. A new analysis of the levelized cost of energy from Lazard, the company I work for, shows that over the past ...
Read More »Trump’s head is in Amazon’s cloud, and Bezos knows it
Dana Deasy, it’s fair to say, has a sterling reputation as a chief information officer. He first took on that role in 2003 at the age of 44, when he became the CIO of Tyco International Ltd. He has also been the CIO at BP PLC, GM North America, and JPMorgan Chase & Co., where he managed 40,000 technologists before ...
Read More »Will Lagarde do ‘whatever it takes’ to save the Earth?
For the past decade, politicians in the rich world have relied too much on central banks to solve their problems of weak growth and high unemployment. They may be about to do the same with climate change. Central bankers have started to make their voices heard on the threat of carbon emissions. From worries about how financial institutions might withstand ...
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