The slovenly institution that is US Congress

In January 1988, in Ronald Reagan’s final State of the Union address, he noisily dropped on a table next to the podium in the House chamber three recent continuing resolutions, each more than a thousand pages long. Each was evidence of Congress’ disregard of the 1974 Budget Act. Reagan fumed: “…budget deadlines delayed or missed completely, monstrous continuing resolutions that ...

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Boxing on, or boxed in? Indian banks are splintering

When Moody’s Investors Service polled market participants in Hong Kong recently, 70% picked India’s banking system as the most vulnerable among seven countries in South and Southeast Asia. I wonder what remaining 30% were smoking. As another earnings season rolls on, the weaknesses of Indian lenders are once again obvious. What’s not as apparent, though, is an quadrifurcation of Indian ...

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Greece still hasn’t turned the corner

Greece returned to the private debt market this week for the first time in years, raising 3 billion euros at a relatively affordable interest rate of 4.6 percent. That’s encouraging news — but it doesn’t mean the euro zone’s most flattened economy is on course for sustained growth. The economy is showing signs of life, growing a bit in the ...

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Trump’s Twitter habit destabilizes the world

Like the rage of Achilles, Donald Trump’s tweets are sudden, explosive and freighted with tragedy. Yesterday brought the most foreboding yet. “After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow……” And then: nothing. For a full nine minutes, the world was left to ponder what those ominous six ...

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Why Uber is losing out to locals in Southeast Asia

By any measure, the April 2016 decision by Uber Technologies Inc. to sell its China operations to rival Didi Chuxing was a defeat. The brief but spectacular battle between the two ride-hailing behemoths had cost Uber at least $2 billion and earned it little more than the enmity of the Chinese government. The only silver lining seemed to be that ...

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Imax China needs another kind of hero

Imax China Holding Inc. has a bigger challenge than a Chinese box office in the doldrums. Barring a surprise hit or two, the Hong Kong-listed subsidiary of Imax Corp. needs a strategy overhaul to win fans. The giant-screen operator posted a 6.3 percent drop in first-half revenue to $51.6 million, sending profit down 7.1 percent to $16.5 million. That drove ...

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There’s one place the US still dominates in Asia

For all the talk of America’s decline and China’s rise, Asians still seem obsessed with events in one corner of Washington, D.C.: the Federal Reserve. This week’s meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee was the first I’d observed from Asia in 15 years. During that period, China’s economy has grown from about the size of Italy’s to surpass Germany ...

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Instagram posts to soon help sniff out tax fraud in India

Bloomberg A photo of your shiny new car on Instagram or the Facebook post about your chic holiday cottage may lead India’s taxman to your door. Starting next month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government will begin amassing a warehouse of virtual information collected not just from traditional sources like banks but also from social media sites, as it looks to ...

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Samsung profit, sales surpass estimates on chips, S8 smartphone

Bloomberg Samsung Electronics Co.’s quarterly profit and revenue topped analysts’ estimates, fueled by the success of its new Galaxy S8 smartphones and demand for semiconductors. Net income rose to a record 10.8 trillion won ($9.6 billion) in the three months ended June, the Suwon, South Korea-based company said in a filing, exceeding the 9.75 trillion won average of projections compiled ...

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Slack Technologies raises $250mn in funding from SoftBank, others

Bloomberg Slack Technologies Inc. is raising about $250 million in a funding round co-led by SoftBank Group Corp., according to people familiar with the matter, as the Japanese investment firm helps drive a new venture capital boom. Investors in the round are expected to value the San Francisco-based company, which sells software for workers to communicate with their colleagues, at ...

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