Roger Stone attacks Mueller indictment

Bloomberg Roger Stone, a sometime adviser and confidant of President Donald Trump, launched a blunderbuss attack on his indictment by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, filing a flurry of papers claiming he was singled out for prosecution and demanding that his lawyers be allowed to see the special counsel’s final report. A longtime Republican political operative and dirty trickster, Stone was ...

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Trump’s sanctions on Iran could backfire

The Trump administration’s “maximum pressure campaign” against Iran assumes that economic sanctions are weakening the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — and that more sanctions will make the IRGC weaker still. The problem is that US and European intelligence analysts don’t think this forecast is accurate. “Re-imposition of sanctions in 2018 has played into the hands of the IRGC,” warns ...

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JPMorgan is bullish on the consumer

The health of the US economy largely comes down to consumers’ attitude and spending. That’s why some investors were anxious about the contentious government shutdown that lasted into early 2019; any lingering concerns could dampen the outlook for future growth. Judging by JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s first-quarter earnings, that saga has barely been a blip. And that might just mean ...

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China’s data boomlet can’t hide a longer slowdown

China’s economy has come up for air, just a little. A bit of pep in recent Chinese numbers is encouraging. At least as important as the short-term bounce, though, is the long-term trajectory. The Middle Kingdom may lose its exceptionalism and start looking more like the US and Europe in ways that seemed barely conceivable during the 1990s and the ...

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Derivatives still present threat to financial system

Financial regulators have done a lot to reform the derivatives markets that helped turn the financial crisis of 2008 into a global disaster. But their work is unfinished — and there’s even a danger that, in one way, they might have made things worse. Derivatives are bets on the performance of something else, such as stocks, interest rates or creditworthiness. ...

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India can’t replicate China’s path to power just by magic

There’s one clear favourite in the world’s biggest election, which runs for six weeks: incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Buoyed by his personal popularity, Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party isn’t even pretending to offer dramatic new programs if it returns to power. Its election manifesto, released earlier this week, was a relatively uninspiring document — a few populist promises to ...

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Now isn’t time for a Boeing-Airbus row

On April 8, the Trump administration decided that now is the moment to ratchet up a longstanding trade dispute between Boeing Co. and Airbus SE. The US is threatening to impose $11 billion of punitive tariffs on a range of European products from aircraft to cheese. The dispute is unrelated to the crash of two Boeing 737 Max aircraft – ...

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How populists can ruin a global growth recovery

There is a strange sound of relief coming out of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF has slashed its global growth forecasts to the lowest level since the financial crisis, but it also believes policy makers may have stepped in just in time to avoid a turn for the worse. Central bankers deserve credit for pausing on their long ...

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Wall Street’s most-hated stock trade nears dot com-era nadir

Bloomberg For students of market history, the third month of the 21st century is infamous. March 2000 was when the Nasdaq Composite Index marked a peak in the dot-com bubble. By the end of the year, it fell by more than 50 percent, with more losses to follow. That month was one of the last times the world’s cheapest companies ...

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Brexit delay leaves pound prospects in suspended state

Bloomberg Pound analysts are struggling to find reasons to be optimistic even after the immediate threat of a no-deal Brexit was lifted. Sterling strengthened this week as the UK and European Union agreed to extend the divorce deadline to October 31, but its gains were well short of what strategists had previously predicted for such a scenario. The currency’s prospects ...

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