President Trump’s slash-and-burn actions in his first week have been dramatic, but dangerously lacking in a consensus of support, even within his own administration. The risks were evident in the collapse of a planned meeting with Mexico’s president and in Trump’s embrace of torture tactics rejected by his secretary of defense and CIA director. Trump’s ‘tweet from the hip’ ...
Read More »India’s best lenders should brace for a new kind of ugly
Indian bank investors are in for a rude shock, and one that’s got little to do with the chaos unleashed by demonetization. The fault lies in shareholders’ own expectations, which, in Morgan Stanley’s words, are driven by “institutional memory.†The top three Indian private-sector lenders by assets — ICICI Bank Ltd., HDFC Bank Ltd. and Axis Bank Ltd. — ...
Read More »Can Trump win friends and influence people?
With Britain poised to quit the European Union, Prime Minister Theresa May needs all the friends she can get. That helps explain her visit to White House, President Donald Trump’s first from a foreign head of state. The question is, what’s in it for him? Like so much else in the Trump era, this rapprochement is both unpredictable and, ...
Read More »Trump travel ban flies in the face of American values
US President Donald Trump issued an executive order barring most citizens from seven mainly Muslim Mideast and East African nations from entering the US. The nationals from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Sudan and Somalia won’t be able to enter the US for at least 90 days. The order will deny visas to Syrian nationals and halts the processing of ...
Read More »â€˜Reform’ isn’t the answer for everything today
Nearly a decade after the global financial crisis, the recovery remains disappointing and nothing — neither massive fiscal stimulus, nor record-low rates, nor generous injections of liquidity by central banks — seems to be helping. Policymakers from Washington to London to Tokyo all seem to agree there’s only one answer left: structural reform. Everywhere there’s talk of amending tax ...
Read More »Tesco’s Booker deal is really a succession plan
Tesco Plc’s move to acquire cash-and-carry wholesaler Booker Group Plc is a bid by Britain’s biggest grocer to tackle a serious problem that faces all of the nation’s big supermarkets. It’s also a cunning succession plan. The deal makes strategic sense. Tesco can transform some of the excess space in its big hypermarkets into Booker distribution centers. It’s not ...
Read More »A blunt and counterproductive travel ban
Some bold and simple policies have merit; Friday’s executive order that temporarily bans the citizens of certain countries from coming to the US, and stops indefinitely the entry of Syrian refugees, is not one of them. As designed and implemented, there are genuine doubts about the order’s effectiveness in meeting its stated objective of preventing terrorism. It also risks ...
Read More »Businesses ride the ‘cloud’
Bloomberg Alphabet Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corp., which all posted quarterly results recently, reinforced what’s become a truism in technology: the biggest growth is in businesses that deliver computing over the internet. Microsoft topped projections on the strength of rising customer sign-ups for its cloud offerings like Azure, which saw revenue almost double. Intel sales rose more than ...
Read More »Rolling robots could soon be making deliveries in Virginia
RICHMOND / AP Robots about the size of a beer cooler could soon be rolling down Virginia sidewalks to deliver sandwiches, groceries or packages. Supporters say proposed legislation to allow the robots would make the state the first in the nation to regulate such devices. State lawmakers partnered with European company Starship Technologies on bills allowing Virginia cities to ...
Read More »Acer brings TravelMate to classrooms
Emirates Business Acer announced the availability of its latest convertible notebook for education customers, the Acer TravelMate Spin B1 (B118), at the 2017 BETT Show (Booth B109) that was held in London from January 25 to 28. The 11.6-inch convertible notebook with Windows 10 Pro is perfectly sized for easy portability, features four usage modes and a robust design ...
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