Bloomberg Increases in Toronto pushed Canadian housing sales higher for a third month, further evidence the country’s real estate market is regaining strength after it stumbled at the start of this year. Transactions nationwide rose 1.9 percent from June to 38,612, bringing them back towards the 10-year average, the Canadian Real Estate Association said from Ottawa. Sales in Toronto advanced ...
Read More »Big New York City landlords vow to cut energy use
Bloomberg Some of the biggest names in New York real estate, including SL Green Realty Corp., Vornado Realty Trust and Related Cos., have signed on to an ambitious plan to reduce energy use in the city’s larger buildings by 20 percent by 2030 — with some “wiggle room.†If it’s implemented, the plan would take the city’s 50,000-plus buildings of ...
Read More »Good ideas are also an important US export
If you are a believer in free markets, you might be tempted to be pleased by some of the more positive policies of the Trump administration: lo-wer corporate tax rates, more market-friendly jud-ges, a greater emphasis on deregulation. Resist (the temptation, if not the administration). When it comes to ideas, the lifeblood of capitalism, the influence of President Donald Trump ...
Read More »Can India turn its back on free trade
India’s state is a mirror of its noisy, messy democracy. It’s often hard to achieve even a modest internal consensus between government departments in New Delhi: Right now, the heads of several ministries are scrambling to find a common position on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP — a giant trade deal that stitches together India, the Association of ...
Read More »US should keep up the fight against extinction
Forty-five years ago, Congress passed the US Endangered Species Act — quietly, near-unanimously and with no concern that any American would ever object. Everyone wanted to avoid the extinction of wildlife, to save the likes of the California condor, the Florida panther and the North Atlantic right whale for their “esthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific value to the ...
Read More »Bond market says Fed isn’t world’s central bank
For US bond investors, the summer hiatus from Federal Reserve speakers couldn’t have come at a better time. Since the central bank left interest rates unchanged on Aug. 1, only two officials have made public comments: Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin on Aug. 8 and Chicago Fed President Charles Evans on August 9. None are scheduled to talk again until ...
Read More »Euro fans have a blind spot they keep forgetting
It should have been a good day for the euro after Eurostat said the euro-area economy grew faster in the second quarter than initially reported. But instead, the Bloomberg Euro Index that measures the shared currency against its major peers fell the most in two months, dropping as much as 0.92 percent. The seemingly illogical response by foreign-exchange traders becomes ...
Read More »Yum China does a great deal with the wrong buyer
The party at China’s oldest Western food chain is missing a key guest. China Investment Corp is joining a consortium including Hillhouse Capital and former KKR & Co. senior executives planning a $14 billion-plus acquisition of Yum China Holdings Inc, Vinicy Chan, Cathy Chan, Carol Zhong and Manuel Baigorri wrote on Wednesday. The purchase of the KFC and Pizza Hut ...
Read More »Cash wildfire spreads among young tech firms
It’s time to get real about the financial fragility of young technology companies. Far too many are living beyond their means, flirting with disaster and putting their investors at risk. Bloomberg Opinion examined 150 US technology companies that had gone public since the beginning of 2010 and were still operating independently as of Aug 10. About 37 percent had negative ...
Read More »Indonesia rate hike aims at curbing ‘current-account’ gap
Bloomberg Indonesia’s central bank raised its benchmark interest rate a fourth time since May in a surprise move aimed at underpinning the currency as volatility sweeps across emerging markets. The seven-day reverse repurchase rate was increased to 5.5 percent from 5.25 percent on Wednesday, as forecast by just seven of 28 economists in a Bloomberg survey, with the rest predicting ...
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