President Donald Trump’s unexpected call to remove all trade barriers didn’t gain much traction with other Group of Seven (G-7) leaders, perhaps because they were fuming about the US president’s behaviour during the summit in Canada this weekend. But a partial implementation of the idea would be a good way to defuse the brewing trade war without preventing nations from ...
Read More »China’s next big thing? Used cars
China’s huge bet on new-energy vehicles has understandably gotten the world’s attention. But a less flashy phenomenon now underway may be at least as consequential for the environment in the near term: China is finally getting into used cars. A familiar ritual in most nations, buying vehicles secondhand had until recently been all but unknown in China. In most markets, ...
Read More »Takeda and Shire have a $60bn drug problem
The cleverest corporate strategies can come unstuck when they meet reality. That may include the ambitious plan hatched by Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceuticals Co. to buy the British drugmaker Shire Plc. This deal has got off to a bad start, and bad starts are often inauspicious in M&A. Takeda’s stock fell 16 percent between its interest in Shire emerging and the ...
Read More »Brexit is turning into the road trip from hell
Theresa May survived a key Brexit showdown with rebels in her own Conservative Party in parliament. The apparent compromise frees the prime minister to negotiate a divorce agreement with the European Union. But her threat of walking away without a deal is no longer credible. If she fails in the negotiations, there’s now every chance parliament will force her back ...
Read More »Why economists avoid discussing inequality
Why would economists rather talk about efficiency than inequality? Having lived among them for a while, I don’t think the reason is what many people think. The common narrative on the political left is that economists are shilling for the rich, focusing on growth in order to draw attention away from how a few are gaining enormous wealth. But a ...
Read More »India’s right to throw homebuyers a lifeline
From overburdened tribunals to some bizarre judgments and costly delays, India’s new bankruptcy code has had its share of teething troubles. But the law, which will decide the fate of $210 billion in bad loans, has also broken new ground. Take the most recent tweak, for instance. Hapless homebuyers left without apartments by debt-stressed builders will have their status raised ...
Read More »Amazon is still sorting out its grocery strategy
When Amazon.com Inc. announced a year ago this week that it was buying the Whole Foods supermarket chain, investors braced for an industry shake-up. Stock prices of companies even remotely connected to groceries tumbled. Experts imagined supermarket price wars and stores transformed by Amazon robots. Some predicted Amazon would leverage Whole Foods stores as online delivery hubs, or as a ...
Read More »US stocks creep higher, dollar declines before Fed decision
Bloomberg US equities edged higher ahead of Wednesday’s Federal Reserve rate decision, while European stocks gained. The dollar slipped as benchmark Treasury yields held steady, and emerging-market currencies extended a drop. The S&P 500 Index rose tentatively in morning trading, with a surge in health-care stocks offsetting the telecom weakness brought on after the AT&T takeover of Time Warner won ...
Read More »No letup for Bitcoin as world’s biggest digital coin drops
Bloomberg Bitcoin edged lower, bringing its four-day slide to about 16 percent, as questions mount about whether the world’s biggest cryptocurrency was manipulated during last year’s record price surge. The digital coin has closed below its 50-, 100- and 200-day moving averages for the past 16 days, the longest stretch below those support levels this year. Bitcoin, which surged more ...
Read More »Faster inflation in India puts analysts on watch for rate hike
Bloomberg Inflation picked up in India for a second straight month, giving ammunition to the central bank to further tighten monetary policy and squeezing returns for bond investors. Consumer prices rose 4.87 percent in May from a year earlier, the statistics ministry said in a statement in New Delhi. That was broadly in line with the 4.9 percent median estimate ...
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