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China has long been criticised both for its obsession with GDP statistics and their quality: Pressuring cadres to meet growth targets has encouraged a risky buildup of debt and, at times, the outright fabrication of numbers. If anything, though, the quality of China’s official employment data is even worse — and the inaccuracies could have equally dangerous repercussions. Until relatively ...

When companies turn to gimmicks as the headline act in a product launch, you know there’s not much really going on. We can’t blame Samsung Electronics Co. and Huawei Technologies Co. for releasing $2,000 and $2,600 phones respectively. Foldable screens are kind of cool, I suppose. But so are those weird and wonderful concept cars the auto industry likes to ...

It seems Amazon.com Inc. will be paying zero tax on its profits of roughly $10 billion in 2018. This has caused an outcry in certain quarters, but the complaints are misplaced. The corporate tax code is riddled with loopholes and has plenty of misguided preferences — some of them new, thanks to the tax-reform measure passed in 2017. But the ...

There’s an old theory that as an organism develops, it progresses through the same evolutionary stages traveled by its ancestors. Traditionally, economic development has worked in a similar way. When a country first shifts from agrarian poverty to industrialisation, it tends to start out in light manufacturing, especially textiles. Later it masters more complex manufactured products, and finally it progresses ...

Just because it’s a bargain, doesn’t mean it’s worth it. Associated British Foods Plc has said its Primark discount clothing chain had performed well in the UK in the first half of its financial year, offsetting difficult conditions in Germany. This comes days after value bakery brand Greggs Plc said full-year underlying pre-tax profit was likely to be ahead of ...

As promised by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, US central bankers have embarked on a comprehensive review aimed at making monetary policy more effective. They will draw on both internal and external inputs and, according to a report over the weekend in the Wall Street Journal, consider “whether to allow inflation to rise above their 2 percent target more often ...

Bloomberg US equity futures fell alongside European stocks on fresh headwinds from disappointing corporate earnings and geopolitical tension in Asia. The dollar and Treasuries held steady as traders awaited the second half of the Federal Reserve chairman’s testimony to Congress. The Stoxx Europe 600 index declined as Air France-KLM dropped the most ever and Nivea hand-cream maker Beiersdorf cut guidance, ...

Bloomberg US companies are finally listening to stock and bond investors that have been pressing corporations to cut their debt loads. General Electric Co. is selling its biopharmaceutical business to Danaher Corp. for more than $21 billion, and using the money to pay down borrowings. Kraft Heinz is slashing its dividend and using the proceeds of asset sales to reduce ...

Bloomberg Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said a healthy US economy has faced some “crosscurrents and conflicting signals” that officials in January decided warranted taking a patient approach to future interest-rate changes. With inflation pressures “muted,” the Federal Open Market Committee in its decision last month to keep interest rates unchanged “determined that the cumulative effects’’ of its actions and ...

Bloomberg German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet agreed to extend Jens Weidmann’s term as head of the Bundesbank by another eight years from May as he waits to see if he is picked later this year for the top job at the European Central Bank. The decision, which needs formal approval from President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, was taken at a meeting on ...