Italy heads to new vote with Europe as campaign faultline

Bloomberg Italian President Sergio Mattarella asked economist Carlo Cottarelli to form a government with new elections due as early as the fall, as populist leaders railed against the president and the European Union for blocking their bid for power. Cottarelli, 63, a former executive director of the International Monetary Fund, pledged Italy would stay in the euro and called for ...

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Scottish leader pushes customs union with EU Brexit negotiator

Bloomberg Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon reiterated her goal for the UK to remain in the customs union and single market in a meeting with Michel Barnier, the European Union’s chief Brexit negotiator, in Brussels. Sturgeon’s aim was to ensure that the EU understands Scotland’s concerns, according to a statement from her office. She said in an interview with Politico ...

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Spain’s divided opposition struggles with plan to oust Rajoy

Bloomberg Spain’s Socialists are facing an uphill task in reconciling differences between opposition parties as they seek to garner support for dislodging Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. The no-confidence motion filed on May 25 by the Socialists, the largest opposition group, needs the backing of several other parties to succeed. The trust vote request, triggered by the sentencing last week of ...

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Giuliani accuses Mueller of leading ‘rigged’ probe

Bloomberg Donald Trump’s lawyer again questioned the legitimacy of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 US election, even as a possible interview between Mueller and the president looms. “We’re more convinced as we see it that this is a rigged investigation,” Rudy Giuliani said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Nation.” Asked if he ...

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New Zealand goes cool on migrants when ‘needed most’

Bloomberg On the waterfront of New Zealand’s largest city, a Chinese developer is building a five-star luxury hotel aimed at wealthy tourists. One hitch: there’s not enough local workers to finish it. To help complete Auckland’s NZ$200 million ($138 million) Park Hyatt hotel on time, Beijing-based Fu Wah International Group has been forced to fly out 138 carpet layers, painters ...

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The China debacle

President Trump’s education in global trade continues. Not long ago, he declared that trade wars ‘are good and easy to win.’ He knows better now. The administration’s performance in its latest trade talks with China has been ineffectual, instructive and (yes) humiliating. Let’s be clear. China is the one major country where an aggressive American trade policy is warranted — ...

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Markets don’t care about your needs

You may have reasonable expectations of what you can expect from your investments during the coming years and decades. But regardless of what your risk-adjusted return expectations are, the first rule of economics cannot be denied: There is no free lunch. I was reminded of this by a report that the League of California Cities wanted the state’s big public ...

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Electric cars are feeling a little bit of competition

Electric cars topped the 1 million sales milestone in 2017, a 57 percent increase over 2016. Chinese consumers alone purchased more than half a million electric cars. And Bloomberg New Energy Finance expects more than half of all new cars sold, and a third of the total light vehicles on the road, to be electric by the year 2040. But ...

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Lawmakers officially forget financial crisis

The US Congress might have just set a record for shortness of memory: Just 10 years after a crisis that nearly brought down the global financial system, it’s loosening the safeguards designed to prevent a repeat. Now it’s up to regulators — and specifically the Federal Reserve — to ensure that the backsliding doesn’t go too far. Prodded by President ...

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Italy finally gets a taste of Boris Johnson’s cake

Italy’s populist dream team has a radical plan to revive the country’s economy. Successive drafts of the coalition agreement between the League and the Five Star Movement, seen over the past few days, show the two parties are keen to press ahead with their lavish tax cuts and spending pledges, in spite of Italy’s mammoth public debt. There’s a double ...

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