Surviving a Trump Meeting Doesn't Mean All Clear for Drug Industry

A relatively calm meeting with President Trump doesn’t eliminate drug-pricing risks.

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Under Armour's Reckoning

Under Armour shares are slammed after its stunning growth streak ends.

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Schools are reopening in Mosul, after two years of jihadist rule

LIBERATION has proved dangerous for the residents of Tullaban, a farming hamlet on the outskirts of Mosul. Last autumn, as the push began to wrest the city from Islamic State (IS), villagers returned home to find no sign of the jihadists who had seized it back in 2014. Nor, though, could they spot the booby traps and mines the IS fighters had laid as they fled.

Hidden in the doorways of houses and buried in nearby fields, the villagers only learned of their presence the hard way. “When the IS first came this way, we fled because we knew how they were beheading people,” says Ali Jassem, 80, standing among houses flattened by air strikes and pockmarked with machine gunfire. “Then we came back, and four people were killed while going inside their homes.”

Tullaban, which used to be on IS’s front line, is now being cleared of landmines and booby traps by the Mines Advisory Group, a British charity dedicated to making post-conflict zones safe again. But for all that it still resembles a battlefield, both the hinterland of Mosul and eastern parts of the city itself are seeing life to return to normal in areas freed from IS. It is...Continue reading

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CIT Shakes Its OneWest Hangover

Lighter regulation and faster economic growth could help CIT recover from a problematic merger.

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H&M's New Sales Target Won't Revive Growth

H&M has fallen out of investment fashion. For that to change, management needs to make clearer how its online strategy will revive flagging growth and margins in its core stores.

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Europe Beats U.S. Growth, but Politics Loom Just as Large

The eurozone economy looks to be performing strongly. Political risks remain to the fore.

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Deutsche Bank's Russia Settlements Help But Don't Heal

The German lender is paying less than feared to U.S. and U.K. regulators.

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The Coming Squeeze on Profit Margins

Just because companies’ costs are rising doesn’t mean they are going to be able to pass them on to consumers.

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Apple's Secret, but Very Large, Profit Center

Apple’s services unit bears watching in Tuesday’s earnings report as the tech giant looks for new ways to boost margins and maintain growth.

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Why Executives Are Speaking Out on Travel Ban and Why More Might Follow

President Trump’s immigration order has mostly drawn criticism from companies with employees directly affected, but others may join them as they see international reputations threatened.

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Tempur Sealy's Mattress Nightmare Is Real

Tempur Sealy’s refusal to bow to Mattress Firm’s demands will hurt its retail presence when competition from online players is mounting.

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Toyota Still Biggest Car Maker by the Measures that Matter

Car buffs, journalists and economists pay a lot of attention to unit-car statistics, but investors shouldn’t—just look at Volkswagen’s rise to the top of the official league table.

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Crowds protest Donald Trump’s immigration ban

“LIFT up the lamp at the golden door!” Adriano Espaillat shouted into the microphone, invoking the last line of “The New Colossus,” the poem engraved in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. His amplified words carried over a cheering crowd of thousands packed into Battery Park in downtown Manhattan. Their mittened hands lifted signs that read “No Ban, No Wall” and “Patrol White Supremacy, Not Borders”. Mr Espaillat, the first Dominican-American member of Congress, came to America as an undocumented immigrant. Behind him, in New York Harbour, stood Ellis Island and Lady Liberty herself. 

The protests began the day before at a modern Ellis Island—Terminal 4 at Kennedy International Airport. On the afternoon of January 27th , Donald Trump signed an executive order severely restricting travellers from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Its effects took hold on January 28th when travellers from those countries were being detained by the Department of Homeland Security in airports across the country, in a fog of confusion about the order’s reach. Word of the detentions quickly spread, and the crowds at the airport grew steadily throughout the afternoon....Continue reading

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No Time for Complacency in European Markets

Europe is full of positive signs but there are some clouds that bear watching.

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T-Mobile and Dish: Better Together?

Investors consider Dish Network and T-Mobile US to be takeover targets, but the most interesting merger possibility may be between the two companies.

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Markets' PostelectionCalm Is Eerie and Historic

The CBOE Volatility Index, or VIX, is at historic levels of complacency, a possible warning for investors.

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Under Armour Is Under the Gun

After a long streak of beating analyst estimates, athletic-gear maker Under Armour is running out of ways to send its shares higher.

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How a Mexican border city is reacting to President Trump

UNLIKE conventional wars, the one that has broken out between Mexico and the United States is not starting on the border. Some 178,000 people still cross over daily from Tijuana to San Diego, 33km (21 miles) away, through the busiest border post between the two countries. The Mexican city is home to an estimated 100,000 Americans, many of whom commute to jobs in the United States.

But the conflict that Donald Trump has provoked with Mexico is causing unease, even dread in Tijuana, a city of 1.7m people. “We’re heading for confrontation,” says David Mayagoitia of the Tijuana economic development corporation. “It’s just the details that are still to be discovered.” José Luis, a driver, fears that “Trump will declare war,” an actual shooting war, “if we don’t pay for the wall.” This is far-fetched, but one can see why Mexicans are worried.

Mr Trump’s executive order to start...Continue reading

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Judges block the deportation of Muslim travellers

ONE WEEK after his inauguration, Donald Trump received a lesson in the ways of American democracy. The new president suffered his first setback at the hands of the judiciary, a co-equal branch of the federal government that may soon replace the media as his biggest nemesis. A day after Mr Trump issued an executive order (“Protecting the nation from foreign terrorist entry into the United States”) that banned the entry of all refugees and citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries, federal judges in New York, Virginia and Seattle issued emergency stays that effectively stop a key part of the order in its tracks.

The lawsuit in New York was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of two men, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi and Hameed Khalid Darweesh, and dozens of other “similarly situated” people who arrived at American ports of entry on January 27th just after Mr Trump’s order had taken effect. Mr Alshawi, an Iraqi citizen holding a valid visa who was on his way to Texas to be reunited with his wife and son, was detained by authorities at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. Mr Darweesh, an Iraqi who had served as an interpreter for the...Continue reading

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Donald Trump gets tough on refugees

IT BECAME fashionable during the election campaign to say Donald Trump should be taken “seriously not literally”. Try telling that to the hundreds of mostly-Muslim refugees, students, researchers and businessmen currently detained at American entry ports or being slung off long-planned flights to America. They and thousands of other law-abiding and deserving people, including green-card holders with homes and families in America, have been barred from entering or returning to America by the executive order Mr Trump signed on January 27th.

The order, named “Protecting the nation from foreign terrorist entry into the United States”, has suspended America’s refugees programme for four months and barred Syrian refugees indefinitely.  It also denies entry, for at least 90 days, to anyone from seven mainly-Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

During the campaign, Mr Trump promised as a counter-terrorism measure a “total and complete shutdown” on all Muslim entrants to America. That would probably be unconstitutional. Yet his order goes some way to achieving the same aim; the targeted countries were responsible for 82%...Continue reading

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Anti-abortion protesters hope for change under Donald Trump

“IT’S been a long time coming,” said Carol Anne Jones, as she stood in front of the Supreme Court dressed in funereal black, and waved a small placard: “Abortion’s a choice—to murder”. Every year since 1974, anti-abortionists have gathered in the capital to protest the court’s decision, made the previous year in Roe v Wade, to recognise a right to abortion nationwide. “This year I would like to see that mistake struck down,” said the 63-year old housewife from northern Virginia. “And I think it will happen”.

Many of those who joined the “March for Life” on January 27th expressed similar optimism that Donald Trump’s presidency would bring sweeping changes to abortion law. How close will the new administration come to fulfilling the hopes of the nuns, youth groups and middle aged parishioners who sang hymns and prayed as they walked, wrapped up against the cold, from the Washington Memorial to the Supreme Court? 

Mr Trump, who declared himself in 1999 to be “very pro-choice”, made his new pro-life stance an important part of his campaign. He has repeatedly promised to appoint pro-life justices to the Supreme Court,...Continue reading

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Here's What Can Drive the Economy Higher

The economy put in yet another tepid performance last year, but President Donald Trump says things are about to get a lot better. How might that come true?

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Apple's Hunt for Marginal Gains

It is too early to know what exactly Apple has in mind for the next iPhone. It isn’t too early to think about what it might cost -- for both the company and its customers.

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Why Merck's Pricing Candor is Good for Big Pharma

Merck publishing its list of average price increases shows how big pharma is starting to strike the right note in the battle over high drug prices.

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Tesco's Steal Leaves Booker Investors Short

A big U.K. grocery merger seems a better deal for Tesco than its would-be partner.

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Making protectionism unpopular again

UBS Shows Why U.S. Is Banking Promised Land

The bounce in U.S. market activity is the big story for European private and investment banks, even as the rest of the world remains subdued. For UBS of Switzerland that’s a mixed blessing

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Weak Yen Is Only Slight Reprieve for Bank of Japan

While a weaker currency gives the Bank of Japan a much-needed reprieve, it still isn’t reason to celebrate.

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India's Growth Doesn't Have a Story

In one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, headline growth numbers of over 7% might look good when global growth is sagging but the underlying drivers aren’t so solid.

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Google Gets Stronger Still in Search

A key selling point of Alphabet’s Google is that nearly everyone, especially on mobile, uses it to negotiate the internet.

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The White House hints that tax reform could pay for the border wall

MAKING Mexico pay for a border wall was Donald Trump’s flagship campaign promise. Already, it has already caused a diplomatic crisis. On January 26th Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico’s president, pulled out of a scheduled summit with Mr Trump, who had earlier suggested that if Mexico was not going to pay for the wall, then there was no point in having the meeting. Then, for a brief moment, it looked as if the White House was declaring a trade war, when reports surfaced on Twitter that the Sean Spicer, the White House Press Secretary, had said that a 20% tariff on Mexican imports would raise the necessary funds.

Those reports, it turned out, were not quite right. Mr Spicer in fact suggested that a deal was nearing on corporate tax reform. He implied that it would include the so-called "border-adjustment” Republicans in the House of Representatives have long sought. That change could pay for the wall, he said. (He later told a reporter he was only discussing “possible” policy moves).

Border-adjustment would change the way firms calculate their profits for tax purposes. Revenue made from exports would no longer count. Neither would costs incurred by importing...Continue reading

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The Doomsday Clock now reads two and a half minutes to midnight

THE symbolic clock is ticking. On January 26th, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, in consultation with the Bulletin’s Board of Sponsors and its 15 Nobel laureates, unveiled its latest Doomsday Clock. The current time: two and a half minutes to midnight.

The Bulletin, which began in 1945 as a mimeographed newsletter published by Manhattan Project scientists, has been setting the symbolic clock for the past 70 years. Its first one, set in 1947, read 11:53pm—seven minutes to midnight. It was meant to convey to the public and to world leaders the nuclear dangers they faced—dangers sparked, of course, by the Manhattan Project itself. The closer the clock is to midnight, the greater the existential threat. And we haven’t been closer to the bell tolling for over 60 years.

And it’s no longer only nuclear threats that move the clock’s hands. It’s also climate change—which Donald Trump has called a “hoax” and “created by the Chinese”—and “emerging technologies in the life sciences.” (Think, basically, GMO pandemics and killer robots.)

Both Mr Trump’s pre-election comments and...Continue reading

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Donald Trump's 4% Growth Target Is Easier Said Than Done

Friday’s GDP report will highlight just how difficult—if not impossible—it will be for U.S. economic growth to rebound to President Trump’s target.

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Verizon Needs to Bet Big But Shouldn't Overpay for Charter

A deal with Charter Communications could help Verizon offset its struggling wireless business, but it would only make sense at the right price.

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Bristol-Myers Squibb: Make Lemonade From Lemons

Shareholders shouldn’t give up on Bristol-Myers Squibb just yet.

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America, China and the risk of a trade war

DONALD TRUMP’S quest to protect American workers from cheating foreigners has begun. But in his first flurry of policy tweets and executive orders, China, his favourite bogeyman, was conspicuously absent. On the campaign trail he deplored China’s currency manipulation, accused it of flouting global trade rules and threatened a 45% tariff on its exports, all to cheering crowds. Now, the world is waiting to see how much of this he meant.

The promise to label China a currency manipulator has not been repeated. An optimistic interpretation is that Mr Trump has realised that the promise was based on an “alternative” fact. China is no longer squashing its currency to gain a competitive edge, but is instead propping it up. A pessimistic one is that Steven Mnuchin, his treasury secretary, who would do the labelling, is not yet confirmed by the Senate.

Mr Trump certainly has the power to wreak trade havoc. A big blanket tariff would slice through supply chains, hurt American consumers and fly in the face of the global system of trade rules overseen by the World Trade Organisation (WTO). But, rather than blow up the world’s trading system, Mr Trump...Continue reading

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A big Chinese province admits faking its economic data

AT THE start of 2014 a senior official in the statistics bureau of Liaoning, an industrial province in north-eastern China, told his army of boffins to cultivate a spirit of innovation in their work. “Liberate your minds,” he exhorted an annual planning meeting. They took him at his word. In one of the biggest scandals to rock the murky world of Chinese economic data, the government admitted this month that Liaoning had faked its fiscal data from 2011 to 2014, inflating revenues by about 20%.

For those inclined to distrust all Chinese numbers, the announcement was simple vindication. But a closer look paints a different picture: of central authorities wanting to get a better read on the economy but being impeded at the local level—and by one of the usual suspects at that.

In manipulating statistics, Liaoning has form. When Li Keqiang, now prime minister, was Communist Party chief of the province in the 2000s, he confided to America’s ambassador to China that its GDP figures were “man-made” and unreliable. Mr Li’s comments have often been cited by critics of Chinese data, though his concerns focused just on...Continue reading

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Warren Buffett extends his dominance of retroactive reinsurance

IT IS a niche market, but a big one, and it is increasingly dominated by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. On January 20th its reinsurance subsidiary, National Indemnity Company (NICO), agreed with American International Group (AIG), a big insurer, to acquire excess losses on old insurance policies. In one of the largest such “retroactive reinsurance” deals ever announced, NICO will be on the hook for four-fifths of all losses above $25bn, up to $20bn, in exchange for a payment of $9.8bn now. The deal comes just a few weeks after a similar deal giving up to $1.5bn of coverage to Hartford, another American insurance giant.

For much of the 15 years since the term retroactive reinsurance came into use, Berkshire, through NICO, has been at the forefront. The structure allows insurers to rid themselves of so-called “long-tail” exposures, ie, claims that may come in years or decades after policies were written. Often, they cover long-term environmental risks like pollution, or asbestos-related disease, where workers may fall ill many years after exposure. In the largest previous deal in 2006 NICO provided reinsurance coverage worth $7bn for...Continue reading

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Visas as aid

Better in America

TWO years ago, Jon Hegeman, a farmer from Alabama, was struggling to expand his business. He could offer unglamorous but steady work. Potting plants and shifting them to a greenhouse paid $10.59 an hour. He couldn’t find workers; he even tried recruiting from a youth-detention programme.

Mr Hegeman stumbled on a solution when he met Sarah Williamson, of Protect the People (PTP), a charity for people affected by humanitarian disasters. With the International Organisation for Migration, PTP was trying a novel way of helping Haiti after its devastating earthquake in 2010: by taking Haitians to work temporarily in America. The idea appealed to Mr Hegeman, born to missionary parents on the same island (but in the Dominican Republic). With the agencies’ help, eight workers arrived in September 2015.

A new study by Michael Clemens and Hannah Postel of the Centre for Global Development compares those Haitians who secured visas through the project with unsuccessful applicants left behind. The benefits were mind-boggling: the temporary migrants earned a monthly income 1,400% higher than those back in...Continue reading

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A fintech startup tries to shake up American student loans

IN AN old factory building in lower Manhattan a fintech startup is seeking answers to a question that has tormented teachers and students for decades: what is the value of a given course, teacher or institution? Climb Credit, with just two dozen employees, provides student loans. The programmes it finances bring returns far higher than can be expected from even highly rated universities.

Climb does not claim to nurture billionaires, nor to care much about any of the intangible benefits of education. Rather, it focuses on sharp, quantifiable increases in earnings. The average size of its loans is $10,000 and it normally finances programmes of less than a year. The subjects range from coding to web design, from underwater welding to programming robots for carmakers (which has the highest rate of return). Some students have scant formal education; others advanced degrees. The rate of return they get is calculated as the uplift in earnings after the course of study, minus its cost (which includes that of servicing the loan, and takes account of the absence of earnings during the course).

Climb’s results so far are hardly conclusive. It has...Continue reading

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Financial markets diverge as central banks start to turn off the taps

INVESTORS are learning to let go of Daddy’s hand. Monetary policy has been very supportive of asset markets over the past eight years but the direction of policy is tilting slowly.

The Federal Reserve has increased rates twice already and is expected to push through another three increases this year. The Bank of England has indicated that the next move in rates could be up or down, but that the former looks more likely, especially as inflation is on the rise. The European Central Bank is scheduled to reduce the amount of bond purchases it makes after the end of March. Only the Bank of Japan seems committed to keeping the monetary taps on “full”.

The market impact is already visible. Morgan Stanley says there has been a “crash” in the tendency for assets to correlate with each other in recent months (see chart). Its measure incorporates correlations between different markets (equities and corporate bonds, for example), and between different regions.

The recent fall in correlations takes the measure back to where it was in the run-up to the 2007-08 financial crisis. During and after the crisis, correlations rose...Continue reading

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Winners and losers in a China-America trade war

ECONOMIC Armageddon became a bit more likely when Donald Trump took office on January 20th, given his threats to impose a 45% tariff on Chinese imports. “No one will emerge as a winner in a trade war,” Xi Jinping, China’s president, intoned just days earlier. He was not quite right. In any catastrophe, a few survive; some even thrive.

Tariffs that high would serve as a tax on American shoppers buying phones, computers and clothes (see chart). They might not dent their wallets too much—a study found that in 2010 goods and services from China made up less than 3% of consumer spending. Poorer Americans would be hit harder, however, as they spend a higher share of their income on tradable goods.

American importers would suffer from a tariff. Importers of electronics and clothing enjoy higher retail and wholesale margins than other importers. A tariff would eat into them. Their competitors, relying on domestic suppliers, could benefit and raise prices.

A squeeze on trade between America and China would be painful but not catastrophic for China’s economy. It has weaned itself off export-led growth. Analysts from...Continue reading

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Brexit poses a threat to Ireland’s aircraft-leasing business

THE glass office blocks of Dublin’s docklands still stand proud; the banks that built them no longer do. The financial crisis of 2008 took down Ireland’s six biggest lenders. Within five years Dublin slid from being rated by Z/Yen, a London-based business think-tank, as the world’s tenth-best financial centre to its 70th. Britain’s readiness to leave Europe’s single market has since sparked hopes Dublin’s fortunes could be revived. An English-speaking base from which to keep doing business inside the EU may appeal to London’s bankers. But worries are growing that the impact will not be all good for Dublin.

To see why, look at aircraft finance, perhaps the city’s most successful industry. The topic of Brexit dominated the chatter at the world’s two biggest air-finance conferences, both held in Dublin this month. Drawing more than 4,500 airline bigwigs, lessors and bankers, such gatherings are usually preoccupied by issues such as aeroplane prices and the aviation cycle. This year geopolitics predominated. “In Ireland we’re surrounded by Trump to the west and Brexit to the east,” one industry veteran sighed in...Continue reading

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The definition of “maximum employment” needs updating

“IT IS fair to say the economy is near maximum employment,” said Janet Yellen, chairman of the Federal Reserve, in recent comments preparing markets for rate rises to come. But “maximum employment”, like pornography, is in the eye of the beholder. American adults, of whom only about 69% have a job, seem less than maximally employed. In previous eras, governments of countries scarred by economic hardship set themselves the goal of “full” employment. Today, the target is termed “maximum”. But it is the same concept. It needs a bit of updating.

Ms Yellen has a particular definition of maximum employment in mind, built on the economic experience of the past half-century. In the 1960s and 1970s a consensus (or, at least, what passes for one in macroeconomics) emerged that government efforts to boost demand could push unemployment only so low. Below that “natural rate”, it would soon start climbing again and inflation would accelerate. So now central bankers take a guess at the natural rate and at how quickly unemployment that is “too low” will spark inflation. Maximum employment, in their view, is the sweet spot: the...Continue reading

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Progress at Syria’s latest peace talks

KAZAKHSTAN is an odd place to seek a fresh start for Syria. Its strongman, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has been in charge since Soviet times. In 2015 he won 97.7% of the vote—an even better tally than Syria’s despot, Bashar al-Assad, can command. But as a Russian-speaking capital of a Turkic nation sharing the Caspian Sea with Iran, there was some symbolism in selecting its capital, Astana, as a place to unveil the new tripartite protectorate over Syria. 

And as peace talks go, the ones in Astana, on January 23rd-24th, marked a new realism. The hosts were the three outside powers who are doing the bulk of the fighting in Syria. Along with Russia and Turkey, they included Iran, which was pointedly kept out of the last round of talks in Geneva. The Americans, Europeans and Arabs who steered those negotiations were this time either reduced to observer status, or absent altogether. Saudi Arabia, once the rebels’ prime backer, is too preoccupied with its war in Yemen these days to have time for the one in Syria. “The uprising began as an Arab awakening and ended in a carve-up among non-Arab powers,” says a Syrian analyst.

Also reflecting...Continue reading

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Why African widows get evicted by their in-laws

ACTIVIST, firebrand and feminist are just a few of the terms used to describe Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga, a former opposition MP and cabinet minister in Zimbabwe. No one would call her a pushover. Yet despite her connections and some of the country’s finest lawyers arguing her case, after her husband’s death she was forced empty-handed out of her matrimonial home of 13 years.

Before Ms Misihairabwi-Mushonga was widowed she and her late husband owned three houses, including one in the leafy suburb of Mt Pleasant in the north of Harare. They shared bank accounts and owned several cars. Some of this was left to her in a will. Yet after her husband’s death Ms Misihairabwi-Mushonga lost almost everything, even her clothes, to her late husband’s brother, various other in-laws and his children from an earlier marriage. “I am a typical example of a person who had access to information, a minister, but yet I woke up with nothing,” she says.

Her destitution illustrates a wider problem. It is not only the government that grabs other people’s stuff in Zimbabwe. In-laws do it, too. Tens of thousands of widows are stripped of their...Continue reading

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After Gambia’s dictator, democracy?

Barrow finally makes it

TEODORO OBIANG, the dictator of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, is used to shady guests. A decade ago, his Black Beach prison held Simon Mann, a British mercenary who was sentenced to 34 years for his role in the botched “Wonga coup” that tried to topple him. (Mr Mann won a presidential pardon in 2009.) In a fresh act of mercy, Mr Obiang has taken in another guest, whose quarters will doubtless be cushier. On January 21st he welcomed Yahya Jammeh, the former dictator of Gambia, whose people had tired of him after 22 years.

Mr Jammeh fled Gambia after a month-long stand-off with West Africa’s regional power bloc, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). It had threatened to send troops in after Mr Jammeh reneged on a pledge to hand over power to Adama Barrow (pictured), an opposition politician who won a presidential election in December.

Mr Jammeh and his new host are not known to have been close before, but they may find many reasons to get along. Both seized power in coups, and both have clung to it for decades: Mr Obiang, who has been in office for 37 years, is the...Continue reading

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Nigeria imposes a no-fly zone on its own capital

THE capital of Nigeria is a picture of order compared with Lagos, the chaotic commercial hub. But whereas Abuja’s sweeping avenues are well maintained, the runway of its airport is potholed. Several aircraft have damaged their landing gear on the rutted tarmac. Facing the risk of a serious crash, the government is closing the whole place for six weeks from March 8th. “The entire architecture of the runway, it has failed,” says the minister of aviation.

The government hopes airlines will fly instead to Kaduna, a mere 230km (140 miles) north of Abuja, while the runway’s central portion is rebuilt, with other repairs taking six months in all. But a new terminal at Kaduna is still being built; right now it handles just 300 passengers a day, compared with 5,000 in Abuja. The foreign carriers that fly to the capital, including British Airways, Air France and Lufthansa, are queasy. “None of the European airlines will fly to Kaduna,” says an airline official.

Nigeria has a history of airport closures. In 2005 an Air France flight ploughed into a herd of cows on the runway at Port Harcourt, the country’s oil capital. Later that year...Continue reading

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Who can unblock Morocco?

Still a popular king

MOROCCANS call it the “blockage”, as if their government is suffering from a medical condition. Three days after the Justice and Development Party (PJD), a moderate Islamist outfit, won the most seats in a parliamentary election on October 7th, King Muhammad VI asked its leader, Abdelilah Benkirane, to form a new government. More than three months later, Mr Benkirane is still trying. The power struggle has indeed put Morocco’s economic and political health at risk.

Morocco rode out the Arab spring better than most countries in the region. Big protests led to constitutional reforms and a relatively free and fair election in 2011, won by the PJD. The economy shows promise and the king pushes a mild version of Islam. By the standards of the region, it is a budding success—which makes today’s mess all the more disappointing.

It had seemed that the new government would look very much like the one before it, which was led by Mr Benkirane and included the PJD, the National Rally of Independents (RNI), the Popular Movement (MP) and the Party of Progress and Socialism (PPS)—with little to...Continue reading

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As Venezuela crumbles, the regime digs in

EVERY weekday morning, a queue of several dozen forlorn people forms outside the dingy headquarters of SAIME, Venezuela’s passport agency. As shortages and violence have made life in the country less bearable, more people are applying for passports so they can go somewhere else. Most will be turned away. The government ran out of plastic for laminating new passports in September. “I’ve just been told I might need to wait eight months!” says Martín, a frustrated applicant. A $250 bribe would shorten the wait.

As desperation rises, so does the intransigence of Venezuela’s “Bolivarian” regime, whose policies have ruined the economy and sabotaged democracy. The economy shrank by 18.6% last year, according to an estimate by the central bank, leaked this month to Reuters, a news agency (see chart). Inflation was 800%.

These are provisional figures, subject to revision. They may never be published (the central...Continue reading

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The diplomatic meaning of El Chapo’s extradition

ONE Mexican whom Donald Trump is unlikely to deport is Joaquín Guzmán, better known as El Chapo (Shorty). The Mexican government put Mr Guzmán, the chief of the Sinaloa drug-trafficking gang, on an aeroplane to New York on January 19th, the last full day of Barack Obama’s presidency. He will stand trial on charges ranging from money-laundering to murder, to which he has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he will probably spend the rest of his life in an American jail.

Mr Guzmán’s extradition is an opening gambit in Mexico’s diplomacy with Mr Trump, the most anti-Mexican president since James Polk, who waged the Mexican-American war in the mid-19th century. Mr Obama gets the credit because he was still president when the extradition happened. But the dispatch of Mr Guzmán to the United States is also a signal that Mexico is prepared to co-operate with the Trump administration, and to retaliate if ill-treated.

Mr Trump can hurt Mexico by ripping up the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada or through a renegotiation that restricts trade. On January 25th he signed an executive order to start building a...Continue reading

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A row over money may disrupt Argentine football

Celebrate while you can

BUENOS AIRES has 36 stadiums with a capacity of at least 10,000 spectators, more than any other city in the world. Mauricio Macri, Argentina’s president, used his 12 years as president of Boca Juniors, the most popular football club, to launch his political career. He still enjoys a kickabout at the Quinta de Olivos, the presidential residence.

But an ugly row over money is disfiguring the beautiful game. The government owes 350m pesos ($22m) to Argentina’s football association (AFA), which owes the same amount to the country’s football clubs. Many are unable to pay their players. The dispute may delay the restart of the top division’s season, scheduled for February 3rd.

The crisis stems from Mr Macri’s determination to sweep away the populist policies of his predecessor, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, which extended to football. He is also using the government’s muscle to force reform on a sport notorious for corruption.

For years, Argentines without cable television could only watch highlights of weekend fixtures. This amounted to “hijacking the goals until Sunday”,...Continue reading

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Emmanuel Macron finds new space in the centre of French politics

WHAT explains the sudden rise of Benoît Hamon? A few months ago he was a nondescript former education minister. Now he is favoured to beat Manuel Valls, the centrist who was France’s prime minister until last month, in a run-off primary on January 29th for the Socialist presidential nomination, having won the first round a week earlier. A proud leftist, he would probably lead his party to a crushing defeat in the election in April.

The party’s true believers were fired up by Mr Hamon’s ideas. He says France can cope with digital disruption by adopting a universal basic income, eventually to be worth €750 ($805) a month per adult. He would cut the 35-hour working week even shorter and levy taxes on the use of robots. (After all, robots can’t vote.) Why, though, didn’t the party’s centrists turn out for Mr Valls? Unfortunately for him, it looks as if they have abandoned the party altogether.

To see where French centrists have gone, one needed to take a trip to a pig farm in Brittany last week, where a crowd of reporters trailed behind Emmanuel Macron, an independent candidate and ex-minister. Mr Macron had forgotten his rubber boots, but...Continue reading

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At a summit in Germany, nationalism goes international

A safe space for blondes

TWO ghosts haunted a “counter-summit” of Europe’s nationalist leaders in the German city of Koblenz on January 21st: Angela Merkel and Donald Trump. To the 1,000-odd visitors, most of them supporters of the anti-establishment Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Mrs Merkel epitomised all that is rotten in Europe: out of touch, elitist and besotted with immigrants. (Chants of “Merkel must go!” punctuated the day’s speeches.) The energy of Mr Trump’s inauguration the previous day, by contrast, crackled through the proceedings. “Last year the wind began to turn,” said Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Freedom Party. “It brought us the victory of Trump!” The crowd whooped.

Koblenz brought together the leaders of populist, nationalist parties from France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and elsewhere under the banner of the “Europe of Nations and Freedom”, their grouping in the European Parliament. Feuds and personality clashes have long marred their attempts to co-operate. But now they are surfing a wave of success; several are leading in the polls, and they see themselves at the...Continue reading

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Matteo Renzi pushes for early elections

ITALY’S constitutional court has fired the starting pistol for the next general election. On January 25th the judges struck down key provisions of the electoral law for the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house, as unconstitutional. In doing so, they have increased the likelihood of an early election. But how long will the race last? That depends on whether the president, Sergio Mattarella, decides to push parliament to adopt a new system or make do with the current legal mess.

The constitutional wrangle has its origins in the failed attempt by the former prime minister, Matteo Renzi, to engineer stable majorities in a country that has known 66 governments since 1945. There were two pillars to his scheme. One was to reduce the powers of the Senate, the powerful upper house, by turning it into an indirectly elected assembly of regional and municipal appointees. The other was to introduce a new electoral law for the lower house in 2015. Known as the Italicum, it gave the party that won more than 40% of the vote a generous portion of extra seats to ensure it controlled 54% of parliament. If no party reached the threshold, a run-off ballot would be held...Continue reading

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Cyprus can be reunified, if Turkey’s president allows it

TREAD carefully through the building sites that litter Paphos, testament to the city’s preparations for its stint as 2017 European Capital of Culture, and you eventually find your way to the enclave of Mouttalos. Thousands of Turkish-Cypriots once lived here, before intercommunal fighting, reprisal killings and Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus in 1974 drove their exodus to the island’s north. George Pachis, a local Greek-Cypriot, sometimes helps those who fled find the graves of relatives. Recalling one brings him close to tears. Accompanying an old widow through the cemetery recently, rather than the single tomb he expected, he found a gravestone listing nine names, including a two-year-old girl. All had been shot dead by Greek-Cypriot irregulars.

The scars of Paphos bear witness to the traumas of Europe’s last divided country. Cyprus’s cleavage may be peaceful today, but it is deeply entrenched. Its artefacts—barbed wire, rusting military outposts—are scrawled artlessly across the UN “buffer zone” that divides Nicosia, the capital. Checkpoints allow easy travel between north and south, but the two peoples lead separate lives; 48% of...Continue reading

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The Trump administration vows to get tougher on China’s maritime claims

WHEN Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, said during his confirmation hearings that America should deny China access to the bases it had built on disputed reefs and islands in the South China Sea, many assumed that he was speaking off the top of his head, perhaps trying to impress the senators by sounding tough. But when, at a press briefing on January 23rd, the new president’s spokesman said something similar, it was not just jumpy Chinese who began wondering whether Mr Trump might deliberately and dramatically escalate military tensions with China.

At the briefing Sean Spicer, Mr Trump’s press secretary, was asked if he agreed with Mr Tillerson’s remarks. He replied, “It’s a question of if those islands are in fact in international waters and not part of China proper, then, yeah, we’re going to make sure that we defend international territories from being taken over by one country.”

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Islamist agitators try to take down a Chinese Christian governor

A parable of lies and fishermen

WIPING away tears, Dharma Diani, a 40-year-old woman in a black headscarf, recounts how Jakarta’s city government gave her less than a fortnight’s notice before evicting her family and flattening their home last year. Hers was one of 400 families in Pasar Ikan, an informal settlement on the edge of Jakarta’s old port, who saw their houses razed as part of a scheme to improve the city’s flood defences. The authorities gave no help or compensation, she says, just the offer of a cheap rental apartment in a distant suburb. But a vigilante group called Islam Defenders Front (FPI, by its Indonesian acronym) did help, handing out food, water and bedding.

When locals rebuilt a mosque demolished at the same time as their houses, they named it al-Jihad, a gesture of defiance at the urban-renewal schemes championed by Jakarta’s governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, known as Ahok. The walls that still stand at Pasar Ikan are daubed with anti-Ahok slogans. And when FPI organised five minibuses to ferry people from Pasar Ikan to the city centre to join a protest against the governor, Ms Diani willingly...Continue reading

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Malaysian democrats pin their hopes on the country’s royals

Liberal fantasy

ELEPHANTS once carried the sultans of Johor—a sprawling state in southern Malaysia—on tours of their tropical kingdom. Sultan Ibrahim, the present ruler, prefers the saddle of a Harley Davidson. Each year the car-collecting monarch leads a crowd-pleasing convoy through the state’s ten counties, sometimes driving motorbikes but also boats, buses, scooters and trains. Last year locals flocked to see the sultan pilot a powerful truck painted in the colours of the state flag, its leather seats stitched with threads of gold.

Sultan Ibrahim is the most charismatic and outspoken of Malaysia’s nine sultans (who reign ceremonially in their own states and take it in turns to serve five-year terms as Yang di-Pertuan Agong, the head of state of the entire country). Lately the profile of Johor’s royal family has been boosted by the extravagant success of the local football team, the Johor Southern Tigers. Owned by the sultan’s son, Tunku Ismail, the club has rebounded from a two-decade losing streak to win three championships in three years.

Yet with the scandal-hit...Continue reading

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Australia gets its first aboriginal minister

Comfortable in his own skin

WHEN he became the first indigenous member of Australia’s House of Representatives in 2010, Ken Wyatt donned a kangaroo-skin cloak and spoke of improving opportunities for aboriginals and Torres Strait islanders. This week he put on the same outfit again to become Australia’s first aboriginal minister. His new job puts him in charge of health care for the elderly and for indigenous Australians, giving him a chance to make good on his lofty rhetoric.

Mr Wyatt’s mother was a member of the “stolen generation”—aboriginal and mixed-race children taken from their families to be raised in orphanages. He worked in the state bureaucracies of both Western Australia and New South Wales, focusing on aboriginal health and education. In 2008 a panel which he co-chaired successfully demanded A$1.6bn ($1bn at the time) of public funding for aboriginal health. This background gives him more authority than his predecessors have had, and will help to insulate him from complaints about paternalism.

Yet Mr Wyatt faces a huge challenge in trying to unpick the “industry” of indigenous aid....Continue reading

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South Korea’s ministry of culture is accused of blacklisting more than 9,500 artists

“BLACKTENT”, a pop-up citizens’ theatre pitched in January on Gwanghwamun square in central Seoul, invites South Koreans to become “both the protagonist and the audience”. On a recent weekday evening, its 100-odd tickets sold out in minutes. Some of the audience had to sit on the stage to watch “Red Poem”, a play about sexual exploitation.

The head of the theatre troupe that produced it, Lee Hae-sung, is among 9,500 local actors, artists, writers, musicians, film directors and publishers included on an alleged blacklist of artists critical of President Park Geun-hye. Like many others on the list, Mr Lee says he has not received any state funding in recent years. Kim So-yeon, an art critic who helped set up “BlackTent” to protest against the blackballing, says the venue will continue to stage plays by shunned writers until Ms Park is removed from office.

News of the existence of the list—which a former culture minister, Yoo Jin-ryong, said this week was orchestrated by Kim Ki-choon, Ms Park’s former chief of staff and right-hand man—is yet another twist in a sensational influence-peddling scandal that led to Ms Park’s impeachment by parliament in December. That handed the constitutional court the responsibility for deciding whether to end Ms Park’s term early or reinstate her.

On January 21st a special prosecutor...Continue reading

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An ugly row about sacred cows

SOME call it cruel, and no wonder. Baying spectators jab them with sharp sticks, or yank and twist their tails. Handlers are said to squeeze lemon in their eyes, rub chili on their genitals or force alcohol down their throats—whatever it takes to drive a bull wild enough to charge into a pen ringed with cheering, jeering people. The terrified beasts often trample or gore the boys who try to catch them by the hump and drag them down. Fear can also send a 450kg (1,000lb) bull crashing through barriers into speeding cars or trains.

But jallikattu, a form of bull wrestling practised in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, is no blood sport: unlike in a Spanish bullfight, the bulls’ ordeal does not end in death. For Tamils, the “taming” of bulls is a noble tradition. Prehistoric cave paintings, ancient seals and 17th-century carvings from Hindu temples all capture the same, unchanging image of a daredevil youth straining against the ungainly shoulder hump that distinguishes the hardy native bos indicus breed of cattle. In myth Krishna pacified a bull; the great Tamil screen heroes have also tested...Continue reading

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Trust me, I’m the president

WHEN Richard Nixon’s presidency began his attorney-general gave this piece of advice to reporters: “Watch what we do, not what we say.” In his first week in office the 45th president said plenty to comfort loyalists and confound foes with his extravagant and disorientating lies. The press corps dwelt on what it means to have a White House spokesman who makes statements that are readily disproved, working under a president whose claims about voter fraud are entirely bogus. The startling thing is that in these first few days Donald Trump has been just as extravagant in his deeds as in his words. 

Incoming presidents like to use their powers to take swift action even when they have majorities in Congress. The order banning foreign NGOs that “actively promote” abortions from receiving federal money is a good example (see article). Even so, it is breathtaking how powerfully this president is signalling that he intends to honour campaign promises that some assumed were just talking points. So,...Continue reading

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Teaching economics

TEACHERS for maths, science and for special and bilingual education have long been hard to find and keep. Filling empty slots in rural and in low-achieving urban districts is not easy either. This is not new, but districts, states and colleges are devising new ways to tackle the problem. Some are allowing unqualified teachers into the classroom. A survey last year of 211 California school districts found that 22% allowed teachers to teach subjects outside their expertise. Others are paying maths and science teachers more, which is anathema to unions, who want to treat all teachers the same. To avoid their wrath, a few states plan to use separate grants to pay bonus salaries, bypassing school districts altogether.

Some districts, such as the Cherokee County School District in South Carolina, pay teachers a $10,000 signing bonus to work in rural areas. Math for America, a privately funded programme in New York city, gives teachers up to an extra $15,000 a year for four years. New York city’s public schools lose 9% of maths and science teachers each year. Math for America’s attrition rate is less than 4%. It provides 20% of the city’s public...Continue reading

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A policy intended to cut abortions is likely to do just the opposite

ONE ritual has become familiar for a president’s first week in the Oval Office. It has long been illegal for federal money to be used to fund abortions anywhere. On January 23rd, four days into his presidency, Donald Trump signed an executive order that bans government aid to foreign non-governmental organisations that “actively promote” abortion, for example by telling a woman that abortion is a legally available option. Since 1984, when the policy first came about, it has been swiftly revoked by incoming Democratic presidents and reinstated by Republican ones.

Past experience suggests that this “global gag rule” will lead to more abortions, not fewer. A study by researchers at Stanford University found that after the policy came into effect in 2001, the abortion rate increased sharply in sub-Saharan African countries that had been receiving substantial amounts of aid for family-planning programmes. By contrast, the abortion rate remained stable in countries that were less dependent on such aid (see chart).

The study, as well as anecdotal accounts and research by NGOs, suggest that abortions rose because of cuts in...Continue reading

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Skipping class

READING John F. Kennedy’s application to Harvard College is a study in mediocrity. The former president graduated from high school with middling marks and penned just five sentences to explain why he belonged at Harvard. The only bit that expressed a clear thought was also the most telling: “To be a ‘Harvard man’ is an enviable distinction, and one that I sincerely hope I shall attain.” America’s premier universities, long the gatekeepers for the elite, have changed greatly since their days as glorified finishing schools for scions. But perhaps not as much as thought.

New data on American universities and their role in economic mobility—culled from 30m tax returns—published by Raj Chetty, an economist at Stanford University, and colleagues show that some colleges do a better job of boosting poor students up the income ladder than others. Previously, the best data available showed only average earnings by college. For the first time, the entire earnings distribution of a college’s graduates—and how that relates to parental income—is now known.

These data show that graduates of elite universities with...Continue reading

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If you fund it, they may come

Raiders of the stretched budget

ALONG with framed family photos and magazine articles trumpeting his career, fifteen shovels adorn the walls of Steve Sisolak’s office. As the chair of the Clark County Commission, Mr Sisolak presides over many groundbreakings. He hopes to soon add a shovel to the wall to commemorate the start of construction on a 65,000-seat football stadium. The stadium proposal is at the crux of a plan to lure the Raiders football team to Sin City from Oakland, where the team currently shares a 1960s stadium with the Oakland Athletics baseball team. On January 19th the Raiders filed paperwork with the National Football League (NFL) expressing their intent to move to the Silver State. For this to go forward, 24 of 32 NFL team owners must approve it in a vote at the end of March.

Subsidising sports stadiums increased with the Tax Reform Act of 1986, says Ted Gayer of Brookings, a think-tank. The law intended to clamp down on the tax exemption of bonds used to finance many sports stadiums (though not the proposed Las Vegas arena). But in practice, it incentivised the federal government to match local subsidies....Continue reading

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The rise of the Herbal Tea Party

AS A rule, populist insurgencies are rarely defeated with slogans in Latin. Yet there it was, swaying proudly over the protest march that filled the ceremonial heart of Washington, DC, a day after the inauguration of President Donald Trump—a handwritten sign reading: “Primum Non Nocere”. The cardboard sign, quoting the ancient medical principle “First, Do No Harm”, was held by Mike Gilbert, an epidemiologist from Boston, Massachusetts, who joined hundreds of thousands of others showing their disapproval of the new president. Mr Gilbert gave two reasons for attending what was officially the “Women’s March on Washington”, part of an internet-organised global protest that saw sister marches in hundreds of cities. He marched to show solidarity with “the women in my life” and to rally support for “sound science”, which he fears will be undermined by ideologues chosen to oversee scientific funding and regulation.

Many marchers set out to shame Mr Trump for boorishly boasting, years ago, that fame allowed him to grab women “by the pussy”. They wore knitted pink “pussy hats” with pointy ears, or carried such signs as “Viva La...Continue reading

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The pitfalls of replacing Obamacare

Room for everyone

AS REPUBLICANS seek to carry out their promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), they must keep an eye on their own political health. “Obamacare” may be unpopular, but its components are not. A celebrated part of the law bans insurers from turning away customers who have pre-existing medical conditions. Before the ACA, insurers would routinely deny coverage to those with even minor or old blots on their medical histories. At a recent question-and-answer session, Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, was confronted by a man who, thanks to a cancer diagnosis, owed his life to this Obamacare rule. Mr Ryan promised the voter that the GOP’s desired ACA overhaul would not have left him for dead. Instead, he could have joined a “high-risk pool”. Beloved by the right, these pools feature in almost every Obamacare alternative, including the one penned by Tom Price, Donald Trump’s pick to be health secretary.

The idea is to hive unhealthy people off into their own dedicated market and then subsidise their coverage. It reverses the logic of the ACA, which lumped everyone together to...Continue reading

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Investing in Whisky? Future of Scotch Looking Golden Again

Strong results from drinks giant Diageo signal a revival in demand for one of the U.K.’s key exports.

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Growth Looms Larger Than Brexit for Bank of England

The Bank of England should keep its options open next week. But data showing continued strength in the U.K. economy will challenge its stance.

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Chinese Industry Starts to Feel the Chill

Slowing growth and rising costs hint that the party could be winding down.

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Messaging Giant Line Shows No Easy Path to Profits

Japan’s Line Corp. faces bulging costs and hard-to-navigate hurdles to growth.

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Donald Trump backs two big oil pipelines

“From this day forward all war between the parties to this agreement shall forever cease.” So begins the Fort Laramie Treaty, which leaders of the Sioux signed in 1868 with the United States government. On January 24th the war threatened to restart—at least in the courts. In one of his first actions in office, Donald Trump ordered swift approval of two pipelines, one of which runs through land which the Standing Rock Sioux in North and South Dakota say is within the boundaries of the Fort Laramie treaty. The tribe vowed to take legal action, claiming it risks soiling their water. It heralds the start of what is likely to be a bitter battle between a pro-oil administration and environmentalists.

The two projects, the Dakota Access Pipeline running 1,200 miles (1,900km) to Illinois, and the Keystone XL covering a similar distance from Alberta, Canada, to Nebraska, offer a boost to an industry hit by slumping prices and environmental rules in recent years. Both were blocked during the Obama administration.

The first, costing $3.8bn, will carry oil from North Dakota’s Bakken area, an early beneficiary of the shale...Continue reading

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Why Russia is about to decriminalise wife-beating

SHOULD it be a crime for a husband to hit his wife? In many countries this question no longer needs discussing. But not in Russia, where the Duma (parliament) voted this week to decriminalise domestic violence against family members unless it is a repeat offence or causes serious medical damage. The change is part of a state-sponsored turn to traditionalism during Vladimir Putin’s third presidential term. It has exposed deep fault lines. Many Russians now embrace the liberal notion of individual rights, but others are moving in the opposite direction.

Activists warn that decriminalisation will legitimise abuse. “The overall message to Russian citizens is that domestic violence isn’t a crime,” says Andrei Sinelnikov of the Anna Centre, a violence-prevention charity.

The debate began in 2016, when the government decriminalised battery, the least violent form of assault on the Russian statute books. Russia is one of three countries in Europe and Central Asia that do not have laws specifically targeting domestic violence. Instead it is treated like other forms of assault, ignoring the fact that spouses and children are more vulnerable than...Continue reading

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Death of a Brazilian justice

ON JANUARY 19th Brazil lost a crucial man at a crucial moment. Teori Zavascki, a justice of the supreme federal tribunal (STF), died along with four other people in the crash of a small aeroplane off Brazil’s south-eastern coast. He leaves behind a devastated family, legions of admirers—and the most explosive dossier of cases before the country’s highest court.

Mr Zavascki became a household name—in spite of the string of consonants inherited from his Polish forebears—because he oversaw investigations into the corruption scandal centred on Petrobras, the state-controlled oil company. Known collectively as Lava Jato (Car Wash), these have dominated politics since 2014. They led indirectly to the impeachment last August of the president, Dilma Rousseff; she was not implicated, but her Workers’ Party (PT) was. Before he died Mr Zavascki was about to authorise plea-bargaining deals with businessmen that could lead to more prosecutions of politicians.

Michel Temer, who succeeded Ms Rousseff, must now appoint a replacement. He was not expecting to have a hand in shaping Brazil’s highest court. None of the 11...Continue reading

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No Turnaround in Sight for Starbucks

Starbucks is facing slowing growth, a management shake-up and a​weak stock price ahead of Thursday’s earnings report.

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In Italy, Knockdown Prices Don't Mean Knockout Deals

Just because something is cheap doesn’t make it good value. Banking group Intesa Sanpaolo is eyeing insurer Generali. It should look away.

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Donald Trump gets serious about building a border wall

UNTIL the first days after his inauguration, Donald Trump's adversaries and even some of his supporters thought that, once in power, he would back away from many of his most contentious policy proposals. Rahm Emanuel, the Democratic mayor of Chicago, recently said that he thought building a wall on America’s southern border would not be a priority for the new president. This has turned out to be wishful thinking. On January 25th Mr Trump signed a pair of executive orders that mandate the building of the wall as well as increasing the number of border-police officers by 5,000 and immigration-enforcement officers, who deport illegal immigrants, by a whopping 10,000. The orders also called for cutting federal funding of sanctuary cities, like Chicago, which protect illegal immigrants from deportation.

Mr Emanuel reacted almost immediately. “I want to be clear: We’re gonna stay a sanctuary city. There is no stranger among us. We welcome people—whether you’re from Poland or Pakistan, whether you’re from Ireland or India or Israel and whether you’re from Mexico or Moldova where my grandfather came from. You are welcome in Chicago as you pursue the American dream,” he...Continue reading

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Spot the Investing Dummy at Harvard

Harvard may take the wrong lessons after firing half of its money managers.

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Credit-Card Competition Is Running Too Hot

As credit-card companies compete fiercely to push out loans, costs and credit risks are on the rise.

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Cisco Pays High Price for Small Diversification

Buying AppDynamics shows the big price Cisco will pay to diversify its business.

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Dow 20000 Means Stocks Are Pricey

Dow 20000 comes just days after the inauguration of Donald Trump and, because of stocks’ rich valuation, makes strong gains during his presidency tougher.

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Understanding the spike in China’s birth rate

WHEN China’s government scrapped its one-child policy in 2015, allowing all couples to have a second child, officials pooh-poohed Western demographers’ fears that the relaxation was too little, too late. Rather, the government claimed, the new approach would start to reverse the country’s dramatic ageing. On January 22nd the National Health and Family Planning Commission revealed data that seemed to justify optimism: it said 18.5m babies had been born in Chinese hospitals in 2016. This was the highest number since 2000—an 11.5% increase over 2015. Of the new babies, 45% were second children, up from around 30% before 2013, suggesting the policy change had made a difference.

Confusingly, the National Bureau of Statistics announced its own figures at the same time: it said the number of births had risen by 8% to 17.9m (see chart). These numbers were based on a sample survey of the population, not hospital...Continue reading

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