Another job opening in the Trump administration

WHEN President Donald Trump gathered his cabinet secretaries around a table and invited them to sing his praises, his administration was compared to an early scene in "King Lear". Four months later, it is looking more like the last act of "Hamlet", such is the rising body count. On September 29th Tom Price was pushed out as secretary of health and human services, following a series of revelations about his penchant for taking private jets at public expense. This made him at least the ninth senior member of the administration to have been purged in the eight months of its existence.

For a president sworn to “drain the swamp”—that is, to attack the culture of insiderism, back-scratching and special favours that prevails in Washington, DC, Mr Price’s travel tastes were embarrassing. Investigations by Politico revealed that the former Republican congressman had spent over half a million dollars of public money on 27 private-jet flights since early May, including several for trips that appeared to mix business with...Continue reading

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A school in Louisiana bans protests during the national anthem

ON SEPTEMBER 29th, at 7pm, when the Parkway Panthers face the Airline Vikings in a high-school football clash in Bossier City, Louisiana, the drama will begin before the first snap. The previous day, the principal of Parkway High School sent a letter to student athletes warning them not to mimic the widespread protests that took place over the weekend at National Football League (NFL) games. Parkway players attending “any sporting event in which their team is participating”, wrote Waylon Bates, the principal, must “stand in a respectful way throughout the National Anthem”. Anyone who kneels, sits or makes any sign of disrespect will risk being benched, or, with “continued failure to comply”, subjected to “removal from the team”.

With its legalistic language, this pre-emptive strike against student protestors is different in tone to President Donald Trump’s jeering call for NFL team owners on September 23rd to fire any “son of a bitch” who “disrespects our flag”. But the demand, like Mr Trump’s call, brooks...Continue reading

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Outlook Is Foggy, Investors See Sunshine

The market is acting like the economy is about to take off, though hurricanes and tax cut debate make it hard to see the future.

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More Borrowing Is Not the Answer at Valeant

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International is considering a new round of borrowing. That is one reason investors should consider cashing in after the stock’s big recent rally.

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Why M&A Bankers Are Rooting for Tax Reform

Every deal banker has a pile of pitches that were rejected by clients who said the tax bill made them too costly. Bankers will start dusting those pitches off if the Trump plan’s lower corporate rate become law.

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The next financial crisis may be triggered by central banks

AS WITH London buses, don’t worry if you miss a financial crisis; another will be along shortly. The latest study on long-term asset returns from Deutsche Bank shows that crises in developed markets have become much more common in recent decades. That does not bode well.

Deutsche defines a crisis as a period when a country suffers one of the following: a 15% annual decline in equities; a 10% fall in its currency or its government bonds; a default on its national debt; or a period of double-digit inflation. During the 19th century, only occasionally did more than half of countries for which there are data suffer such a shock in a single year. But since the 1980s, in numerous years more than half of them have been in a financial crisis of some kind.

The main reason for this, argues Deutsche, is the monetary system. Under the gold standard and its successor, the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates, the amount of credit creation was limited. A country that expanded its money supply too quickly would suffer a trade deficit and pressure on its currency’s exchange rate; the government would react by slamming on the monetary brakes. The result was that it was harder for financial bubbles to inflate.

But since the early 1970s more countries have moved to a floating exchange-rate system. This gives governments the flexibility to deal with an...Continue reading

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The Long-Haul Airline Disruptor Isn't Built For Turbulence

If you’ve booked a cheap trans-Atlantic flight with Norwegian Air Shuttle, you can relax: It probably isn’t about to go bust. Whether the Oslo-listed airline’s high-risk business model can withstand more difficult market conditions is doubtful.

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What Barclays Should Do to Win Back Shareholder Love

Banks need a good story to explain what they are about. Barclays wants to tell a tale of growth, but its audience is struggling to suspend its disbelief.

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GoPro Needs to Tame the Thrills

GoPro wants to be a little boring. For investors, that is not such a bad thing.

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Massachusetts Takes on the Drug Industry

Massachusetts Medicaid system said it wants the right to refuse to reimburse for some drugs, citing rising costs. Investors should take note because it could imperil smaller drug companies, and other states could follow suit.

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North Korea has brought America and China closer

MURDEROUS, thin-skinned and in possession of nuclear weapons, the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un, has one good deed to his name: he has united America and China. Max Baucus, America’s ambassador to Beijing until January 2017, recalls the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, privately expressing “disgust” at Mr Kim’s reckless pursuit of nukes and missiles to carry them to other continents. Mr Xi’s frustration with North Korea’s hereditary despot stands out as “the strongest statement that I have ever heard Xi make”, says Mr Baucus. China has never sounded as closely aligned with America when it comes to using sanctions and diplomatic pressure, in a last-ditch bid to change how Mr Kim calculates his regime’s interests.

Breaking a long-standing taboo about imagining the Kim regime’s collapse, a well-connected Chinese academic, Jia Qingguo, was allowed to publish an essay in September suggesting that China, America and South Korea should discuss such contingencies as refugee...Continue reading

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The Market's Helping Hand for Oil Prices

A recent shift in the financial market for oil provides insights into the physical market, and could boost oil prices beyond normal impact of supply and demand.

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Iran’s Kurds are growing restless, too

THE Kurds of Iran are calling for independence just as lustily as their cousins in Iraq, perhaps even more so. While the mood in the streets of Iraq’s Kurdish cities was generally subdued and nervous after their referendum on independence on September 25th, wilder celebrations erupted across the border in Iranian Kurdistan. In the Kurdish cities of Baneh, Sanandaj and Mahabad demonstrations lasted for two days, even as armoured cars drove through the streets heralding a wave of arrests. Crowds sang the anthem of the Republic of Mahabad, the Kurdish state that briefly held sway in north-western Iran in 1946. Kurdish flags flew from lampposts.

Some Iranian Kurds talked dreamily of a state they call Rojhelat, or East Kurdistan, which would slough off the “occupation” by Ajamastan, a pejorative term for Iran. “There’s a new self-confidence among Kurds,” says Luqman Sotodeh, a prominent Iranian Kurd. “The whole world stood against the referendum, but the Kurds held it regardless.” Kurdish officials say that over 90% of voters backed independence.

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The difficulty of drafting ultra-Orthodox Jews into Israel’s army

This one’s tired and needs a rest

DURING the violent birth of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, its first prime minister, allowed 400 ultra-Orthodox Jews (also called Haredim) to avoid compulsory military service to pursue a life of Talmudic study. He may have thought they were too few to matter, or that their endangered traditions should be nurtured after the Holocaust. Seven decades on, however, the number of such yeshiva students has exploded to 60,000. They are still allowed to dodge the draft, and many do not work, either. Other Israelis resent this.

The clash between those who serve God and those who serve their fellow citizens was on display on the streets of Jerusalem on September 17th. Thousands of ultra-Orthodox protesters had gathered to denounce a decision by Israel’s high court—the third in two decades—that the exemption of yeshiva students from military duty was unconstitutional because it enshrined...Continue reading

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South Africa’s ruling party is at war with itself

DEEP in the southern hills of KwaZulu-Natal, mourners came to bury Sindiso Magaqa on September 16th. In July gunmen ambushed Mr Magaqa and two other councillors from the African National Congress (ANC), South Africa’s ruling party, as they sat in a car. (Mr Magaqa died in hospital on September 4th.) Three other ANC politicians from the same area were gunned down between April and May. Across the province, there have been at least 40 politically motivated killings since the start of 2016.

Most of the violence has occurred within the ANC, which is steeped in corruption at all levels. On September 27th thousands of South Africans marched in protests against the graft and the country’s scandal-plagued president, Jacob Zuma, who heads the party. Nowhere is the rot within the ANC more evident than in his home province, KwaZulu-Natal, which boasts more party members than any other, though not all of the names on its rolls are real.

ANC cadres in the province compete furiously for...Continue reading

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Uganda’s 73-year-old president has a plan to rule forever

Mr Museveni refuses to hang up his hat

“THIS is a generational cause,” says Bobi Wine, back in his studio after a long day in parliament. In June the singer and self-styled “Ghetto President” (real name: Robert Kyagulanyi) won a sensational victory in a parliamentary by-election. Now he is the spokesman for Uganda’s frustrated youth in a struggle to stop Yoweri Museveni, the actual president, from extending his rule. “All the power has been packed into the presidency,” he says. “We want to take it back to the people.”

Mr Museveni used to say similar things himself, blaming Africa’s problems on “leaders who want to overstay in power”. But after 31 years at the top he has changed his mind. Politicians in his ruling party are trying to scrap a clause in the constitution which says candidates must be no older than 75 to run for president. The goal is to let Mr Museveni, 73, stand again in 2021—and probably rule for life.

There...Continue reading

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Tax authorities are the latest tools of repression in Africa

DAYS after she announced her candidacy for president in May, naked photos of Diane Rwigara, a Rwandan political activist, were leaked online. Two months later she was disqualified from the election, held in August, on dubious technical grounds. But she continued to speak out against President Paul Kagame, who has been in charge of Rwanda since 1994. So this month the government tried a new tactic, detaining Ms Rwigara—and her mother and sister—for alleged tax evasion. She has since been charged with “offences against state security”.

Ms Rwigara’s experience is hardly unique. These days many governments that want to cow their critics are as likely to use the taxman as the secret police. Such tactics are not confined to Africa. The Russian and Chinese governments often use complicated tax rules to intimidate or punish dissidents. Nor are they entirely new. Daniel arap Moi, Kenya’s dictator until 2002, turned his tax collectors into scourges of the opposition. But politically...Continue reading

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Venture capitalists with daughters are more successful

RICHARD NESBITT, a former chief operating officer at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, has long been an evangelist for women in business. In “Results at the Top”, a book he wrote with Barbara Annis, he describes his efforts to convince men to promote women. When speaking to bosses, he stresses data showing that companies with more senior women are more successful. But he has noticed that men with daughters tend to be more receptive to his message. At least for venture-capital (VC) firms, recent research confirms this observation, as well as the assertion that gender diversity boosts performance.

Paul Gompers and Sophie Wang at Harvard University wanted to determine whether VC firms with more women managers do better. Answering this question is tricky—firms that hire more women may have other characteristics that lead to success. VC-investing remains a predominantly male activity. In the authors’ sample of 988 VC funds in 301 firms, around 8% of new hires were women. Very few firms...Continue reading

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The Bank of Japan sticks to its guns

SEVENTH time lucky? Minutes of the Bank of Japan’s (BoJ) policy meeting in July, published on September 26th, showed that the central bank had, for the sixth time since 2013, pushed back the date at which it expected prices to meet its 2% inflation target—to the fiscal year ending in March 2020.

Four-and-a-half years since Haruhiko Kuroda took office as governor and embarked on an unprecedented experiment in quantitative easing (QE), the bank is still far from its goal. It has swept up 40% of Japanese government bonds and a whopping 71% of exchange-traded funds. The bank’s balance-sheet has tripled. It is now roughly the size of the American Federal Reserve’s.

Yet, despite his apparent failure, and despite a snap general election, Mr Kuroda may yet stay for another five years when his term runs out next April. If not, most of his likely successors are signed up to the same reflationary policy. At least one member of the bank’s board gave warning at its...Continue reading

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Three trade cases facing the Trump administration spell trouble

Ruinously competitive

IN 1845 Frédéric Bastiat, a French economist, wrote an open letter to his national parliament, pleading for help on behalf of makers of candles and other forms of lighting. The French market was being flooded with cheap light, he complained. Action was necessary: a law closing all windows, shutters and curtains. Only that would offer protection against the source of this “ruinous competition”, the sun.

Three similar pleas are facing the administration of President Donald Trump. But these are not parodies. On September 22nd the United States International Trade Commission paved the way for import restrictions on solar panels, ruling that imports had injured American cell manufacturers. On September 26th the Department of Commerce pencilled in tariffs of 220% on airliners made by Bombardier, a Canadian manufacturer. A third decision on washing machines is due by October 5th.

This cluster of cases represents around $15bn of...Continue reading

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Once a leader in virtual currencies, China turns against them

Nordic payments firms have become acquisition targets

THE Vikings were slow to adopt coins. They preferred to pay by cutting pieces off silver bars, at least until contact with the rest of Europe convinced them of the benefits of standardised coins. Today their Nordic descendants are abandoning coins and notes in favour of electronic payments. Two Nordic e-payments firms have recently announced that they will be acquired by foreign companies. The rest of the world, too, is using less cash. And they want the financial backing to enter new markets.

On September 25th Nets, a payments firm based in Denmark, announced that Hellman & Friedman, an American private-equity firm, had offered to acquire it for DKr33.1bn ($5.3bn). Nets is following Bambora, a Swedish-based payments firm, for which Ingenico, a French electronic-payments firm, offered €1.5bn ($1.7bn) in July.

Nets was created in 2010 from the merger of payments companies in Denmark and Norway. It has a strong presence in both countries. Dankort, Denmark’s national...Continue reading

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Europe’s capital markets face a big shake-up and are not ready

FINANCIERS usually regard new regulations as dull, annoying drudgery best left to lawyers or the compliance department. That is not an option with the second iteration of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID 2), a European Union law years in the making and entering into force on January 3rd 2018. The law introduces radical changes to trading in trillions of euros-worth of stocks, bonds and derivatives. But its sheer scope and complexity mean that an unprecedented number of issues and technicalities are still unresolved.

MiFID 1, in force since 2007, was aimed at shares, and spawned a proliferation of new trading venues ranging from electronic platforms to “dark pools” run by investment banks, breaking the oligopoly of dozy national stock exchanges. The new, more ambitious, law seeks to bring transparency to a far wider range of asset classes, notably bonds and derivatives.

The single reform that has probably received most attention is the requirement to...Continue reading

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The cost of innovation has risen, and productivity has suffered

WERE there far fewer undiscovered ideas out there than in our more primitive past, how would people know? This is not an idle question; decoding the mysteries of nature, from atmospheric pressure to electricity to DNA, allowed people to bend the natural world to their will, and to grow richer in the process. A dwindling stock of discoverable insights would mean correspondingly less scope for progress in the future—a dismal prospect. And some signs suggest that the well of our imagination has run dry. Though ever more researchers are digging for insights, according to new research, the flow of new ideas is flagging. But that uncovering new ideas is a struggle does not mean that humanity is near the limits of its understanding.

The development of new ideas—meaning scientific truths or clever inventions—allows economies to grow richer year after year. Adding more workers or machinery to an economy boosts GDP, but only for a while. Applying ever more men with hoes to the cultivation of a field will generate diminishing returns in terms of crop yields, for instance; wringing more from the soil eventually requires the use of better seed-stock or fertiliser. Unless humanity finds new ways to do more with the same amount of labour and capital, growth in incomes peters out to nothing.

Dwindling growth in incomes is not a bad description of what has happened...Continue reading

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As the world frets about the North, South Koreans try to relax

It does not come naturally

SOUTH KOREANS are packing their bags. Perhaps 1.3m of them will leave the country this week. The last remaining international flights are selling out fast. Tickets on trains out of the capital, Seoul, are a hot commodity too. A few Seoulites have been sleeping at train stations, in the hope of nabbing one. The frantic exodus has nothing to do with the latest exchange of barbs between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s ruler (see Banyan). Instead, it marks the start of Chuseok, the harvest festival, which usually lasts for three days but this year will stretch for ten. That is thanks to Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s president, who decreed an extra day off to join up a series of tantalisingly close public holidays and weekends.

Mr Moon reckons Koreans need a break. There is plenty of...Continue reading

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A subset of Tamils lags other Sri Lankans by almost every measure

Not everyone’s cup of tea

BOTH Sri Lanka’s ethnic Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority think of themselves as original, indigenous inhabitants of the island—an important prop to their political claims and counterclaims. But there is one group of Tamils who are relatively recent arrivals, and whose status has suffered accordingly. The first 10,000 “hill-country Tamils” came to work in the island’s nascent coffee plantations in 1827 as indentured labourers. They marched on foot through rough terrain to isolated camps in the jungle, which they then set about clearing. Many died. But the prospect of work in Sri Lanka’s booming tea industry, along with famine, poverty and landlessness back in India, led many more to make the journey.

Today the hill Tamils number almost 1m, accounting for over 4% of Sri Lanka’s population. They live mainly on or near tea estates in the mountainous interior of the island, not in the north and east, home to most Sri...Continue reading

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India is working itself into a frenzy about interfaith marriages

THE older woman’s slaps come quick and hard, followed by a shrill, “Have you no shame?” The younger woman sits still, eyes downcast, holding a hesitant hand to her stinging cheek as if in disbelief. Captured earlier this month in the city of Aligarh, 140km south-east of the Indian capital, Delhi, this little act of violence was mild by the standards of videos that go viral across India’s 1.2bn mobile phones.

Yet the scene was widely shared, and for compelling reasons. The two women were complete strangers. The older one happens to be Sangeeta Varshney, a prominent local member of India’s ruling party. The younger woman, who is Hindu, had been spotted sitting in a teahouse with a man who is Muslim. In a later interview on television, Ms Varshney explained that as a mother and a Hindu herself, she had a God-given right to hit the other woman. This was, she continued, a clear-cut case of “love jihad”.

Ms Varshney is far from alone...Continue reading

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Japan’s prime minister may regret calling an early election

SHINZO ABE wants to be remembered for making Japan great again. He reckons that entails reviving the economy and getting more involved in the world. The problem is, those things take time. Earlier this year he persuaded the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to extend the maximum tenure of its leaders to give him a shot at remaining at its head until 2021. Now he needs voters to pave the way, too.

This week Mr Abe called a general election to be held on October 22nd, 14 months earlier than necessary. He says an early vote is needed because he has had a change of heart over how to use the ¥5trn ($45 billion) in estimated revenue from a rise in the sales tax due in 2019. He now believes Japan should divert ¥2trn of that to education rather than using it all to pay down the public debt, which is almost 250% of GDP. He also says that Japan needs to have a discussion about North Korea.

Dishonest Abe

Few buy this explanation. Instead, observers assume that Mr Abe...Continue reading

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It is too late to get North Korea to give up its nukes

TWO vain, prickly, strutting loudmouths hurl colourful threats at each other. Were they hip-hop artists engaged in a rap battle, it might be entertaining. But since they both have nuclear weapons, it is not. At the UN General Assembly on September 19th President Donald Trump threatened to “totally destroy North Korea”, a country of 25m, along with “Rocket Man”—its leader, Kim Jong Un. Mr Kim retorted that he would “surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire”. Meanwhile, the North Korean foreign minister raised the prospect of testing a thermonuclear bomb over the Pacific, and American strategic bombers made a show of force off North Korea’s east coast. North Korea declared that tantamount to a declaration of war, and said that next time it might shoot them down.

For Americans it is as if a half-vanquished enemy is “rising zombielike from the crypt of...dimly remembered wars”, as Blaine Harden, a veteran writer on North Korea, puts it. Unlike the Vietnam war, which is perennially relived and relitigated, the Korean war of 1950-53 is largely forgotten in America. Yet it brought about the utter devastation of the Korean peninsula, along with the deaths of 2.5m civilians and 1.2m soldiers, among them 34,000 Americans. After a massive Chinese intervention, it ended with Korea as divided as it had been before.

The...Continue reading

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Racial progress and the NFL

WHEN Tommie Smith and John Carlos bowed their heads and raised their black-gloved fists during a medals ceremony at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968, they moved the world. It was only six months since Martin Luther King’s murder and the race riots it sparked. The protest was also visibly supported, in a gesture of global solidarity with black Americans, by a white Australian, Peter Norman, who had finished second to Mr Smith. A memory of the humiliations suffered by Jesse Owens, America’s greatest athlete, who had bested Hitler at the Berlin Olympics in 1936 then come home to segregation, lent additional force to the protest. So did the experiences of racism that Mr Smith later described: “On the track you are Tommie Smith, the fastest man in the world, but once you are in the dressing rooms you are nothing more than a dirty Negro.” That contrast, between glory on the playing-field and discrimination off it, has electrified many protests by black American athletes, from Muhammad Ali...Continue reading

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Republicans unveil a tax plan at last

FOLLOWING their failure to pass a health-care bill, the White House and Republican leaders in Congress are eager to move on to their next priority: tax cuts. On September 27th they released a sketch of a tax plan, after months of negotiations and several false starts earlier this year. The document—though still relatively short on detail, given the work that has supposedly gone into it—proposes the most significant change to the federal tax code since 1986. Whether it can be turned into passable legislation, or whether it instead meets the same fate as Republicans’ health-policy ideas, remains to be seen.

Launching the plan, President Donald Trump reiterated his promise that the tax cuts would benefit “the middle class, the working men and women, not the highest-income earners”. To that end, he promises a near-doubling of the standard deduction, the amount that can be earned before paying income tax. For an individual, it would rise to $12,000, from $6,350 today. That is much less generous than it sounds, because Republicans would also abolish the personal exemption, currently worth $4,050, which performs a similar function. The total amount that could be earned tax-free would go up only slightly. The plan is also to raise the bottom rate of income tax, from 10% to 12%.

The top rate of tax, by contrast, would fall from 39.6% to 35%. (Mr Trump...Continue reading

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Government by private jet

You are all I long for

CHOOSING the best aspect of modern American air travel is like choosing the least painful spot on one’s face to be kicked by a donkey. Some are slightly worse than others; none is good. Cancellations, delays, breathing germ-filled air for hours with a stranger’s knees digging into your lower back, the barking, groping security agents: no wonder people with sufficient means often prefer to hire their own planes.

But what if you want to take your own plane but you either can’t afford it or do not want to pay? Tom Price, President Donald Trump’s health secretary, hit on a novel solution: get the taxpayer to foot the bill. According to Politico, a politics news outlet, since early May Mr Price has chartered at least 24 private planes that have cost American taxpayers over $300,000. Mr Price’s predecessors had no problem flying commercial.

Spokesmen from his department claim Mr Price flew private...Continue reading

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Puerto Rico could feel the effects of Hurricane Maria for decades

THE full extent of the catastrophic damage Hurricane Maria has done to Puerto Rico is not yet known. The storm ravaged the island on September 20th, and then continued to deluge it with rain the next day. It knocked out the electrical grid—it will take months to restore power to the whole island—and put an end to most mobile communication. It rendered many roads and bridges impassable. (In the storm’s immediate aftermath, before relief workers distributed satellite phones, some parts of the island could be contacted only by runners.) The Federal Emergency Management Agency is providing help, relying in part on the $15.3bn in funding that Congress allocated for disaster relief earlier in September, after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma struck Texas and Florida, respectively. But the island’s governor, Ricardo Roselló, is in no doubt that more help is needed. Otherwise, he says, the island faces a “humanitarian crisis”.

Even if that plea is met, it is unlikely to stop the long-term damage to the island. Before the storm, Puerto Rico already faced an economic collapse. Having borrowed too much, and seen its economy shrink almost every year since 2005, the island commenced bankruptcy-like proceedings in May. That was possible because of a federal law passed in 2016. Until then, unlike states and municipalities, it had no way to escape its unpayable $123bn in debt...Continue reading

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The decline of Turkish schools

DAYS before the start of the new school year, Merve, an eighth-grade science teacher, is flipping through the pages of her old biology textbook. A picture of a giraffe appears, alongside a few lines about Charles Darwin. Teaching evolution in a predominantly Muslim country where six out of ten people refer to themselves as creationists, according to a 2010 study, has never been easy. As of today it is no longer possible. A new curriculum has scrapped all references to Darwin and evolution. Such subjects, the head of Turkey’s board of education said earlier this summer, were “beyond the comprehension” of young students. Merve says her hands are now tied. “There’s no way we can talk about evolution.”

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has made clear on more than one occasion that he would like to bring up a “pious generation” of young Turks. He has made plenty of headway. The education ministry, says Feray Aytekin Aydogan, the head of a leftist teachers’ union, is...Continue reading

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Why Italy has not yet suffered Islamist terrorism

THE image is of a young man with his back turned, grasping a large knife. Beside him in stark white capitals are the Italian words “Devi combatterli” (“You must fight them”). The photo-montage, circulated in late August on Telegram, the favoured communications app of Islamic State (IS), is a blatant incitement to “lone wolves” to kill Italians. It was reproduced on the website of Site Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist communications, days after a video circulated of masked, IS-affiliated guerrillas in the Philippines sacking a Roman Catholic church and ripping up a picture of Pope Francis.

“You. Kafir [Infidel]. Remember this,” says a masked figure, wagging his finger at the camera. “We will be in Rome, inshallah.” His threat, from 10,000km away, may be far-fetched. The attraction for jihadists of an attack on the seat of Western Christendom is certainly not. So it is remarkable that Italy should not...Continue reading

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How angry street art is making Athens hip

Athena’s watching you

GREECE is enjoying a record year for tourism, and not just on whitewashed Cycladic islands. A seven-year recession has been horrible for Greeks: in Athens, shabby residents rummaging through rubbish bins are an everyday sight. But the crisis has made Greece cheaper for holidaymakers, whose spending supports plenty of local jobs. Overnight stays by foreign visitors in the capital have increased by almost 40% over the past three years, say local hoteliers’ associations. “Athens used to be just about museums and ancient ruins. But not any more,” says an American banker. Dozens of new bars and cafés are popping up, and a flowering of street art and graffiti has given the city an edgier look.

Much of the graffiti scrawled or stencilled on empty buildings and shuttered shop fronts has a resentful tone. “Vasanizomai” (“I’m being tortured”) is one popular slogan. “Kleista gia...Continue reading

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Clueless on Cuba’s economy

GABRIEL and Leo have little in common. Gabriel makes 576 Cuban pesos ($23) a month as a maintenance man in a hospital. Leo runs a private company with revenues of $20,000 a month and 11 full-time employees. But both have cause for complaint. For Gabriel it is the meagre subsistence that his salary affords. In a dimly lit minimá (mini-mall) in Havana he shows what a ration book entitles one person to buy per month: it includes a small bag of coffee, a half-bottle of cooking oil and five pounds of rice. The provisions cost next to nothing (rice is one cent per pound) but are not enough. Cubans have to buy extra in the “free market”, where rice costs 20 times as much.

Leo (not his real name) has different gripes. Cuba does not manufacture the inputs he needs or permit enterprises like his to import them. He travels abroad two or three times a month to get them anyway. It takes six to eight hours to pack his suitcases in such a way that customs officials don’t...Continue reading

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Modernising Brazil’s waste-picking trade

Cazuza, a real cool catador

EVERY night Gabriel Cazuza drags his two-wheeled, metal-framed carroça through the streets of São Paulo collecting aluminium, paper, cardboard and other recyclables for sale to scrap merchants. He is one of tens of thousands of catadores in Brazil’s biggest city, plying a trade that has employed poor Brazilians since the 19th century. Brazil’s last census, in 2010, counted 387,910 waste-pickers nationwide; that number may be too low. The work is back-breaking and unappreciated. “People don’t like to see us,” says Mr Cazuza.

The developers of Cataki, an app, hope to change that. Since July it has been matching people who have rubbish with catadores operating in their neighbourhoods. Catadores cart off unwanted non-recyclables like sofas and televisions as well. On the Cataki map their carroças show up...Continue reading

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Canada makes amends to descendants of black loyalists

WHEN Britain needed reinforcements to fight American revolutionaries it tried to entice enslaved blacks to join up by promising them “freedom and a farm”. More than 200 years later, the offer has come back to haunt the governments of Canada and Nova Scotia, where many black loyalists settled. In September a UN human-rights working group criticised them for failing to ensure that the loyalists’ descendants have clear title to land they inherited. Despite Canada’s reputation for celebrating multiculturalism and diversity, said the group’s report, it is “deeply concerned by the structural racism that lies at the core of many Canadian institutions”.

Those stinging words prodded the provincial government into action. On September 27th it said it would spend C$2.7m ($2.2m) over two years to help descendants of black loyalists and other early settlers, including Jamaican Maroons, establish their claims in five mainly black communities, including Sunnyville and Cherry Brook. “We’re turning a corner,” said Tony Ince, the provincial minister of African Nova Scotian Affairs.

The 3,000 black loyalists who followed the defeated troops north to British-held Nova Scotia were given land as promised, although their lots were often smaller and less fertile than those given to their white comrades in arms. Some “farmland” lay beneath swamps or...Continue reading

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Latin America’s battle over “gender ideology”

THIS year Peru introduced a new curriculum for its primary schools as part of an effort to improve education. One of the new curriculum’s principles is that boys and girls have the same right to education. It notes that “while what we consider to be ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ is based on biological-sexual differences, these are roles which we construct from day to day, in our interactions.” And “some of those [socially] assigned roles” lead to girls dropping out of school to take on domestic chores.

To many people, this is a statement of the obvious. Yet it provided fuel for a growing campaign that holds that there is a conspiracy in Latin America, known as “gender ideology”, whose aim is to feminise boys, turn girls into lesbians and destroy the family. This might come as news to many in a region notorious for machismo. Nevertheless, the campaigners are scoring victories.

In March a group called Con Mis Hijos No Te Metas...Continue reading

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Catalonia prepares for its independence referendum

TO DESCRIBE the Spanish government’s approach to the unconstitutional independence referendum organised by the regional administration in Catalonia on October 1st, a senior official recently quoted Sting: “Every step you take, I’ll be watching you.” And so it has been. In the run-up to the promised ballot, Catalonia is tense. But officials are confident that they have prevented anything resembling the organised vote that Carles Puigdemont, the Catalan president, intended to deliver a “binding” result. The most that will happen, predicts another official in Madrid, is an informal exercise in which some votes may be cast in makeshift stalls.

The conservative government of Mariano Rajoy has relied on the courts to disrupt arrangements for the vote. On the orders of a Barcelona prosecutor, a dozen key Catalan officials were arrested (and later freed) and 9.8m ballot papers seized. The Generalitat, as the Catalan government is called, dissolved the electoral authority it...Continue reading

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Egypt’s Shia come out of hiding

SINCE the dawn of Islam, Shias have been trying to penetrate Egypt. Ali, the Prophet Muhammad’s son-in-law and the first imam of Shia Islam, sent a loyal follower to govern the area. But no sooner had he arrived than he was captured by Sunni opponents, sewn into the belly of a donkey and burnt. Later the Fatimids, a Shia dynasty, captured Egypt and ruled it for two centuries. But Saladin overthrew them and, according to Shia lore, massacred thousands while levelling much of Cairo. “Kharab al-Din,” spits a Shia librarian in Alexandria, twisting Saladin’s name to mean destroyer of religion.

Since then Shias in Egypt have pretended to be Sunnis. Some cloak their traditions in the mystical rites of the Sufis. They join their moulids, or birthday celebrations, for saints and camp at the shrines of the prophet’s relatives. Holy men can be found beating themselves into a trance, recalling past Shia practices. Many Sunnis, in turn, have adopted Shia...Continue reading

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The Supreme Court’s new term

Knight of the round table

A YEAR ago the Supreme Court returned to work one judge down, as Senate Republicans refused to consider Merrick Garland, Barack Obama’s nominee to replace Antonin Scalia. On October 2nd, when all nine seats are once again filled for opening day with Neil Gorsuch, Mr Trump’s choice, perched in the right-most chair, the court will begin a term promising bigger cases, sharper splits and higher hopes for conservatives. How far those hopes are realised will turn on Anthony Kennedy, the longest-serving justice, who sits at the court’s ideological centre.

Retirement rumours in June proved premature, but Justice Kennedy, who is 81, has told clerkship applicants he may not hire a full team for the 2018-19 term. That means perhaps one last docket of 60 or 70 cases for the 29-year veteran to decide before he hangs up his robe. The dazzling array of cases may have been too tantalising to watch from the golf course. According to Elizabeth...Continue reading

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A bad night for Angela Merkel

AT THE headquarters of the free-market Free Democrat Party (FDP) on September 24th activists gasped as the first exit poll results were read out: Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU), their Bavarian sister party, were on just 32.5%, much lower than any poll had suggested. Then, a few seconds later, came a gargantuan cheer. The FDP had almost doubled its vote share to 9%. “If you keep cheering after every sentence this will be a long night!,” a visibly delighted Christian Lindner, the FDP leader, told the crowd.

Such was the story of the night. The CDU/CSU and their Social Democrat (SPD) coalition partners both did badly. Their joint vote share fell from 67.2% to 53.5%, its lowest ever (see chart 1). So grim was the SPD result that party leaders immediately announced that they would not be available for a second “grand coalition” with Mrs Merkel, even if asked. The FDP’s stellar result saw it comfortably clear the 5% hurdle needed to...Continue reading

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Counting murders

The FBI’s annual crime numbers, released on September 25th, showed a 22% rise in murders between 2014 and 2016. Is the “American carnage” Donald Trump described in his inauguration speech still increasing? Probably not. The Economist has crunched monthly numbers for the 50 largest cities, and so far in 2017 the murder rate is flat.

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Roy Moore’s win in Alabama creates more problems for the Republicans

“THE political winds in this country right now”, said Luther Strange as he conceded Alabama’s Republican Senate primary to Roy Moore on September 26th, “are very hard to understand.” Thus ended a bitter six-week run-off campaign to choose a Republican nominee to fill the seat vacated when President Donald Trump appointed Jeff Sessions as attorney-general. Primary elections in off-years do not normally attract national attention, especially in single-party states such as Alabama. But this race turned into a proxy battle between Stephen Bannon, a firebrand who served as Mr Trump’s chief strategist until August, and Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, with Mr Trump, who ambivalently endorsed Mr Strange, caught awkwardly in the middle. Around $20m flowed in, mostly from groups based outside the state. Mr Strange raked in nearly seven times as much as Mr Moore.

Mr Bannon backed Mr Moore, Alabama’s former chief justice and an unyielding theocrat, who was twice...Continue reading

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Facebook’s latest pledges show how technology undermines election laws

FACEBOOK’S announcement that it will do more to detect attempts to influence elections unduly, including by forcing its advertisers to disclose more information, marks a slow about-turn for the social-media behemoth. Allegations that Russian propagandists used the platform to interfere with the presidential election were initially described by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s boss, as a “pretty crazy idea”. But a string of revelations have put the company on the backfoot—most recently, that Russian companies, some with Kremlin ties, had purchased $150,000 worth of political adverts. This has attracted the interest of Congress and of Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian interference. Yet Facebook, despite being accused of something so serious, will probably be allowed to police itself, for now.

The agency entrusted with protecting elections and policing campaign finance is the Federal Election Commission (FEC), known by some as the “failure to enforce commission”. By law, no more than three of the six commissioners can be from the same party. Four votes are needed to change anything, and the Republican commissioners are usually opposed to the very idea of campaign-finance regulation. Don McGahn, a former FEC commissioner who is now the White House counsel, has said “I plead guilty as charged” to “not enforcing the law as Congress...Continue reading

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H&M's Old Formula Needs a New Look

Fashion retailing giant H&M has opened over 40 new stores this year in the U.S. and China, the two markets shifting most rapidly online.

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How Macron and Merkel will shape the European Union

WHAT a study in contrasts. To the strains of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”, the anthem of the European Union, Emmanuel Macron strides manfully across the courtyard of the Louvre to deliver his victory speech. France’s new president vows to defend the EU, “the common destiny the peoples of our continent have given ourselves”. A few months later, after a bruising election result, Angela Merkel gives a plodding press conference in a functional room in Berlin, tentatively extending a hand to the parties her wounded Christian Democrats must woo into coalition. As for Europe, do not get your hopes up. “Today,” she says, “isn’t the day to say what will work and what won’t.”

The future of the EU lies somewhere in the gap between a bold young president whose ambitions extend far beyond France’s borders, and a cautious chancellor approaching her political end, running a country not yet ready to accept the mantle of leadership many would like to thrust upon it. Mr Macron...Continue reading

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Screen Blues Aren't Over for Many of Apple's Suppliers

Display makers such as Japan Display, LG Display and Sharp are falling behind in the screen arms race as Apple shifts to OLED technology.

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Amazon's Device Ambitions Speak Volumes

Despite heavy spending, Amazon has managed to boost its profitability over the last couple of years, thanks largely to its growing cloud business, and its investments fuel far more than the Echo devices.

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What Investors Don't Know About the Tax Plan

Investors can be sure the newly released Republican tax overhaul would improve companies’ bottom lines. Whether it would benefit top lines is up in the air.

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Why Big, Bad Boeing Is Picking on Bombardier

Why is Boeing picking on the little guy? Because that is how you stay big and dominant.

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Saudi Arabia's Mega Bond Sale Sets Clock Ticking on Change

Saudi Arabia has been forced by the collapse of oil prices onto a road of change: the lifting of the kingdom’s ban on women driving is another clear signal of that. But the country’s jumbo $12.5 billion bond sale, after last year’s even bigger $17.5 billion debut issue, is as much about where Saudi Arabia has come from as where it hopes to go.

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Insurers Could Make Trouble as Fed Balance Sheet Shrinks

Everyone is wondering how markets will react when central banks unwind their huge bond-buying programs. One sector where regulators have definite concerns is insurers.

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Saudi Arabia will finally allow women to drive

THE roads in Riyadh are about to undergo a historic change. On September 26th Saudi Arabia announced the end of its decades-old ban on female drivers. It is the only country in the world to have such a stricture, which became a symbol of the ultraconservative kingdom’s repression of women.

For many Saudi women, the change is long overdue. Dozens of them got behind the wheel in Riyadh in 1990 to demand more rights. Some were prosecuted or lost their government jobs. The protests resumed in 2008 and peaked soon after the Arab uprisings in 2011. “We have lived to see this day after 27 years,” said Hessa al-Sheikh, one of the original activists.

They found a supporter in the youthful crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman (or MBS, as he is called), who has an expansive plan to change Saudi society. One piece is loosening the kingdom’s social restrictions. Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, has been ruled according to a strict interpretation of sharia,...Continue reading

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Big Tech's Biggest Risk

Governments are putting tech’s giants under increasing scrutiny, which could slow growth and squeeze margins.

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Micron's Memory Isn't Fading Just Yet

The memory-chip maker’s strong results and outlook cool fears of a peak.

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Why a Labour government might mean a fall in sterling

THE British Labour party is in buoyant mood at its annual conference, expecting to be in power very soon. And it has already started to think about the consequences, including a possible run on the pound if it takes office. But not everyone thinks this is likely; Simon Wren-Lewis, an economist, challenged people to think of "a serious economic reason why stering would fall on the election of a Labour government?" Well, this blogger can think of several. 

1. Labour plans to increase the rate of tax on corporate profits from (what will be) 17% to 26%. That means the profits available to overseas investors will be reduced accordingly. They will demand a lower price to compensate for this lower return - this will either come in the form of a fall in the stockmarket or in the pound, or probably a bit of both.

2. Labour plans to nationalise various utilities (railways, water, the Royal Mail and some energy) and to cancel some private finance initiatives, by...Continue reading

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Donald Trump turns to hurricane-hit Puerto Rico

IT IS nearly a week since Hurricane Maria thumped Puerto Rico, flattening buildings and ripping up roads, and the island is still without electricity. Tens of thousands of its inhabitants are homeless. Many more are short of food and drinking water. On September 26th Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, the capital, wept as she described the wreckage. “I know that leaders aren’t supposed to cry and especially not on TV, but we’re having a humanitarian crisis here,” she said. “The worst fear is that we cannot get to everyone in time."

This may turn out to be the biggest test of Donald Trump’s presidency so far. If so, he is failing it. Faced with the reality of 3.4m Americans devastated by the biggest hurricane their island had seen in nearly 90 years, the president was silent for days.

The storm hit Puerto Rico on September 20th. While workers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) were carrying out search and rescue operations and getting food and water to thirsty people, the president...Continue reading

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The president of Togo is under pressure to resign

They’re not flagging

ASSOUGEY, a technician from Lomé, the capital of Togo, was arrested on September 7th. His crime: participating in one of the anti-government protests that have rocked the country in recent weeks. A policeman beat him with the butt of his gun, he says. His left leg is covered in bruises. Like many of his fellow protesters, Assougey says he joined the demonstrations because the same corrupt people have been in power for too long.

Faure Gnassingbé, Togo’s president, has ruled the small west African country for 12 years. In 2002 his late predecessor and father, Gnassingbé Eyadéma, lowered the legal age limit for a president to make way for his son. Eyadéma had seized power in a military coup in 1967. Fifty years later, the family has been in power longer than any other African regime.

Despite Mr Gnassingbé’s best efforts to quash the protests, they continue. Initially centred around Lomé, they have spread to other parts...Continue reading

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Africa is a smugglers’ paradise for North Korean diplomats

THE face that stares from Kim Jong Su’s passport shows a rather woebegone man in suit and tie. In fact, Mr Kim is a taekwondo master and, allegedly, a North Korean spy. In 2015 he was detained in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, along with a counsellor in North Korea’s embassy in South Africa after their vehicle was stopped by police. Inside was almost $100,000 in cash and 4.5 kilos of rhino horn. They were released after the North Korean ambassador to South Africa intervened. In 2016, Mr Kim slipped out of South Africa.

This and other such stories are contained in a new report published by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, a Geneva-based lobby. The author, Julian Rademeyer, found that North Koreans were implicated in 18 of the 29 rhino-horn- and ivory-smuggling cases involving diplomats since 1986. How much of this shadowy commerce is for personal gain, and how much is to meet the North Korean regime’s thirst for hard currency, is impossible...Continue reading

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Muhammad bin Salman cracks down on his perceived opponents

Prince Muhammad spots a critic

THESE are jittery times in Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy that prefers to script its political changes many years in advance. Over the past two weeks, police have arrested dozens of public figures who seem to have little in common. The most prominent is Salman al-Ouda, a popular cleric who dispenses religious advice to his 14m followers on Twitter. But the list also reportedly includes writers, human-rights activists and even officials from the justice ministry. On September 11th Mr Ouda’s brother, Khalid, criticised his arrest on Twitter: “It has revealed the size of the demagoguery we enjoy.” The authorities soon rounded him up, too.

The kingdom’s motives, as ever, are opaque. The arrests came ahead of September 15th, when a loose coalition of activists had called for protests to demand more political freedom. The appointed date came and went quietly—in part because of a heavy police presence on city streets. Saudi...Continue reading

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Western officials are trying to avert the next war in Iraq

AS THE jihadists of the so-called Islamic State (IS) retreat, the Arab and Kurdish forces allied against it in Iraq are turning their arms towards each other. Rather than celebrate victory, Masoud Barzani, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, called a referendum on independence for September 25th, not just in his constitutionally recognised autonomous zone but in the vast tracts that his forces seized from IS. Protesting against this threat to Iraq’s integrity, Haider al-Abadi, the country’s president, gathered his commanders at Makhmour, opposite the Kurdish front lines. If the referendum went ahead, Kurdistan “might disappear”, he warned. Hoping to prevent their allies from sparring, Western mediators have stepped in. But as The Economist went to press, Mr Barzani remained committed to his referendum.

Kurdistan is far from ready for statehood. The government is steeped in debt; its coffers are empty. The Peshmerga, its vaunted fighting force, is split between...Continue reading

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Picking a fund manager? The odds aren’t great

WHO wants mediocrity? That is what a lot of people say when the subject of index-tracking, or passive fund management, comes up. They would rather choose a fund manager (an active manager in the jargon) who tries to beat the market by picking the best stocks. It does sound like a good idea.

The tricky bit is finding the right manager. The temptation is to look at past performance but fund managers rarely beat the market for long.

The average fund manager is always going to struggle to beat the market (this is a separate argument from whether markets are “efficient”). That is because the index reflects the performance of the average investor before costs. In a world dominated by professional fund managers, there aren't enough amateurs for the professionals to beat. Even the hedge funds, those supposed “masters of the universe”, haven't been able to do it; Warren Buffett looks...Continue reading

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Chicago accounted for 22% of a nationwide increase in murders last year

RAHM EMANUEL does not like the description of Chicago as a tale of two cities. Yet in the last few days the discrepancy between the prosperous, glossy neighbourhoods downtown and on the north side, which are thriving more than ever since Mr Emanuel took over as mayor in 2010, and the poor, violent south of the city was highlighted once more. First came the good news with predictions that the Windy City is on track this year to break its own record of 54m annual tourist visits—up from 39m in 2010. Then on September 25th followed grim reading: the publication of the FBI's annual crime statistics of the FBI showing Chicago’s murder rate is again one of the highest in the country.

The estimated number of violent crimes in the nation increased for the second consecutive year, rising by 4.1% in 2016 compared with 2015, driven by increases in Baltimore, Chicago and Las Vegas, said the FBI. The number of murders rose by 8.6% to an estimated 17,250 murders nationwide last year. Chicago, the nation’s third-biggest city, accounted for 22%...Continue reading

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A Tax Cut's Unintended Consequences

What a tax cut could give the economy the Federal Reserve could take away. Republican leaders on Wednesday are expected to release a tax plan that would lower tax rates on individuals and corporations and allow companies to repatriate earnings held overseas at a low rate.

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Why Biotech's Retreat Won't Be as Dramatic This Time

The failure of a high-profile clinical trial to treat Alzheimer’s disease means that the biotech market is about to get a big test. But Axovant’s stock meltdown is unlikely to spread.

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Nestlé's Tame Target Doesn't Justify Lofty Stock

Nestlé has published a margin target, but not the aggressive one demanded by activist investor Dan Loeb of Third Point. And it doesn’t make the company’s shares look much less expensive.

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Alibaba's Latest Deal Finally Takes Deliveries Into Account

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s decision to consolidate earnings from its logistics subsidiary Cainiao may improve delivery—but at a cost.

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Oil's Move Higher Now Rests Squarely on U.S. Shoulders

Oil is back in a bull market, but China is slowing down. Oftentimes, those two things aren’t compatible.

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Why Emerging Markets Aren't Too Hot to Handle

The Fed’s apparent desire to push on with tightening policy may give emerging markets a pause. But if global growth continues, then a pause is all it should be.

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The Supreme Court cancels a travel-ban hearing after Donald Trump issues a new order

THREE months after the Supreme Court gave the Trump administration a provisional green-light to implement its second try at a ban on travel from several majority-Muslim countries, the justices have scrapped a hearing scheduled for October 10th at which the order would have faced a final legal reckoning. The parties in Trump v International Refugee Assistance Project and Trump v Hawaii have until October 5th to send new briefs to the justices outlining where the litigation should go next, but in the meantime, the cases have been wiped off the argument calendar.

Donald Trump’s March 6th order banning all travel from six countries—Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen—was not received well by the judiciary. Appeals courts concluded in the spring that the restrictions, along with a ban on refugees, seemed to violate the First Amendment or exceed presidential power under federal immigration law. On June 26th, the Supreme Court issued an injunction staying those rulings, saying Mr Trump’s ban could go into...Continue reading

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Anthony Weiner is sentenced to 21 months in prison

“THE internet is the predator’s venue of choice,” said Anthony Weiner in 2007 when he was a New York congressman trying to pass a bill that updated sexual predator laws. A decade later, the one-time mayoral candidate was convicted and sentenced in a federal court to 21 months in prison for transferring obscene material using social media to a minor. 

Just six years ago, Mr Weiner’s prospects looked bright. He was a congressman who was admired for his criticism of Republicans who did not vote for a bill that provided aid for first-responders to 9/11.  His wife, Huma Abedin, was Hillary Clinton’s closest advisor. He was considered to stand a reasonable chance of becoming New York City’s mayor.

But in 2011 Mr Weiner sent a graphic photo of his genitals using Twitter that accidentally went public. At first, he claimed he had been hacked, but it soon emerged that he had been exchanging explicit messages with six women over three years. He stepped down as congressman. But New Yorkers, who had a soft spot...Continue reading

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Donald Trump sparks protests on football fields across America

LET’S start with context. Last year Colin Kaepernick, then a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers and an outspoken supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, sat and kneeled rather stood during the national anthem. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of colour,” he said. As the season progressed other players—all of them black, like most of the National Football League (NFL)—also began to “take a knee” during the anthem. Mr Kaepernick left the 49ers at the end of last season. No other team has signed him, despite his strong record; many suspect he has been blackballed. But the protests have continued.

On the evening of September 22nd, Donald Trump came to Huntsville, Alabama to stump for Luther Strange, who is running for Senate in the Republican primary runoff against Roy Moore. He spoke before a crowd of around 10,000 people at a sports arena, and they were there to see the president, not Mr Strange: in the crowd your blogger saw hundreds of...Continue reading

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Funeral Stock Is Not Dead Yet

The death care business has boomed lately and is in a demographic groove, but consider recent loser StoneMor instead of industry leader Service Corp.

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AIG's Delicate Dance With Regulators

While the debate goes on about how AIG should be treated by regulators, more significant changes are happening behind the scenes at the company

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Betsy DeVos scraps Obama-era guidelines on campus sexual assault

AS PROMISED, Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, has pitched herself further into the fraught politics of campus sexual assault. On September 22nd, she announced that she was rescinding Obama-era directives to universities on how they should investigate and adjudicate sexual assault claims. The move provoked fury. Patty Murray, a Democratic senator from Washington, said the education department was “continuing a pattern of undermining survivors’ rights”. Catherine Lhamon, an official who helped write the reversed regulations, said “this backward step invites colleges to once again sweep sexual violence under the rug”. Sofie Karasek, co-founder of End Rape on Campus, an advocacy organisation, said the intent of the rules was “to protect those who ‘grab’ by the genitals and brag about it”. 

Such claims seem to ignore the fact that the original guidance had a number of deep flaws. First, it was issued without a formal period of notice and comment, meaning that it lacked the force of law. Two documents, a letter...Continue reading

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Unilever's Most Expensive Deal in Years Is a Risk Worth Taking

Unilever’s purchase of Carver Korea is the company’s biggest acquisition in seven years and among its most expensive, but the Seoul-based skin-care company give the Anglo-Dutch giant the kind of exposure it needs.

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Still Time to Ride the Payments Deal Wave

Sometimes the public just doesn’t appreciate a good thing. That anyway is the view of Danish payments company, Nets, which is recommending a $5.3 billion private-equity buyout offer barely a year after it listed.

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Natural Gas Poised to Light Up in China

Gas usage by the world’s largest energy consumer has lagged the U.S. and other big economies for years. That is about to change.

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China's Banks Don't Share Investors' Enthusiasm for Steel

The stock market has fallen in love again with China’s beleaguered state-owned steel titans, which are up roughly 60% since the dark days of early 2016 due to higher steel prices. But China’s banks don’t share investors’ enthusiasm.

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Ignore the Fed's Yield Sign at Your Peril

The Federal Reserve is telling investors it will flatten the yield curve. They should listen.

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The Global Stock Market's Hidden Juice

Investors should be worried that stocks are being supported by record amounts of margin debt. These kinds of loans secured against stocks have often proved dangerous in a downturn because when share prices fall borrowers are forced to sell.

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Too late, China and America see North Korea the same way

FOR many years, a plausible case could be made that two forms of timidity, one Chinese and one American, were blocking the sort of strategy that might—just might—make North Korea suspend or abandon its sprint to a nuclear arsenal. Start with the Chinese.

In theory, the prospect of a nuclear-armed North Korea peninsula worried Communist leaders in Beijing every bit as much as it did the Americans. The problem was that in China’s hierarchy of horrors, a nuclear-armed Korean dictator ranked very high, but just below the prospect of regime collapse in North Korea. That surpassing Chinese horror of instability meant that, to simplify, China’s rulers were willing to agree to any level of sanctions on North Korea, except those horrible enough to stand a chance of success.

The Americans stand charged with their own form of timidity. Since George H.W. Bush, successive presidents have steeled themselves to negotiate with North Korea about its nuclear and missile programmes. America has offered massive bribes in return for...Continue reading

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Tesla's SolarCity Hangover

Car maker’s investors should be concerned after solar-panel unit’s Justice Department settlement over allegations of False Claims Act violations.

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Death of World's Richest Woman Sets Stock Scramble in Motion

L’Oréal billionaire Liliane Bettencourt’s passing opens the door to shareholder-friendly maneuvers at some of Europe’s most storied companies.

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What If Apple's Supercycle Isn't So Super

Early concerns about Apple’s iPhone 8 and cell-connected watch provide a rough start to what needs to be a big year

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Nintendo Switches on the Growth

Japanese videogame maker Nintendo is having another renaissance, but execution remains an obstacle to realizing investors’ lofty expectations.

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Bitcoin is fiat money, too

FINANCIERS with PhDs like to remind each other to “read your Kindleberger". The rare academic who could speak fluently to bureaucrats and normal people, Charles Kindleberger designed the Marshall Plan and wrote vast economic histories worthy of Tolstoy. “Read your Kindleberger” is just a coded way of saying “don’t forget this has all happened before”. So to anyone invested in, mining or building applications for distributed ledger money such as bitcoin or ethereum: read your Kindleberger.

Start with A Financial History of Western Europe, in which Kindleberger documents how many times merchants in different centuries figured out clever ways of doing the exact same thing. They made transactions easier, and in the process created new deposits and bills that increased the supply of money. In most cases, the Bürgermeister or the king left these innovations in place, but decided to control the supply of money and credit themselves. It is good for the king to be in charge of his own creditors. But also, it has...Continue reading

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A medieval poet bedevils India’s most powerful political party

He has had 110 years to think about it

CALLED to evening prayer, 8,500 schoolboys shuffle in very long lines along a grand arcade built in the shadow of a granite plateau. Barefoot, each wears a white lungi, a red shoulder-cloth and three horizontal streaks of ash across his forehead. Slogans painted on the boulders above remind them that “Work is worship” and “One god has different names.” These are quotes from Basava, a poet, philosopher and administrator who lived in the area in the 12th century.

The holy men who teach at the Siddaganga mutt (monastery), 70km from the IT hub of Bangalore, revere both the god Shiva and Basava, who was a monotheist. That makes them Lingayats. But does it make them Hindus too?

The creed has plenty of the trappings of Hinduism, but an unusual fixation on social justice. Its most esteemed adherent, Shivakumara Swami (pictured), the head of the mutt, is 110 years...Continue reading

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Australia’s controversial gay marriage vote gets under way

A party prompted by a feud within a party

THE question reads, “Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?” Ballots asking it have been posted to Australia’s 16m registered voters. They have until early November to return them; the result will be announced on November 15th. Rallies for and against are being held around the country. Earlier this month 30,000 supporters of gay marriage gathered outside Sydney’s town hall, waving placards with slogans like, “It’s a love story baby, just say yes.”

One of those saying yes is Malcolm Turnbull, the prime minister. But many Australians criticise him for calling the vote at all. Opinion polls consistently show that most Australians support gay marriage. Proponents say a simple vote in parliament, which also has a majority in favour, would have saved money and avoided a divisive campaign.

But if there is relatively little debate among Australians, there is a great deal within...Continue reading

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Tajikistan’s crackdown on observant Muslims intensifies

THE young Tajik man does not want to leave home, despite his mother’s assurance that he looks fine. The day before he had sported a curly black beard, just like his friends from the mosque. But the police had frogmarched him and other bearded young men to the barber shop, where their beards were shaved off. A few of the onlookers laughed, but, once out of the police’s sight, many more grumbled.

Such scenes have become increasingly common in Tajikistan, a landlocked country of 9m bordering Afghanistan and China. In 2015 an official in one of the country’s four regions reported forcibly removing the beards of 13,000 men. Con men have started selling certificates, complete with photographs and official-looking stamps, permitting holders to grow a beard. Initially, the Tajik government blamed the crusade against beards on local police, but it now admits that it instigated the practice to curb religious extremism.

Shaving beards is just one tool the government uses to...Continue reading

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