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 ...
Read More »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 ...
Read More »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 — ...
Read More »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 ...
Read More »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 ...
Read More »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 ...
Read More »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 ...
Read More »Unemployment in US hits a low. Then comes the recession
Whatever one might think about the US political situation, it’s hard to deny that the economy is doing just fine. In April, the unemployment rate dropped to 3.9 percent, a 17-year low. At this point, there’s a job opening for every unemployed person in the country. Not bad. In the spirit of seeing the glass as half empty, though, it’s ...
Read More »A top economics prize for a theory that really works
What do people think economic theorists do? The pundits who regularly criticize the profession, particularly in the pages of British magazines, seem to think that they spend all their time making abstruse, unrealistic theories about how free markets are the best of all possible worlds. And it’s true that there are still a few economists out there who are essentially ...
Read More »US stock futures rise on hopes of US-North Korea summit
Bloomberg US equity futures followed Asian shares higher on signals an America-North Korea summit is back on track, but risk appetite waned in Europe as Italy’s political outlook darkened. The region’s stocks and common currency both surrendered gains. S&P 500 futures advanced, as did South Korean stocks, after President Donald Trump appeared to confirm that his June meeting with Kim ...
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