Fed meeting shouldn’t obscure BOJ’s moment

  This week, much attention will focus on the Open Market Committee of the U.S. Federal Reserve, the most powerful central bank in the world, whose actions have global impact. Yet the most informative, and intriguing, policy decision could take place in Tokyo. And the outcome will not only tell us more about Japan’s daunting challenges, but could also signal ...

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Getting the balance right on infrastructure spending

The big guns are coming out in the battle over infrastructure spending. Larry Summers, a celebrated Harvard economist and veteran policy adviser, has a new article making the case for spending more. Ed Glaeser, a brilliant and versatile colleague of Summers’ who studies urban economics, has an article making the opposite case. Though both make many good points, I think ...

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Income liftoff shows the US recovery is real

During the past two years, we have seen signs that wage pressure is building as the economic recovery grinds on. Enough evidence has now accumulated to suggest that it is already happening. The latest data, courtesy of the Census Bureau, which released its annual update on incomes and poverty yesterday, showed that median household income increased a whopping 5.2 percent ...

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Merkel needs to convince her critics

  Two back-to-back stinging defeats have rattled German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The internal splits are palpable now. Even though Merkel has dropped the “we can do it” rallying cry on migrants, she has refused to put a cap on migration. This is a bold and righteous move, but to convince her coalition partners about her stand ...

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Watch out this year’s most consequential Senate race

  From Erie in the west to Scranton in the east, Pennsylvania is flecked with casualties the stubborn economic sluggishness and relentless globalization have inflicted on industrial communities. But in this middle-class Philadelphia suburb, Tom Danzi knows that the economy is denting even his business repairing damaged cars. His Suburban Collision Specialists once had 27 employees kept busy by drivers ...

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What’s behind China’s rising housing costs

  For many years, China’s authorities took a Goldilocks approach to housing prices: They wanted a market that was neither too hot nor too cold, and took measures as needed to control prices. Although an explicit asset-price target was never announced, it was widely assumed that the government wanted home prices to grow in line with the rate of economic ...

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The European welfare state has a future again

  In the years since the 2008-09 financial crisis, cracks have appeared in the global hegemony of neoliberalism. The pressure to favour free markets and reject the social-welfare model has moderated somewhat. In the U.S., President Barack Obama succeeded in installing the first general health-insurance system in the country’s history. Thus Washington has moved closer toward the European welfare state ...

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China rich help Europe banks raise $14bn

  Bloomberg The appetite of China’s wealthy to diversify from a weakening yuan is helping European finance companies boost capital to prepare for the next financial crisis. Global fund managers are urging caution. Since Aug. 1, seven issuers opened order books for their Basel III bond sales in Asian hours, raising $11.9 billion selling instruments that count as capital under ...

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Qatar central bank offers sale of $824mn govt bonds

  Dubai / Reuters Qatar’s central bank is offering 3 billion riyals ($824 million) of government bonds in its second domestic bond sale this year, according to a circular seen by Reuters. The central bank only issued its first domestic bonds this year in August when it sold 4.6 billion riyals of conventional and Islamic government bonds. Bids for the ...

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Danske names new personal banking head for wealth unit

Bloomberg Danske Bank A/S named Jesper Nielsen its head of personal banking, as Denmark’s largest lender reshuffles its management after creating a $200 billion wealth management unit. Nielsen, 47, will be responsible for all of Danske’s personal customer business in the Nordic region from Oct. 1 , the Copenhagen-based bank said in a statement on Monday. Nielsen, who will also ...

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