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After China, it’s Hong Kong’s turn to take Moody’s Investors Service to task. The city’s financial secretary wrote a blog post on Sunday to express his displeasure with the recent one-notch cut in Hong Kong’s sovereign rating to Aa2. More than the downgrade, what seems to have really irked Paul Chan are the 16 references to “links” and “linkages;” four ...

The gory details of the Congressional Budget Office’s report on the House legislation to “repeal and replace” Obamacare are, in many ways, superfluous. The bill’s flaws, substantive and otherwise, have long been evident. Less clearly understood, though equally disturbing, is the larger political context. That’s not to say the particulars of the CBO report, released Wednesday, are irrelevant: far from ...

Three years after he was elected, Prime Minister Narendra Modi looms over India’s political scene like no other leader in the country’s recent history. And his critics must explain why his mass appeal seems unimpaired, despite his increasingly authoritarian ways and growing failures. Modi is far from realizing his promises of economic and military security. Pakistan-backed militants continue to strike ...

Universal basic income (UBI) schemes are often rejected out of hand as too expensive. In some countries, however, paying every resident a basic income sufficient for survival could actually result in budget savings. That’s the surprising conclusion in a fresh policy brief from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The OECD decided to contribute to the basic income ...

Almost a decade after a crisis that nearly brought down the global financial system, markets still aren’t showing much confidence in banks. It’s a troubling phenomenon that U.S. and European leaders ignore at their peril. It’s understandable that, after years of wrangling and thousands of pages of new rules, regulators might want to consider their mission accomplished. They have changed ...

Robert Lighthizer’s nomination as U.S. trade representative made the steel industry happy. Both the Steel Manufacturers Association and the American Iron and Steel Institute put out statements lauding the choice, with the latter citing his “dedication” to the steel industry. U.S. Steel Corp has been Lighthizer’s most prominent client as a lawyer in recent years. Lighthizer’s confirmation earlier this month ...

Bloomberg European stocks fell and the euro struggled against the dollar as investors were reminded of a few of the challenges still faced by the world’s biggest single market. Oil joined a wider selloff in commodities. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index declined a fourth day as data showed euro-area economic confidence fell for the first time this year, and as ...

Bloomberg Thailand is seeking to take on Singapore’s dominance in aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul with a $5.7 billion upgrade of a Vietnam War-era airport. Lockheed Martin Corp.’s Sikorsky Aircraft is the latest company to study a possible increase in MRO spend in Thailand in the wake of the planned revamp of U-Tapao International Airport, said Ajarin Pattanapanchai, deputy secretary ...

Bloomberg Turkish Airlines is considering options to fund its planned move to Istanbul’s new airport, due to open at the end of next year, reports said. Options under consideration include having the new airport’s consortium of builders, known as IGA, construct and own the facilities and lease them to the airline, three people said, asking not to be identified because ...

Bloomberg India’s federal investigation agency will probe a decade-old deal by the national carriers to acquire 111 aircraft, which saddled the flag carrier Air India Ltd. with losses, the Central Bureau of Investigation said. The CBI, as the federal police is known, registered three cases and one preliminary inquiry in the light of orders from the Supreme Court in January, ...