The Gulf Time Newspaper One of the finest business newspapers in the UAE brought to you by our professional writers and editors.

  A major factor behind the soaring growth of risky wealth-management products in China is that investors typically think the government stands behind them. Lately, nervous regulators have been emphasizing that this isn’t so. But they’ll have to do a lot more to change expectations in a state-dominated economy. Wealth-management products are short-term, high-yielding investments that are issued by banks. ...

  A new sentiment washed over investors immediately after the U.S. presidential election in November. Traders started to believe in a new narrative of reflation, a marked shift from the many months of talk about deflation and persistent slow economic growth. They piled into inflation-protected securities and bought riskier assets. They projected higher commodity prices because big economies were suddenly ...

  The European Council, which includes leaders of EU member states, normally issues a consensus document at the end of each meeting. On Thursday, it failed to do so because one member — Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo — refused to approve it. The spat tells us something about the rocky future of a multispeed Europe. Szydlo’s snub had nothing ...

  Bloomberg America’s labour market might not be as great yet as President Donald Trump wants, but by almost any measure, it’s gett- ing better. Employers added an above-forecast 235,000 positions in February, while measures of joblessness and under- employment improved, the Labor Department’s monthly report showed. Wage growth picked up and the share of prime-age Americans in the labor ...

  Bloomberg Volkswagen AG pleaded guilty to misleading US regulators and customers by hiding emission levels on diesel vehicles and obstructing investigations when authorities grew suspicious. Sentencing was put off until April 21. VW entered the formal plea in Detroit federal court as it agreed to do two months ago as part of a $4.3 billion deal to settle claims ...

  Bloomberg US subprime auto lenders are losing money on car loans at the highest rate since the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis as more borrowers fall behind on payments, according to S&P Global Ratings. Losses for the loans, annualized, were 9.1 percent in January from 8.5 percent in December and 7.9 percent in the first month of last ...

  Bloomberg Toronto may be next on the list of global cities with a tax on home purchases by foreigners as government officials search for ways to cool scorching price gains. Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa surprised many, saying he was reconsidering imposing a tax to curb price increases that have accelerated in Canada’s biggest city, reversing a stance last ...

  Bloomberg Iceland has fought wars to pro- tect its fishermen, most recently against the UK in the 1970s. Now, a record inflow of foreign tourists is threatening the industry that once built this tiny north Atla- ntic country. The flood of sightseers, volcano watchers and glacier trekkers is lifting the national currency, pushing up the price of Icelandic fish. ...

  You knew it all along: Economists can’t forecast the economy worth a hoot. And now we have a scholarly study that confirms it. Better yet, the corroboration comes from an impeccable source: the Federal Reserve. The study compared predictions of important economic indicators — unemployment, inflation, interest rates, gross domestic product — with the actual outcomes. There were widespread ...

  The economist Kenneth Arrow, who died last month at age 95, was a model academic — brilliant, creative, precise, unfailingly modest. If only his fellow economists would stop misrepresenting his work. In the 1950s, Arrow and others proved a theorem that, many economists believe, put a rigorous mathematical foundation beneath Adam Smith’s idea of the invisible hand. The theorem ...