Miracle Cure a Long Shot for Perrigo

Investors shouldn’t expect the relief rally for over-the-counter and generic-drugs maker Perrigo to last for long.

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Why Size Matters Again for Banks

The flattening yield curve has bank investors spooked, but large ones such as J,P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup can outperform smaller peers in this environment.

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How To Resurrect Ericsson's Faded Success

‘Soft’ activist Cevian Capital has taken a $1 billion stake in the Swedish technology giant Ericsson, raising hopes in the company’s turnaround.

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The Supreme Court protects a Mexican immigrant from deportation

“WE HAVE some bad hombres here”, Donald Trump said in his third debate with Hillary Clinton, “and we’re going to get them out”. Ridding America of undocumented immigrants with criminal records is, rhetoric aside, not terribly far from Barack Obama’s position; he prioritised the deportation of people found guilty of violent and drug-related crimes. In practice, though, Mr Trump’s recent crackdown has ushered in a new era where none of the 11m unauthorised immigrants living in America feels especially secure. Mr Trump’s get-tough policy received two quite different messages from federal courts on May 30th. One, from the Supreme Court, limited executive discretion in the realm of deportation without ever naming Mr Trump. The other, from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, upheld the deportation of a longtime Hawaii businessman and father of three while at the same time condemning the 45th president’s stance on immigration as “contrary to the values of this nation and its legal system”.

The unanimous decision from...Continue reading

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Work begins on Africa’s tallest building

COULD Nairobi, Kenya’s traffic-clogged capital, be the next Dubai? Two large Dubai-based investors, Hass Petroleum and White Lotus, seem to think so. On May 23rd they formally started construction of what they claim will be Africa’s tallest building. Out of a vast hole in the ground in Upper Hill, a neighbourhood full of government offices, will rise two towers, the taller some 300 metres high and named “The Pinnacle”. (For comparison, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world’s tallest building, is 828 metres high). One will contain a hotel; the other, some 150 swanky apartments (or “residences”). A helipad will jut out of the roof of the taller tower, allowing the truly plutocratic to be whisked in over the traffic jams from the airport.

The investment is a fillip for Kenya. Much of Africa is in economic trouble. In 2016, according to the IMF, annual GDP growth across the continent sank to just 1.4%, the lowest rate in 20 years. Yet Kenya, which depends less on oil...Continue reading

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Migration from Eritrea slows

IN JERIF, a district of Khartoum, young Eritreans listen to Tigrinya pop music in dimly lit restaurants, or watch football at an oppressively hot community centre supported by their government. They are mostly male, and almost all have fled compulsory, indefinite military service on behalf of their despotic government. Most are working, or waiting for relatives to send money, so they can leave for Europe.

But the lads in Jerif will find their journey harder than their predecessors did. The number of Eritreans successfully completing each stage of the trip across the Sahara and the Mediterranean via Sudan appears to have declined in recent years. Border crossings fell by almost two-thirds to 9,000 between 2010 and 2016, according to the UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency (the real figures will be far higher, however: plenty of Eritreans get into Sudan undetected). A smuggler says he sent 150 migrants from Khartoum to Libya and Egypt last year, down from 300-400 in 2014 and 2015....Continue reading

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The triumph of Iran’s liberals

WHILE the leader of the free world bopped with sword-waving Arab princes and denounced the ancient Persian enemy, Iranian voters on the other side of the Gulf danced for detente. Men and women packed the streets countrywide, revelling most of the night. They were celebrating the re-election of President Hassan Rouhani. They cheered his vision of opening Iran to the West and his success in trouncing Iran’s isolationists and hardliners, championed by Ebrahim Raisi, who mustered only 38% of the vote on May 19th against Mr Rouhani’s 57%. In local elections on the same day, the hardliners were beaten in all Tehran’s 21 seats.

Defeat is growing familiar to the hardliners. The last time they won was in the parliamentary election of 2012, and that they owed to a mass boycott by reformists. This time the hardliners campaigned particularly hard because they sensed they were not only picking a president, but also, perhaps, the next supreme leader (a more powerful post). The incumbent, Ayatollah...Continue reading

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What did Donald Trump achieve in the Middle East?

AS DONALD TRUMP set off on his first foreign trip since taking office, to the world’s most unstable and dangerous region, some observers were worried. As it turned out, though, the Middle Eastern leg of Mr Trump’s nine-day maiden voyage was one of the less tumultuous periods of his presidency so far. Nonetheless, with a further tilt towards Saudi Arabia and the Sunnis, and against Iran and the Shias, the president has increased, not smoothed, the tensions that so bedevil the area.

In Riyadh, where he arrived on May 20th, Mr Trump attempted to reset his relationship with the Muslim world, strained by his own Islamophobic rhetoric. “I think Islam hates us,” he said last year, after calling for a blanket ban on Muslims entering America. But in a speech on May 21st he declared that the fight against extremism is “a battle between good and evil”, not “between different faiths”. Blaming most of the region’s problems on terrorism, he urged his audience of Sunni Muslim leaders to...Continue reading

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Writer wanted

Writer wanted: The Economist is looking for a writer to cover the Arab world, based in Cairo. Candidates should send a CV, a cover letter and a 600-word original article that could run in our Middle East and Africa section to cairocorrespondent@economist.com. Deadline for entries is 23rd June.

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Evergrande's Share-Price Rise Looks Shaky

Hong Kong-listed China Evergrande Group, the world’s most-indebted property developer, has added $15 billion to its market value this year—its shares gained 68% in May alone. What gives?

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Growth but No Inflation Will Keep ECB Chugging Along

The trend in eurozone inflation will underline the ECB’s caution about exiting from its ultraloose monetary policy.

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Why Investors Get Mixed Up In Venezuelan Debt

Goldman Sachs Asset Management is being criticized for buying Venezuelan debt. Still, there are reasons why investors load up on such bonds

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OPEC Oil Deal Sinks Tanker Industry

Oil tanker companies are seeing their profits squeezed by the OPEC deal and a historic oversupply of new vessels.

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Turmoil in Washington, DC clouds Virginia’s governor race

IN VIRGINIA, the only state in the Old Confederacy carried by Hillary Clinton last year, the front-runner for the Republican nomination for governor is trying not to talk about the president. Ed Gillespie, an establishment Republican who worked for George W. Bush and was chairman of the Republican National Committee, is one of three candidates vying for the Republican nomination in the primary on June 13th. But he seems to have little to say about the controversies dogging Donald Trump's new administration.

They include the Republican replacement for Obamacare that could choke off health funds to the Virginia countryside, a Republican Party bulwark; Mr Trump’s firing of James Comey, who made his name as a federal prosecutor in Richmond; and a proposed federal budget that would mean fewer Navy shipbuilding contracts for a Virginia yard and less cash for a cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay, gateway for the first English settlers in the early 1600s.

That is not surprising. A recent poll by the Washington...Continue reading

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Biotech IPOs: Who Needs Them?

Initial public offerings from biotech companies have slowed to a crawl. That isn’t as big a problem for biotech stocks as one might expect.

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For Sterling, the U.K. Election Is Just the Start of the Story

Caution on the pound could be warranted, as minds focus on the Brexit negotiations after the U.K. vote.

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Emmanuel Macron confronts Vladimir Putin

FOR a republican country, the welcome could scarcely have been more royal. Exactly 300 years after a young Louis XV hosted Peter the Great at the Chateau de Versailles, on a trip to admire French imperial splendour, France’s new president, Emmanuel Macron, chose the same setting for talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. The gold leaf on the palace shimmered in the spring sunlight. Plume-helmeted guardsmen lined the red carpet as Mr Putin stepped from his limousine. But if the symbolism on May 29th was friendly, the meeting itself hinted at an inner steeliness to the 39-year-old French president and diplomatic novice.

After two hours of talks, Mr Macron described the encounter as “extremely frank and direct”, which is as close as diplomatic jargon gets to admitting that things were tense. With Mr Putin standing by his side, in the centre of the chateau’s long gallery of paintings depicting glorious French battles, Mr Macron warned that his “red line” in...Continue reading

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Smoky Diesel Cloud Hangs Over Auto Industry Profits

Fiat Chrysler and GM may yet face their own diesel-emissions scandals, but the mounting indirect costs of diesel are more worrying.,

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Apple: Supercycle Hopes Drive Supersize Bets

Can Apple’s coming “supercycle” actually deliver? Investors already have bet nearly $200 billion that it can. Hopes are high for the next iPhone coming out later this year after the last two versions failed to do much to move the needle.

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Apple's WeChat Problem in China

China is a problem market for Apple. One big challenge it faces is the popularity of WeChat.

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Why U.S. Natural Gas Demand Is Closer to Tipping the Market

Just a decade or so ago, energy traders believed that using natural gas to generate electricity instead of coal was akin to bringing Dom Pérignon to a party where Budweiser would do. How times have changed. The country is several years into a natural gas glut while several coal producers have gone bust.

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The cheery new leader of Canada’s Conservatives

WHEN Stephen Harper stepped down as leader of Canada’s Conservative Party after losing a national election in October 2015 it looked as if the party he had created might come apart. That 13 candidates came forward to succeed him was an indication of how many ideologies he had knit together. Among them were three anti-abortion social conservatives, a libertarian and a Trumpian populist. Any one of these might have unravelled Mr Harper’s coalition.

In an election on May 27th to choose his successor, the 140,000 party members who voted stayed with what they knew. Andrew Scheer, a genial, 38-year-old father of five from the western province of Saskatchewan, spent his 13-year political career under the leadership of Mr Harper, who was prime minister for nearly ten years. Mr Scheer shares his predecessor’s enthusiasm for smaller government and lower taxes. Like Mr Harper he opposes carbon taxes and emphasises the need to go after “radical Islamic terrorists”. The media...Continue reading

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Japan's Banks Could Benefit From Riskier Lending

Major Japanese banks have been issuing more subordinated loans. That could raise their income and speed up reform in Japan.

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S.F. Express Needs UPS Tie-Up to Deliver

S.F. Express needs a tie-up with UPS to go very well to justify its sky-high valuation.

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Turkey’s president had a bad NATO summit, too

TURKEY’S president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, spent the early part of this year repeatedly insulting his NATO allies, partly with the aim of stimulating nationalist sentiment at home in order to win a constitutional referendum giving him nearly autocratic powers. He won that referendum in April, and has since been trying to repair his damaged ties with the West. But as the NATO summit in Brussels on May 25th showed, the charm offensive is not going very well. 

At the summit, Emmanuel Macron, France's newly elected president, pressed Mr Erdogan to release a French photographer who has been held for more than two weeks by Turkish security forces. Germany's Angela Merkel, whose government Mr Erdogan accused of Nazi practices in the run-up to the referendum, complained to him about the arrest of a German reporter three months ago. Mrs Merkel also insisted that Turkey allow German MPs to visit Incirlik airbase, where 250 of her country's troops are stationed....Continue reading

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The billionaire who will probably be the next Czech prime minister

BACK when newspapers were king, Charles Brownson, an American congressman, used to say that one should never quarrel with anyone who buys ink by the barrel. The principle still stands, and it is making life difficult for opponents of Andrej Babis, a billionaire media magnate who until this week served as Czech finance minister. With a general election set for October, Mr Babis’s ANO party seems unassailable, polling at 33.5% against 16% for the second-place Social Democrats.

On May 2nd Bohuslav Sobotka, the prime minister, threatened to resign unless the country’s president fired Mr Babis over a questionable tax break he received in 2013. Mr Sobotka, a Social Democrat, hoped the attention to Mr Babis’s finances would stop his own party’s headlong slide. The finance minister eventually agreed to step down. But more Czechs blamed Mr Sobotka for the clash than Mr Babis, and it seems ever more likely that he will win.

That election is one of two in the next...Continue reading

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Ukraine is struggling with corruption, sometimes successfully

UKRAINE is fighting two wars. One is near its eastern border, where it faces Russian aggression. The other is at its core, where it is wrestling with some of the worst corruption of any post-Soviet state. The war against corruption is only starting, and the fighting is carried out office by office, ministry by ministry.

Naftogaz, a state oil and gas firm which once epitomised the country’s misgovernment, has been cleaned up. Some of the most powerful oligarchs have been squeezed. One of the main sources of corruption that feeds the system, state procurement, has been slowly overhauled, producing some positive results.

In 2016 the health ministry launched a four-year programme to outsource procurement of medicines to international agencies. In the past, bureaucrats allied with suppliers to inflate prices. With one of Europe’s fastest-growing HIV epidemics and many other health emergencies, this was a burden Ukraine could not afford. Patients of Ukraine, an NGO, has...Continue reading

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Ukraine and Russia are both trapped by the war in Donbas

ON APRIL 12TH 2014 Igor Girkin, a former Russian military officer also known as “Strelkov” (“Shooter”), sneaked across the border into Ukraine’s Donbas region with a few dozen men and took control of the small town of Sloviansk, igniting Europe’s bloodiest war since the 1990s. To create the impression of strength, Mr Girkin, an aficionado of historical battlefield re-enactments, masqueraded as a member of Russia’s special forces, and had his men drive two armoured personnel carriers around every night to simulate a large build-up. In fact, his army never exceeded 600 men, mainly Cossacks and war-hungry opportunists like himself.

Having just lost Crimea and lacking a functioning government or military command after the Maidan revolution, Ukraine was stunned. As Russia massed its forces on the border with Ukraine, most observers (and participants such as Mr Girkin) expected a swift invasion followed by annexation. Instead, the Kremlin created an ersatz civil war, absurdly...Continue reading

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The land of morosité and ennui is embracing life coaches

THE French like to think of themselves as a miserable lot. Voltaire taught them that optimism is for the naive. Jean-Paul Sartre made ennui chic. Best-selling French psychology books include such titles as “Too Intelligent to be Happy”. Polls consistently rank the French among the world’s most despondent. Fully 85% earlier this year said that their country was heading in the wrong direction, compared with 61% of Britons and 51% of Americans. The Anglo-Saxon world hosts a blossoming trade of life coaches, self-help writers, motivational speakers and happiness researchers—what might be called the “optimism industry”. In France, it has had trouble gaining a foothold.

Now, it seems, upbeat thinking is à la mode. During his election campaign, Emmanuel Macron, the new president, was the candidate of “la positive attitude”, said Damon Mayaffre, a linguistics researcher. Favourite words he used in his campaign speeches included hope, future, dream and youth. Even the name Mr Macron gave...Continue reading

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Greece meets creditors’ demands but gets no relief

MAKIS, a gym instructor, counted himself lucky three years ago to land a job in the public sector. The 28-year-old works as a groundsman at a sports complex in Glyfada, a seaside suburb of Athens. Hired on a temporary contract, he expected to make a smooth transition to a permanent post in local government. But times are changing. Greece’s state audit council, which normally rubber-stamps official decisions, unexpectedly ruled this month that municipal employees should be dismissed when their contracts expire.

“That’s it for me, I’ll have to leave and find a job abroad like everyone else,” Makis says, gesturing towards his colleagues: a phalanx of state employees, from rubbish collectors to computer technicians. They are outside Athens’s city hall, protesting against the audit council’s decision.

More upheaval is on the way. On May 18th parliament approved a new package of reforms demanded by the European Union and the IMF, Greece’s bail-out creditors. Sunday shopping...Continue reading

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How Trump, Putin and Erdogan unsettle the EU

THE mood is brighter in Europe these days. It has not, admittedly, taken much to lift the spirits: reckless extremists came second, not first, in elections in Austria, the Netherlands and France; economic growth has accelerated beyond a snail’s pace; and Brexit, though probably disastrous for Britain, may not be catastrophic for Europe. Still, even the return of normality is a relief for a continent that has spent the past few years battling crises.

But if Europeans have at last started to feel better about themselves, the world outside looks ever-more menacing. The cherished European values of liberalism and respect for human rights are being challenged by a cohort of unpredictable leaders who seem not to prize or understand them. This is unsettling for the European Union, a slow-moving club founded on reverence for the rule of law. For Europeans the shift is embodied in three presidents whose capricious impulses are shaping and constraining their foreign policy: Donald Trump, Vladimir...Continue reading

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Team Trump and the Russians

READ enough stories about alleged collusion between Donald Trump, his inner circle and Russia, and it is easy to feel lost in a hall of mirrors. That will be the feeling for many digesting the latest astonishing charge set out in the Washington Post on the evening of May 26th: that in December 2016 Jared Kushner, Mr Trump’s son-in-law and trusted counsellor, talked to the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, about setting up a secure back channel of communications between Team Trump and Moscow. According to the Post report, it was suggested that this back channel might use secure communications equipment in a Russian diplomatic facility—presumably to conceal it from American intelligence services answering to Barack Obama, who still at that point had a few weeks left in office.

Here is a route out of that hall of mirrors—though it does not lead anywhere very reassuring. Assuming that the Post report is eventually confirmed by official sources, the most benign possible explanation for Mr Kushner’s...Continue reading

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Donald Trump fails to endorse NATO’s mutual defence pledge

IT WOULD have been so easy, but Donald Trump could not bring himself to do it. On May 25th, in a 900-word speech made in front of a monument to 9/11 at NATO’s new headquarters in Brussels, the president failed to mention the alliance’s Article 5—the bedrock commitment to regard an attack on one member country as an attack on all.

The assembled heads of government had expected to receive a dressing down on most member countries' failure to meet the NATO target of spending 2% of GDP on defence. That they got. Many of them agree with Mr Trump on the need to do more and can point to European defence budgets that are have been rising, albeit too slowly, as a consequence of Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine. They will, however, have been irritated by Mr Trump’s repetition of the canard that the spending shortfall means that the money is somehow “owed” and that American taxpayers have been taken for a ride.

It would have been smart of Mr Trump to have encouraged their efforts on spending while taking some of the...Continue reading

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The Surprising Source of U.S. Profit Growth

It isn’t America, but the rest of the world, that is driving corporate earnings growth.

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The Fragile Truce Between Bonds and Stocks

This year has been good for both bond and stock investors. To rely on that benign picture lasting looks risky.

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Why Americans Aren't Hitting the Road This Summer

This weekend marks the beginning of summer driving season, and Americans should be packing up and hitting the road. Why aren’t they? Americans are driving less than expected and economists are struggling to explain why.

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Japan's Good Times Can't Lift Dour Mind-Set

The nascent comeback of inflation in Japan looks to be gaining steam—but most Japanese, including its central bankers, seem unconvinced.

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Flailing OPEC Leaves Western Oil Majors Holding the Bag

OPEC’s spell over oil markets has been broken. That’s bad news for Western heavyweights like Shell and BHP who made big bets on expensive oil and gas at the top of the last cycle.

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May’s mandate melts

THERESA MAT, Britain’s prime minister, called a surprise election for June 8th arguing that she needed a strong mandate for negotiating Brexit. The pound rallied on the news, in the belief that a large Conservative majority would allow Mrs May the flexibility to do a deal with the EU, and see off the hard-liners among her party.

For a while, it looked as if the plan was going well. The Conservatives had a 20-point lead in some polls. But the party’s campaign, heavily reliant on the appeal of its leader and the repeated use of soundbites like “strong and stable”, has been misjudged. The manifesto launch was disastrous and included a pledge to charge the elderly (a key Tory demographic) for social care. That pledge was quickly reversed, but Mrs May’s refusal to admit to an obvious U-turn undermined her strong leadership...Continue reading

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An appeals court deals another blow to Donald Trump’s travel ban

THE president’s plan to ban travel from six Muslim-majority countries, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals said on May 25th, “drips with religious intolerance, animus and discrimination”. By a 10-3 vote, the appeals court based in Richmond rebuffed Donald Trump’s attempt to have his second try at a travel ban reinstated after it was blocked by a Maryland judge in mid-March. The pause on the entry of refugees, and on travellers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, “speaks with vague words of national security” and dials back some of the more egregious aspects of the first ban, the court ruled, but abandons “one of our most cherished founding principles—that government shall not establish any religious orthodoxy, or favour or disfavour one religion over another”.

The centrepiece of the 67-page majority opinion, written by the court’s chief justice, Roger Gregory, is a traipse through a 17-month-long string of declarations, tweets and comments from the president and his advisers which reveal the true...Continue reading

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The struggle to repopulate Fukushima

FROM his desk, the mayor of Iitate, Norio Kanno, can see the beloved patchwork of forests, hills and rice paddies that he has governed for over two decades. A book in the lobby of his office calls it one of Japan’s most beautiful places, a centre of organic farming. The reality outside mocks that description. The fields are mostly bald, shorn of vegetation in a Herculean attempt to remove the radioactive fallout that settled six years ago. There is not a cow or farmer in sight. Tractors sit idle in the fields. The local schools are empty.

Iitate, a cluster of hamlets spread over 230 square kilometres, was hit by a quirk of the weather. After the accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, 45km (28 miles) away, which suffered meltdowns after a tsunami in 2011, wind carried radioactive particles that fell in rain and snow on a single night. Belatedly, the government ordered the evacuation of the 6,000 villagers. Now it says it is safe to return. With great fanfare,...Continue reading

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Rodrigo Duterte has declared martial law in the southern Philippines

RODRIGO DUTERTE, the Philippine president, declared martial law in Mindanao, the southern homeland of his country’s Muslim minority, after fighting broke out in the streets of the largely Muslim city of Marawi. Gunmen from one jihadist group fought back when the security forces attempted to capture the leader of another such group. Whatever the consequences in lawless Mindanao, for many Filipinos the imposition of martial law was an eerie reminder of a similar declaration in 1972 by the country’s then president, Ferdinand Marcos, that began a decade of ruinous dictatorship.

The defence minister, Delfin Lorenzana, said troops and police had raided a hideout in Marawi to arrest Isnilon Hapilon, the leader of a branch of the Abu Sayyaf, an armed group that pledges allegiance to IS. To their surprise, security forces met resistance from about 100 armed members of another group, called Maute, which also claims IS links. In the ensuing battle, thousands of civilians fled Marawi....Continue reading

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India’s Kashmir problem is getting worse

HAVING suffered a severe beating, Farooq Dar was tied up on a spare tyre attached to the front bumper of an armoured jeep. Indian soldiers claimed he had been throwing stones. Mr Dar was driven in agony through villages south of Srinagar, the largest city in the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir. The soldiers reckoned the sight of him would deter others from throwing stones at their patrol.

Footage of Mr Dar’s ordeal on April 9th circulated widely online, fuelling anger among inhabitants of the Kashmir valley, the Muslim-dominated part of the state to which Srinagar belongs (see map). The soldiers had been deployed to prevent unrest during a by-election that was held around the city for the national parliament. So bitter is the enmity felt by many Kashmiris in the valley towards the Indian government that only 7% of eligible voters cast ballots. Mr Dar, a weaver, says he was one of the few who did and that he did not throw anything at soldiers.

The Indian government is...Continue reading

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Japan’s incredible shrinking monarchy

DEATH through overwork is considered to be such a feature of the workplace in Japan that there is a word for it: karoshi. For the Japanese emperor, karoshi, or at least death in service, has to date been mandatory, since no provision exists in the Imperial House Law, which governs the monarchy, for voluntary retirement. That might seem a bit unfair on Emperor Akihito, an 83-year-old who has had prostate cancer and heart-bypass surgery. Yet when the cabinet of Shinzo Abe, the prime minister, approved a bill last week to allow for the emperor’s abdication—just this once, mind you—Japanese ultranationalists were incandescent. They aggressively revere the emperor, regardless of his wishes. And Mr Abe, they said, was playing with sacred tradition.

Ten months ago, in a televised statement, Akihito hinted at his wish to step down. Age and declining health, he said, were taking their toll and making it hard to perform his official duties to the...Continue reading

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China and ASEAN declare progress in the South China Sea

A reef with Chinese characteristics

TO CALL negotiations between China and the ten-country Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) over rival claims in the South China Sea “drawn out” would be a gross understatement. At the centre of the matter is an unsquareable circle: the competing claims of China and several South-East Asian countries. Nobody wants to go to war; nobody wants to be accused of backing down.

Still, at a meeting of senior Chinese and ASEAN officials on May 18th, something happened: the two sides agreed on a “framework” for a code of conduct. An official from Singapore (which currently co-ordinates ASEAN-China relations) called the agreement a sign of “steady progress”.

ASEAN members called for a legally binding code of conduct as far back as 1996. In 2002, ASEAN and China signed a “declaration of conduct”, which recognised that a fully fledged code would be nice to have; it also committed both sides to...Continue reading

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Take-Two Needs 'Grand Theft Auto' to Keep on Rolling

Delay of “Red Dead Redemption 2” means a four-year old blockbuster will need to keep selling.

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Greg Gianforte is charged with assaulting a journalist

WHILE historical comparisons are dicey, it is safe to assume that being charged with assaulting a journalist, hours before election day, might once have been disadvantageous to a candidate’s chances in a House congressional race. Whether or not that turns out to be the case for Greg Gianforte, the Republican candidate for Montana’s special election on May 25th, who was charged with assaulting a reporter in a fit of blind rage the previous day, will be hotly debated.

Mr Gianforte’s behaviour was well-documented and deeply disgraceful. According to an audio recording of the incident, the IT tycoon was approached by Ben Jacobs, a journalist with the Guardian, and asked to comment on the Congressional Budget Office’s scoring of the health-care reform recently passed by House Republicans. This was an exceedingly pertinent question.

Mr Gianforte’s Democratic rival, a banjo-playing political neophyte called Rob Quist, has campaigned heavily on the damage he claims the reform will do to poor Montanans’...Continue reading

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The parable of Italians in the South

A house with a story

THE cellar is flooded and Chris Ranalli worries about snakes. From the safety of the back door, he points out the sturdy walls—two feet thick, as if to withstand Mediterranean earthquakes—and the elegantly vaulted ceilings. “They lived in the top two storeys and made wine in the basement,” explains Mr Ranalli, who now tends the 100-year-old vineyard adjacent to the house. The view from the road is anomalous: framed by Catawba trees, the façade combines northern Italian architecture and Ozark stone, seeming to belong as much to the Apennines as Arkansas.

This house tells a story that is both familiar and extraordinary, as the exploits of immigrants to America tend to be. It is a tale of struggle and success, of awful but commonplace suffering, villainy and heroes, including a dauntless priest who, like a latter-day Moses, led his flock to a new life in the mountains. It epitomises the variety behind the strip-mall, fast-food sameness...Continue reading

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Before Republicans replace Obamacare, the White House is killing it

WHETHER or not their bid to reform health care succeeds, Republicans think Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act will founder. For years, critics of the law have said that its health-insurance markets will enter a “death spiral” in which rising premiums drive out healthy buyers, forcing premiums higher still. “Obamacare is absolutely dead” President Donald Trump told The Economist on May 4th.

If he is right, calamity looms. Eighteen million Americans buy insurance for themselves, rather than through an employer; it is this part of the insurance market that looks wobbly. Mr Trump thinks its collapse would force Democrats to join his reform effort. And he is putting his money where his mouth is. Indeed, his administration is part of the problem.

Insurers raised premiums in the individual market by an average of 22% in 2017. They had been caught out by the poor health of enrollees on Obamacare’s “exchanges”, websites that serve a little over...Continue reading

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Schemes to topple the president quickly would hurt the country

AMERICA has elected a man of frightening impatience as president. That is no reason for Donald Trump’s opponents to copy him. Four months into the Trump presidency his sternest critics seem ready to tear the country apart, just to see him gone. Democrats and activists on the left, including members of Congress, are already calling for his impeachment. They revel in leaks that batter the White House almost nightly and yearn for the wheels of justice to spin as fast. Their goal is a speeded-up Watergate, fit for an on-demand age. On the Trump-sceptic right pundits call the president a tyrannical “child upon the throne”. Some see the 25th Amendment to the constitution as a shortcut to adult supervision—just as soon as the vice-president, cabinet and a two-thirds majority in Congress agree that Mr Trump is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office”.

Leave aside, for one moment, the legal and political hurdles that could delay the impeachment or dismissal of Mr Trump...Continue reading

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The White House’s budget goes from unrealistic to innumerate

THE Budget Act of 1921 requires the president to propose a budget, but Congress holds the power of the purse. Since Mick Mulvaney, the budget director, sketched out the Trump administration’s proposal in February, it has been clear that lawmakers would end up rewriting it. Mr Mulvaney wants immediate deep cuts across government that are unpalatable even to many Republicans. The fleshed-out version of the budget, released on May 23rd, features a new promise: to eliminate the budget deficit within ten years.

The president wants to leave Medicare, health insurance for the old, and Social Security (public pensions) untouched. As a result, achieving budget balance requires an unimaginably deep cut to so-called “non-defence discretionary” spending, which includes things like education, scientific research and diplomacy. This part of the budget would shrink by 41%, after adjusting for inflation, according to the Centre for Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think-tank....Continue reading

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Congressional hearings on election meddling grind on

John Brennan, optimist

“IT SHOULD be clear to everyone that Russia brazenly interfered in our 2016 presidential election process.” So declared John Brennan, former director of the CIA, at a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee on May 23rd, adding that he had seen intelligence of “contacts and interactions between Russian officials and US persons involved in the Trump campaign,” leaving him with “unresolved questions” about whether Russian spooks successfully recruited American helpers. He remembered a warning telephone call he made in August 2016 to the head of Russia’s spy service, the FSB, urging his opposite number to remember that, regardless of their political affiliation, “American voters would be outraged by any Russian attempt to interfere in the election.”

It is rare to hear a spy chief sound insufficiently cynical about the world, but Mr Brennan managed it. Both his premises turn out to be wrong. To hear a shifting cast of...Continue reading

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The Latest Drug Pricing Threat: The FDA

FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb is the latest public official to signal a tougher environment for drug pricing.

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Canada's Banks Can't Dodge Housing Risks Forever

Risks to Canadian banks from the country’s housing bubble should not be overstated, but are very real.

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The fate of Brazil’s president hangs in the balance

“IF THEY want, let them bring me down!” So declared Brazil’s president, Michel Temer, in a newspaper interview on May 22nd. He is the second president in the space of a year who is fighting to stay in office in the face of allegations of wrongdoing and dismal poll ratings. His predecessor, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached in 2016 on a technical violation of public-accounting law. The allegations against Mr Temer are far graver, but his chances of remaining president may be brighter. Whether he stays or goes, the accusations against him are momentous. The blow to his prestige and influence will delay, and might destroy, vital reforms to Brazil’s economy, which is only beginning to emerge from its worst-ever recession.

Mr Temer’s woes began on May 17th when O Globo, a newspaper, reported that, on a tape recorded by Joesley Batista, a billionaire businessman, he is heard endorsing payment of hush money to a politician jailed for his role in the Petrobras...Continue reading

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Brazil’s fabulous Batista boys

JOSÉ BATISTA SOBRINHO helped build Brasília. In 1957 his meat business supplied canteens that fed workers constructing Brazil’s modernist capital. Now his two youngest sons, Wesley and Joesley, are bringing the place down. As the bosses of the company their father founded, renamed JBS in his honour, they are at the centre of a scandal that may force a president out of office for the second time in a year (see article).

JBS is the world’s biggest beef exporter. Its revenues rose from 3.9bn reais ($1.8bn) in 2006 to 170bn reais last year, helped by China’s appetite and Brazil’s enthusiasm for national champions. From 2007 to 2015 the development bank, BNDES, injected into Batista enterprises more than 8bn reais in capital and loans. Most of it was to help JBS buy rivals, including American brands like Swift and Pilgrim’s...Continue reading

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Argentina’s new, honest inflation statistics

SOME readers of The Economist may be numbed by statistics. To many others, they are the water of cognitive life. Each week at the back of this newspaper we publish official data on 42 of the largest economies in the world—with one exception. Five years ago we stopped publishing the inflation figure for Argentina produced by the government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner because we, and many others, thought it was bogus. We substituted an inflation number drawn up by PriceStats, an international data service. A year later the IMF followed our lead, formally censuring Argentina for “inaccuracy” in its data.

This week we are delighted to resume publication of the official inflation number for Argentina. One of the first things that Mauricio Macri did after he was elected as the country’s president in November 2015, defeating Ms Fernández’s candidate, was to restore the professional independence of INDEC, the statistical office. He charged it...Continue reading

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Canada’s war over “cultural appropriation”

Appropriately dressed

ANYONE, anywhere “should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities”, wrote Hal Niedzviecki in the spring issue of Write, an obscure Canadian literary magazine. For that apparently innocuous observation, he lost his job as the publication’s editor. Mr Niedzviecki was defending “cultural appropriation”, the use by artists and writers of motifs and ideas from other cultures. He suggested an “appropriation prize” for creators who carry out such cross-cultural raids. In a special issue of the magazine dedicated to indigenous writers, that was offensive, his critics said.

Mr Niedzviecki’s supporters were also made to suffer. A journalist at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was demoted after he offered on Twitter to help finance the prize. The editor of Walrus, a better-known magazine, decried “political correctness, tokenism and...Continue reading

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What the German economic model can teach Emmanuel Macron

IT IS heartening that the euro area has a knack for surviving near-fatal crises. Yet confidence in the durability of the single currency might be stronger if it suffered fewer of them. Europe dodged its latest bullet on May 7th in France, when Emmanuel Macron, a liberal-minded (by local standards) upstart centrist, defeated Marine Le Pen for the presidency. Even so, an avowed nationalist and Eurosceptic captured 34% of the vote, leaving Mr Macron with five years to assuage widespread frustration with the economic status quo. An obvious model lies just across the Rhine, where the unemployment rate—below 4%, down from over 11% in 2005—is testimony to the potential for swift, dramatic change. Yet Germany’s performance will not be easy to duplicate.

It would be unfair to call France the sick man of Europe; half the continent is wheezing or limping. Yet there is certainly room for French improvement. Real output per person has barely risen in the past decade. Government spending stands at 57% of GDP, outstripping the tax take; France’s budget deficit, at 3.4% of GDP, is among the largest in the euro area’s core. The biggest worry, however, is the labour market. The unemployment rate, now 10.1%, is stubbornly high. Nearly a quarter of French young adults are unemployed. Worklessness, especially among young people, is a source of rising social tension and a...Continue reading

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Machine-learning promises to shake up large swathes of finance

MACHINE-LEARNING is beginning to shake up finance. A subset of artificial intelligence (AI) that excels at finding patterns and making predictions, it used to be the preserve of technology firms. The financial industry has jumped on the bandwagon. To cite just a few examples, “heads of machine-learning” can be found at PwC, a consultancy and auditing firm, at JP Morgan Chase, a large bank, and at Man GLG, a hedge-fund manager. From 2019, anyone seeking to become a “chartered financial analyst”, a sought-after distinction in the industry, will need AI expertise to pass his exams.

Despite the scepticism of many, including, surprisingly, some “quant” hedge funds that specialise in algorithm-based trading, machine-learning is poised to have a big impact. Innovative fintech firms and a few nimble incumbents have started applying the technique to everything from fraud protection to finding new trading strategies—promising to up-end not just the humdrum drudgery of the back-office,...Continue reading

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A trade deal between the EU and east Africa is in trouble

Magufuli advises Museveni on how to tilt at colonialism

THE winds that waft along the Swahili coast change direction with the seasons, a boon to traders in times past. Shifts in the political winds are harder to predict. Last July a proposed trade deal between five countries of the East African Community (EAC) and the EU was thrown into disarray when Tanzania backed out at the last minute. An EAC summit, scheduled for months ago, was meant to find a way forward. Held at last on May 20th in Dar es Salaam, after many postponements, only two presidents showed up. The deal is in the doldrums.

The pact is one of seven “Economic Partnership Agreements” (EPAs) the EU wants to sign with regional groups in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific. The first was agreed with the Caribbean in 2008; southern Africa followed suit last year. But progress in west Africa has also stalled, with Nigeria raising objections. The EPAs were promoted as a new breed of trade deal, and...Continue reading

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A new code aims to clean up the foreign-exchange market

FINANCIAL-MARKET traders have earned a pretty shocking reputation in recent years. From manipulating LIBOR, a benchmark interest rate, to rigging the daily fix of foreign-exchange (FX) rates, traders have shown themselves ready not just to stretch the rules, but to collude in outright illegality.

A global code of conduct for the FX market, unveiled on May 25th, aims to put things on a sounder footing. Drawn up over the past two years by a coalition of central bankers, known as the FX Working Group (FXWG), and supported by a panel of industry participants, the code’s 55 principles lay down international standards on a range of practices, from the handling of confidential information to the pricing and settlement of deals.

Such standards seem long overdue in the massive FX market. Roughly $5trn is traded every day (see chart). Many companies, pension funds and money managers depend on banks to hedge their exposure to currency fluctuations. Yet in the past traders colluded with one another...Continue reading

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How becoming a Hong Kong pensioner can save you tax

Not dodging but shuffling

THE global war on tax evasion rumbles on. What began as an American onslaught, with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) of 2010, has been joined by more than 100 countries through an initiative called the Common Reporting Standard (CRS). Under this, governments will exchange tax information on their financial firms’ clients on a regular, “automatic” basis, without having to be asked for it, starting this year. Holdouts such as Panama, the Bahamas and Lebanon have, one by one, been frogmarched into line.

But tax-dodgers and their advisers are enterprising sorts, eager to clamber through the smallest loophole—and gaps in the CRS there are. One involves becoming a pensioner in Hong Kong.

The territory, home to a big financial centre, has a type of pension known as an ORS (for Occupational Retirement Scheme). The beauty of ORS from a tax evader’s point of view is that anyone can get one and they are not...Continue reading

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One bitcoin is worth twice as much as an ounce of gold

Fans of bitcoin, a crypto-currency, have long called it digital gold. Now this sounds like an insult: continuing its stellar rise, and adding more than 30% to its value in just a week, one bitcoin is worth more than $2,600, over twice as much as an ounce of gold. As The Economist went to press all bitcoins in circulation were worth over $43bn. A sum of $1,000 invested in bitcoins in 2010 would now be worth nearly $36m. Other crypto-currencies are also marching upward: together this week they were worth $87bn. But if the history of gold is any guide, what goes up will come down—and then go up again.

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Noble Group, a big Asian commodities trader, is teetering

THE difficulties facing Noble Group, a beleaguered Hong Kong commodities trader, are multiplying. On May 23rd the firm was forced to suspend trading of its shares in Singapore after their value slumped by more than 28% in half an hour. The panicked selling came after S&P Global, a ratings agency, warned that Noble was at risk of defaulting on large debt repayments that are due within the next 12 months. Investors were also rattled by reports from Reuters and the Financial Times suggesting that Sinochem, a Chinese conglomerate at one time tipped to take a stake in Noble, had lost interest in a deal.

Founded in 1986 by Richard Elman, a former scrap-metal merchant from London, Noble grew from an initial investment of $100,000 to be worth more than $10bn at its peak in 2010. But investors took fright in 2015 when a previously unknown group called Iceberg Research began publishing reports questioning Noble’s accounting practices (Noble has vigorously defended its...Continue reading

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Is efficient-market theory becoming more efficient?

BUILD a better mousetrap, the saying goes, and the world will beat a path to your door. Find a way to beat the stockmarket and they will construct a high-speed railway. As investors try to achieve this goal, they draw on the work of academics. But in doing so, they are both changing the markets and the way academics understand them.

The idea that financial markets are “efficient” became widespread among academics in the 1960s and 1970s. The hypothesis stated that all information relevant to an asset’s value would instantly be reflected in the price; little point, therefore, in trading on the basis of such data. What would move the price would be future information (news) which, by definition, could not be known in advance. Share prices would follow a “random walk”. Indeed, a book called “A Random Walk Down Wall Street” became a bestseller.

The idea helped inspire the creation of index-trackers—funds that simply buy all the shares in a benchmark like the S&P...Continue reading

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Internship

The Economist invites applications for the 2017 Marjorie Deane internship. Paid for by the Marjorie Deane Financial Journalism Foundation, the award is designed to provide work experience for a promising journalist or would-be journalist, who will spend three months at The Economist writing about economics and finance. To apply, write a covering letter and an original article of no more than 500 words suitable for publication in the Finance and economics section. Applications should be sent by June 2nd to deaneintern@economist.com. For more information, please visit http://ift.tt/1gKuRFS.

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To forecast share returns, count buy-backs as well as dividends

WHAT is the point of buying shares? Ultimately investors must hope that the cash they receive from the company will offer an attractive long-term return.

Over the long run, reinvested dividends rather than capital gains have comprised the vast bulk of returns. But since the 1980s American firms have increasingly used share buy-backs, which have tax advantages for some investors. Buy-backs have been higher than dividend payments in eight of the past ten years.

In a buy-back, investors receive cash for a proportion of their holdings. A new paper* in the Financial Analysts Journal argues that adding this to dividend receipts to calculate a total payout yield gives a better estimate of future returns than the dividend yield alone. It also reveals a much better match between stockmarket performance and overall economic growth.

Using data going back to 1871, the authors find that the average dividend yield has been 4.5% and the total payout yield 4.89%. Since 1970 the dividend yield has dropped to 3.03%, but the total payout yield has averaged 4.26%. Looked at on that basis, the overall income return from shares has been not that far below historical levels.

The return from shares can be broken down into three components: the initial income yield; growth in the income stream; and any change in valuation. (If shares become more...Continue reading

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Tighter Global Banking Rules Tilt Against Europe's Lenders

Long battle over update to Basel capital rules is finishing closer to U.S. demands.

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How HP Stole Lenovo's Computer Crown

Lenovo needs to focus on its premium segment to regain its position as world’s biggest computer maker from HP Inc.

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Where the China Credit Crunch Could Really Bite

What Moody’s didn’t say this week is that China’s sovereign bailout of troubled state companies is in fact already well under way, with a little help from provincial governments.

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When $43 Billion Isn't Reward Enough for Success

A revised compensation plan for Patrick Drahi, founder of Cablevision-owner Altice, offers stock options that could make him one of the world’s best-rewarded bosses.

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How Islamic State clings on in Libya

LIKE their comrades in Iraq and Syria, the jihadists of Islamic State (IS) in Libya were in retreat earlier this year. Their branch, considered the most lethal outside the Levant, was pushed out of Sirte, its coastal stronghold, in December and hit hard by American bombers in January. The blows seemed to dispel the idea that, as the core of its “caliphate” crumbled, Libya might serve as a fallback base for IS.

But although the jihadists are down in Libya, they are not out. And they may have international reach. Many of the fighters have regrouped in a swathe of desert valleys and rocky hills south-east of Tripoli. British police are probing links between Salman Abedi, the suicide-bomber who murdered 22 people at a concert in Manchester on May 22nd, and IS, which claimed responsibility for the attack. Mr Abedi was in Libya recently; his brother and father were arrested in Tripoli on May 24th. 

Chaos has been the norm in Libya since the uprising that toppled...Continue reading

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Donald Trump meets Pope Francis

WHEN Donald Trump laid into the bishop of Rome during his presidential campaign, some in America—where Catholics represent around a quarter of all voters—wondered whether it would cost him the presidency. The pope had chided Mr Trump for his plan to build a wall on the border with Mexico—it was “not Christian”, the pontiff said—and Mr Trump responded with characteristic imprudence. The pope, he said, was “disgraceful”.

But on May 24th, during a meeting with the pope in Vatican City, Mr Trump was on his best behaviour. He described the half-hour meeting, in the pope’s private office, as “great” and “fantastic.” A brief Vatican statement described it as “cordial” and expressed hope for collaboration with the administration on “health-care, education and assistance to immigrants”.

That looks unlikely. Pope Francis and Mr Trump hold wholly different views on those and indeed most important topics. On a handful of issues they clash frequently. The plight of refugees and migrants is one of Pope...Continue reading

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HP's Ink Starts Flowing Again

Printer supply segment sees first growth in four years.

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What You Still Don't Know About Health Law Can Hurt You

Uncertainty for Obamacare replacement doesn’t mean smooth sailing for stocks.

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Drone Wars Shoot Down Profits

Consumer drone sales are taking off, but profits for most in the business have been grounded.

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Donald Trump’s budget ignores what is ailing American workers

PRESIDENTIAL budget requests are worth exactly nothing. They carry no force of legislation. They land, heavy, bound and shrink-wrapped, so they can be immediately binned as Congress continues its now yearly stumble toward a “continuing resolution”—a supposedly temporary legislative act that in recent decades has almost entirely replaced the statutory budget process. The request from the President is the least consequential part of something that is completely broken. It functions like a bumper sticker on an old car. It only tells you about the person who’s driving. 

Mick Mulvaney, a former congressman from South Carolina who won his seat in the Tea-Party wave of 2010, runs Donald Trump’s Office of Management and Budget. Mr Mulvaney has created the budget his wing of the Republican party always wanted: government as a service, paid for by its clients, the taxpayers. If you receive more than you pay, the system has failed, and must be fixed. The marketing copy that accompanied the budget calls this “respect for people...Continue reading

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Glencore's Bunge Jump Only Makes One-Sided Sense

Moving into U.S. agriculture while grain prices—and shares—are depressed might be a good move for Glencore. But unless the firm offers a nice premium, Bunge might be better off waiting.

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China's Downgrade: It's Not Just About the Government

Moody’s decision to cut China’s credit rating could make it more costly for Chinese companies and banks to issue bonds.

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Fannie and Freddie Endgame Takes Shape

A consensus is starting to emerge between lawmakers and the Trump administration on how to reform the U.S. housing finance market.

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Investors' Faith in Michelin Looks Over-Inflated

The tire maker’s stock is trading at peak multiples even as higher rubber prices and a weakening car market threaten its margins.

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The Supreme Court rejects two Republican-drawn voter districts

WHEN the Supreme Court heard Cooper v Harris last December, an exasperated Justice Stephen Breyer lamented that the justices were stuck, yet again, “reviewing 5,000-page records” to determine if states had violated the constitution when drawing electoral district lines. The legal standard, Justice Samuel Alito added, is “very, very complicated” and serves as “an invitation to litigation”. On May 22nd, Justice Alito repeated this sentiment, in a biting partial dissent, as the court slammed North Carolina Republicans for giving too much thought to race when crafting two congressional districts. The decision, Justice Alito warned, will give voters renewed cause to try to “obtain in court what they could not achieve in the political arena” and turn the “federal courts...into weapons of political warfare”.

Both sides in this 5-3 decision called attention to the fact that one of the districts at issue was making its fifth appearance before the justices since the 1990s. (Justice Alito emphasised...Continue reading

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Xilinx: A Cloudier Chip Play

Xilinx chips are in demand among cloud-service providers, but the outlook is still subdued.

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No sign of the ultimate deal as Donald Trump leaves Israel

DONALD TRUMP arrived in Israel on May 22nd with a surprising message concerning the situation in the Middle East. Going in to dinner with the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, he said he had discovered on the first stop of his trip in Saudi Arabia that “there’s a lot of love out there”. Dutifully, he set about spreading that love with promises of a “coalition” in which both Israel and the Sunni Arab states would co-operate with America in a joint struggle against radical Islamist terrorism and the influence of Iran.

The tacit alliance between Israel and the Saudis, which do not have diplomatic relations but both see Iran as their mortal enemy, is of course not new. But Mr Trump, whose Air Force One plane took a rare direct route from Riyadh to Tel Aviv, is eager to bring the secret partners out into the open as part of the grand alliance he had outlined a day earlier to an assembly of Sunni Muslim leaders. The Saudis have signalled their willingness for...Continue reading

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Nokia Uses Lawsuit To Make Apple Its Friend

The Finnish technology group has signed a novel legal settlement with Apple that involves business collaboration as well as royalties.

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A fist-fight in China turns into a clash between tradition and modernity

MOST lovers of Chinese martial arts take the magical aspects of kung fu, as demonstrated by the flying fighters of legend and film, with a pinch of salt. But Wei Lei built his career in China on a claim that his mastery of tai chi, a branch of kung fu, had given him supernatural power. In a programme about kung fu that was broadcast on state television in 2015, Mr Wei demonstrated that he could keep a dove standing on his hand with an invisible force-field and smash the inside of a watermelon without damaging its rind. The broadcaster itself appeared to be among the credulous.

There were many sceptics, too. Earlier this year one of them stepped forward to challenge Mr Wei: Xu Xiaodong, a practitioner of mixed martial arts—a fighting form drawing on Eastern and Western traditions that began to take off in America in the 1990s (and is picking up fans in China). Mr Xu mocked tai chi as a slow-motion form of aerobics. Last month the two men decided to settle their argument in...Continue reading

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Thailand’s junta intensifies its hunt for critics of the monarchy

THE only historical record of Queen Chammathewi, the legendary founder of the Thai city of Lamphun, comes from a fanciful 15th-century chronicle written on palm leaves in an ancient liturgical language. It describes how, some time in the seventh century, she came to a spot that the Buddha had supposedly visited centuries before. With the help of a Buddhist ascetic, she conjured a city out of the jungle, subjugated the natives and begat not one, but two royal dynasties.

There is no proof that the queen (pictured) ever really existed, and she definitely falls outside the scope of Thailand’s law on lèse-majesté, which bars criticism only of the reigning king, queen, heir apparent and regent. But Thais should not feel they can say whatever they want about her. So, at least, a provincial court implied last month when it convicted a local of disseminating false or illegal material online for posting a lascivious comment about her on Facebook.

Thailand has...Continue reading

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Taking on Taiwan’s ruinous and partisan pension system

Retired but not retiring

THE protests outside parliament got so ferocious that the 2,000 policemen defending the building barricaded it with barbed wire. That was soon festooned with angry placards. Inside, opposition politicians sought to disrupt parliamentary business: they seized the podium, and brawls broke out. In Taiwan, as everywhere else, reining in expensive pensions is not easy. But Tsai Ing-wen, the president, seems determined to press on. The current system, she said last month, is on “the brink of bankruptcy”.

The government’s liabilities have swelled to almost NT$18trn ($597bn), nine times its total annual expenditures. That is divided among funds for different professions, in which contributions from current workers help to finance payments to pensioners. The fund for civil servants is projected to go bust by 2031; the one for teachers by 2030; the one for private-sector workers in 2027; and the one for the armed forces in...Continue reading

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Australians debate how to avoid shark attacks

Duh-dah, duh-dah, duh-dah

MANY Australians dislike their country’s reputation as a hotbed of deadly creatures, but it is a brave surfer who has never felt a prickle of anxiety at what lurks beneath the surf. Laeticia Brouwer, a teenager who was recently killed by a shark in Western Australia, was the state’s third such fatality in under a year, and the 14th nationwide since 2012. Her death has reignited a debate over how to deter attacks in a country that may have lost a prime minister to one (though it is more likely that Harold Holt, who vanished while swimming in 1967, simply drowned).

Certain endangered species of shark, including the great white, have been protected in Australia since the 1990s. Swimmers and surfers worry that their numbers are rising: the rate of unprovoked attacks doubled between that decade and the 10 years to 2015. Responsibility probably lies with a growing human population, but “any fisherman will tell you that they see more...Continue reading

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