TUNIS / Reuters Tunisia’s prime minister accepted the resignation of interim finance minister Fadhel Abdelkefi over a conflict of interest in a judicial case, but said he had asked him to stay on until a replacement is found. Abdelkefi is a key member of Prime Minister Youssef Chahed’s government, which is under pressure to carry out contentious economic reforms demanded ...
Read More »The real alternative to a nuclear war is a revolution
The most depressing aspect of the current North Korean crisis is that even if Donald Trump wins, he loses. Despite doubling down on his rhetoric of “fire and fury” and deriding his predecessors for failed negotiations, Trump looks like he wants to eventually strike a deal with the nation’s tyrant, Kim Jong Un. Just look at what Secretary of State ...
Read More »China’s yuan faces tougher road
Looking at the performance of China’s currency this year one would suspect that things are looking up in the local economy. The reality is that the yuan’s 4.5 percent gain against the dollar is as much a reflection of weakness in the US currency as it is about developments in China. At this point, what investors should expect for the ...
Read More »Google is right to focus on bias against women
We’re having the wrong conversation about women in tech. We need to decouple two very different issues that have arisen amid the commotion about diversity at Google: biological differences between genders, and bias against females working in tech and more generally in well-paid, prestigious jobs. Let’s start with the biology. Studies on how babies or very young children interact with ...
Read More »Let Trump rebrand Nafta, but don’t let him wreck it
As talks to revise the North American Free Trade Agreement start in Washington, it still isn’t clear whether President Donald Trump wants to dismantle the pact—”the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere,” he’s called it—or merely rebrand the same basic product under his own name. With any luck, it will be the latter. The administration’s negotiating goals, published last ...
Read More »Why the US trade deficit is big, but not bigger
aThe trade deficit is a lot smaller than it was a decade ago: Over the 12 months ending in June, according to data released last week by the Commerce Department, the US imported about $531 billion more in goods and services than it exported. In 2006, the deficit was $762 billion. Those numbers aren’t adjusted for inflation; if they were, ...
Read More »Analysts can not stop cutting profit forecasts
Largely lost in the debate over how much credit President Donald Trump should or should not get for the performance of US stocks this year is that perhaps the biggest reason for the rally is strong earnings. With more than 90 percent of the S&P 500 members having reported second-quarter results, earnings growth is tracking at a 12.2 percent pace ...
Read More »For the sake of productivity, put a woman in charge
If you’ve never tried a Japanese snack called Jagariko, I highly recommend it. When I visited the Tokyo offices of Japanese snackmaker Calbee Inc., I made sure to ask if I could have a free pack of my favorite snack. “Maybe,†the managers hedged. I wasn’t at Calbee to talk about their potato sticks, but their corporate culture. Calbee is ...
Read More »Apple iPhone gives little-known suppliers long-awaited payday
Bloomberg It was the late 1990s, and entrepreneurs Steven Abramson and Sidney Rosenblatt were pitching an electronics giant on their new flat-screen technology. It didn’t go well. The product was unproven, and, given that the startup had a pittance in the bank, the manufacturer had doubts about its long-term viability. “You want us to bet the future of our company ...
Read More »Fiat Chrysler ties up with BMW, Intel on self-driving
Bloomberg Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV will join BMW AG and Intel Corp. in developing a platform for self-driving vehicles, giving the Italian-American automaker new technology partners and adding heft to their existing coalition. FCA, which supplies plug-in hybrid Chrysler Pacifica minivans to Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo driverless-car unit, announced it had signed a memorandum of understanding with the coalition. The automaker ...
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