Honduras election row drags on with no winner

Bloomberg Honduras is headed into its third week without a winner in presidential elections amid a political standoff between the two leading candidates and few signs its worst crisis in a decade is about to end. The Central American country of 9 million has slipped into a full-blown constitutional emergency since a chaotic November 26 election ended in claims that ...

Read More »

Brexit deal lets May kick ‘questions of future’

Bloomberg The nail-biting finish to the first chapter of Brexit negotiations has left many Conservative lawmakers praising Prime Minister Theresa May as a winner who had, in the words of one prominent member of her Cabinet, “confounded her critics.” But like many of the key Brexit issues, the question of May’s future is merely delayed, not resolved and even the ...

Read More »

‘South Africa’s ruling ANC faces challenge to unite party’

Bloomberg Cyril Ramaphosa, one of two leading candidates to win a divisive contest for the presidency of South Africa’s ruling Afri- can National Congress, said the party’s leaders must unite the party after this month’s elective conference. “Our movement is divided and there are factions in our movement,” Ramaphosa, the country’s deputy president, said in a program on Johannesburg-based radio ...

Read More »

The Republicans’ tax wager is worth trying

The Republicans’ tax legislation is built on economic projections that are as confidently as they are cheerfully made concerning the legislation’s shaping effect on the economy over the next 10 years. This claim to prescience must amaze alumni of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, which were 85 and 158 years old, respectively, when they expired less than 10 years ago ...

Read More »

How Google and Facebook could save net neutrality

Next week, five members of a regulatory committee will make a decision about one of the biggest threats to democratic discourse Americans have faced in our lifetimes — and it isn’t looking good. On December 14, the Federal Communications Commission will vote on a proposal to end net neutrality. This means that internet service providers would be able to block, ...

Read More »

What students, workers need isn’t rocket science

It’s become a bipartisan article of faith that US schools need to train more students in STEM. Yet the vast majority of good-paying jobs, now and in the future, don’t require knowing how to code. Improving basic digital skills is a more cost-effective way to boost workers and businesses. There are roughly 14 million ‘middle-skilled’ jobs in the US that ...

Read More »

This Brexit border blunder can’t end soon

The usual Brexit disclaimer — the UK has no good options, only less-bad ones — applies with extra force when it comes to the dilemma over the Irish border. Nevertheless, the issue will be easier to address, if not resolve, once the UK and European Union start trade negotiations in earnest. There is currently no physical border between Northern Ireland, ...

Read More »

It’s time Modi government should stop blaming RBI

Before the six-member committee that sets monetary policy for the Reserve Bank of India met this week, the government in New Delhi made its preferences very clear. Two members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s economic advisory council—a body that he did without for a long time, but which was recently reconstituted following several policy stumbles—publicly declared that real interest rates ...

Read More »

Central banks aren’t the only ones goosing growth

The case of the missing inflation is unresolved, but the fiscal file may have been solved. Good news: The victim is still alive and might start kicking as well. Fiscal policy is shaping up for a good 2018. The impetus mostly takes the form of tax cuts, and is coming from Asia, Europe and the US. We have grown so ...

Read More »

Why a social wealth fund is a good idea

Matt Bruenig of the People’s Policy Project recently wrote an article in The New York Times suggesting a policy idea that seems extremely promising and woefully overlooked. That idea is what Bruenig calls a social wealth fund—a government-owned portfolio of stocks, bonds and real estate whose dividends would be paid out directly to the citizenry. This is similar to what ...

Read More »
Send this to a friend