You break it, you fix it. That’s the sentiment ahead of India’s annual budget this week. Amid signs that New Delhi’s 8 November ban on 86% of the country’s currency has disrupted demand, snapped supply chains and cratered credit growth, investors expect a fiscal lollipop from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and finance minister Arun Jaitley. Bigger tax rebates for ...
Read More »Trump’s dumb war on Nafta
Hostility to supposedly bad trade deals was a main theme of President Donald Trump’s campaign, and he seems to mean business: Not only has he withdrawn the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but he also confirmed his intention to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). His exact plans for Nafta, however, aren’t clear. Nafta could stand some ...
Read More »Canada must continue on its path of tolerance
Six people killed in an assault on a Quebec City mosque in one of the worst terrorist attacks in the Canada’s history. All the victims are male, ranging in age from 39 to 60 years old, and had gathered for prayers at the mosque. Alexandre Bissonnette, 27, a political science student at nearby Laval University, has been charged with ...
Read More »Trump’s gift to China
The Chinese New Year holiday is traditionally a time of gift-giving and celebration in the Middle Kingdom. This year, no one celebrates more than China’s President Xi Jinping. On Monday, Xi’s US counterpart signed an order withdrawing American support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The move fulfilled one of President Donald Trump’s central campaign pledges. Since the 12-nation free-trade pact ...
Read More »Central banks will keep policies unchanged
With all the attention being devoted to the policy intentions and actions of President Donald Trump, there has been a lot less focus on this week’s four meetings at systemically important central banks — the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank (though that meeting doesn’t involve monetary policy). Here are ...
Read More »When algorithms come for our children!
Consider the tragedy of a child killed by neglect and abuse. Now consider the tragedy of a child taken from parents who would not have criminally abused her. Which is worse? Computer algorithms might soon help humans make such difficult decisions — but only if we recognize the myriad ways in which they can go wrong. In countless cities ...
Read More »Vodafone’s Indian escape route
It’s hard to remember India being anything other than a nuisance for Vodafone Group Plc. The group has taken writedowns of 6.6 billion pounds ($8.3 billion) on the asset since buying it in 2007, and got itself tangled up in a long tax fight with the Indian government. Lately it’s been gored by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd., whose ...
Read More »Trump’s new move to hit closer to home for USA tech industry
Bloomberg President Donald Trump’s clash with Silicon Valley over immigration is about to become even more contentious. After the new president banned refugees and travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries, Google, Facebook, Salesforce, Microsoft and others railed against the move, saying it violated the country’s principles and risked disrupting its engine of innovation. Trump’s next steps could strike even ...
Read More »France economic growth accelerates, stoking debate on ECB tapering
Bloomberg French growth accelerated in the fourth quarter as part of a wider economic expansion in the region that is fueling a debate about how quickly the European Central Bank should trim stimulus. Gross domestic product rose 0.4 percent in the October-December period, national statistics office Insee said. That matches the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey and compares ...
Read More »Google employees rally against Trump ban
Bloomberg Thousand of Google employees staged protests over President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration, revealing rising tension between the technology industry and new administration. More than two thousand employees of Google parent Alphabet Inc. participated across several offices. At Google’s Mountain View, California, headquarters, Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai and co-Founder Sergey Brin — both immigrants — spoke ...
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