New thinking on the armed forces after Argentina loses a submarine

ARGENTINES have given up hope of finding alive the 44 crew aboard the ARA San Juan, the most modern of the navy’s three submarines, which disappeared on November 15th. On November 23rd the navy said an explosion had been detected in the area where the submarine is thought to have been.

The apparent tragedy has started a debate about the role of Argentina’s 105,000-strong armed forces and the money spent on them. Since the end of the military dictatorship in 1983, a year after Argentina’s failed attempt to wrest the Falkland Islands from Britain by force, successive governments have reduced military spending. It has dropped from 3.5% of GDP in 1978 to less than 1% last year. Argentina spends a lower share of GDP than any of its neighbours on its armed forces (see chart).

Little of the money goes towards arms and equipment. The defence ministry spends about 70% of its budget on salaries and pensions (about a third of the United States’ defence spending is on...Continue reading

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Despotism and default in Venezuela

BACK in July, Nicolás Maduro’s big problem was an opposition-backed rebellion against his plan to replace Venezuela’s elected parliament with a hand-picked constituent assembly. More than 120 people died in mass protests and the armed forces briefly seemed to waver in their support for the government. Now Venezuela’s dictator-president has his new assembly in place and the opposition where he wants it—divided and debilitated. But he has another problem: he is running out of cash.

After years of mismanagement, Venezuela’s all-important oil industry is listing like a shipwrecked tanker. According to data provided by the government to OPEC, oil production in October averaged 1.96m barrels per day (b/d), down 130,000 b/d from September (and 361,000 b/d from October 2016). Subtract oil supplied for almost nothing to Venezuelans and to Cuba, and shipments to repay loans from China and Russia, and only around 750,000 b/d are sold for cash, according to Francisco Monaldi, a Venezuelan...Continue reading

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Kroger Investors Cleaning Up in Aisle Five

Supermarket chain Kroger, slammed by Amazon’s entry into the grocery business and other competitive fears, is bouncing back and still looks like a bargain.

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How the Russia investigation looks from Moscow

Bananas in pyjamas

BUZZFEED recently broke an explosive story about Russia’s meddling in America’s elections. On August 3rd 2016, it reported, just as the presidential race was entering its final phase, the Russian foreign ministry wired nearly $30,000 through a Kremlin-backed bank to its embassy in Washington, DC, with a remarkable description attached: “To finance election campaign of 2016”. Worse still, this was only one of 60 transfers that were being scrutinised by the FBI. Similar transfers were made to other countries. The story created a buzz, but not of the kind its authors hoped for. “Idiots. The Russian election of 2016, not the US one, you exceptionalist morons,” tweeted a prominent Russian journalist, pointing out that Russia too held parliamentary elections in 2016 and that the money was most probably sent to the embassies to organise the polling for expatriates. This was confirmed by the Russian foreign ministry. BuzzFeed updated its story,...Continue reading

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The Supreme Court’s justices want to enhance privacy protections for a digital age

Pinpointing Justice Kennedy

THE nine justices of the Supreme Court are used to applying 18th-century principles to an America that would bewilder the constitution’s framers. Yet sometimes this is really hard. On November 29th the court considered how a 226-year-old rule, the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures, bears on one arrow in the government’s investigative quiver: tracking people’s movements via their mobile-phone signals. At least six justices seemed keen to widen the Fourth Amendment umbrella for the digital age, but no single way to do so emerged. “This is an open box”, a forlorn Justice Stephen Breyer said. “We know not where we go.”

The matter dates to 2011, when Timothy Carpenter was arrested for masterminding a string of armed robberies in Michigan and Ohio. The FBI built their case against Mr Carpenter on 127 days of mobile-tower data placing him near the scenes of the crimes. Under the Stored...Continue reading

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Enough already, Nancy

AS AN illustration of what ails congressional Democrats, Nancy Pelosi’s recent attempt to defend an 88-year-old party grandee who was alleged to have shown up to work in his pyjamas, fondled generations of female employees and to have asked at least one of them to “touch it”, is hard to beat. The Democrats’ long-serving House leader, who is merely 77, had been asked on NBC about the allegations against Representative John Conyers of Michigan, the House’s longest-serving member. She responded by calling him an “icon”. Asked whether she believed his accusers, Mrs Pelosi blustered: “I don’t know who they are. Do you? They have not really come forward.” At least five former staffers of Mr Conyers, who was until this week the ranking Democrat on the House judiciary committee and a force in the Congressional Black Caucus, had at that time accused him of inappropriate behaviour. One had received a pay-off from his office funds.

That Mrs Pelosi should be tarred by the culture...Continue reading

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The CFPB, born in controversy, becomes a farce

Taking the Mulvaney

FOR anyone concerned that American consumers have suffered from not having enough financial regulators on the beat, there is now clear evidence of too many. The post-Thanksgiving working week began at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) with two people claiming to hold the temporary leadership mantle, after the abrupt resignation of the previous director, Richard Cordray. Mick Mulvaney, who heads the Office of Management and Budget, was given a second job by the president, operating under the authority of a commonly used statute. He arrived at the agency with a bag full of doughnuts and an open invitation for employees to come by and grab one. As they munched away, they could read an e-mail signed by “Leandra English, Acting Director”, a relatively young staff member whom Mr Cordray promoted to deputy director on his way out, with the intention of putting her in charge under the authority of a clause in the Dodd-Frank...Continue reading

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As bitcoin’s price passes $10,000, its rise seems unstoppable

MOST money these days is electronic—a series of ones and zeros on a computer. So it is rather neat that bitcoin, a privately created electronic currency, has lurched from $1,000 to above $10,000 this year (see chart), an epic journey to add an extra zero.

On the way, the currency has been controversial. Jamie Dimon, the boss of JPMorgan Chase, has called it a fraud. Nouriel Roubini, an economist, plumped for “gigantic speculative bubble”. Ordinary investors are being tempted into bitcoin by its rapid rise—a phenomenon dubbed FOMO (fear of missing out). Both the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, America’s largest futures market, and the NASDAQ stock exchange have seemingly added their imprimaturs by planning to offer bitcoin-futures contracts.

It is easy to muddle two separate issues. One is whether the “blockchain” technology that underpins bitcoin becomes more widely adopted. Blockchains, distributed ledgers that record transactions securely, may prove very useful in...Continue reading

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The euro zone’s boom masks problems that will return to haunt it

“WHAT does not kill me makes me stronger,” wrote Nietzsche in “Götzen-Dämmerung”, or “Twilight of the Idols”. Alternatively, it leaves the body dangerously weakened, as did the illnesses that plagued the German philosopher all his life. The euro area survived a hellish decade, and is now enjoying an unlikely boom. The OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, reckons that the euro zone will have grown faster in 2017 than America, Britain or Japan. But, sadly, although the currency bloc has undoubtedly proven more resilient than many economists expected, it is only a little better equipped to survive its next recession than it was the previous one.

Europe’s crisis was brutal. Euro-area GDP is roughly €1.4trn ($1.7trn)—an Italy, give or take—below the level it would have reached had it grown at 2% per year since 2007. Parts of the periphery have yet to regain the output levels they enjoyed a decade ago (see chart). The damage was exacerbated by deep flaws within Europe’s monetary union. Three shortcomings loomed particularly large. First, the union centralised money-creation but left national governments responsible for their own fiscal solvency. So markets came to understand that governments could no longer bail themselves out by printing money to pay off creditors. The risk of default made markets panic in response to bad news, pushing up...Continue reading

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What cheese can tell you about international barriers to trade

Slicely does it

BEN SKAILES, a British cheesemaker, is busy as Christmas ripens demand for his Stilton. Foreigners make up a third of demand for his dairy, Cropwell Bishop Creamery. This exporting achievement is not to be sniffed at when one considers the barriers to the cheese trade.

Some are natural. Perishable food goes better with wine than long journeys. At least Mr Skailes’s Stilton can survive the three-week trip to America. (His is best eaten within 16 weeks.) Softer cheeses struggle, giving American producers an advantage.

Other hurdles are man-made. Tariffs and quotas are supposed to support domestic dairy industries, and are more onerous than in other sectors. The European Union protects its dairy industry with a 34% average duty, compared with an overall average of 5%. In America it is 17%, compared with 3.5%. Stilton escapes American quotas, but full “loaves” are taxed at a 12.8% rate, or 17% if they arrive sliced. (Unprocessed...Continue reading

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A flattening yield curve argues against higher interest rates

CENTRAL bankers may control short-term interest rates, but long-term ones are mostly free to wander. They do not always behave. When Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, was raising short rates in 2005, he described a simultaneous decline in long rates as a “conundrum”. His successor-to-be, Ben Bernanke, blamed foreign investments in American assets because of a “global saving glut”.

Janet Yellen, today’s (outgoing) Fed chair, faces a similar puzzle. Ms Yellen’s Fed has raised rates twice this year, and will probably make it three times in December. In October the Fed began to reverse quantitative easing (QE), purchases of financial assets with newly created money. Despite all this monetary tightening, yields on ten-year Treasury bonds have fallen from around 2.5% at the start of 2017 to about 2.3% today. As a result, the “yield curve” is flattening. The difference between ten-year and two-year interest rates is at its lowest since November 2007 (see chart).

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India’s new bankruptcy code takes aim at delinquent tycoons

A SMOOTH bankruptcy process is akin to reincarnation: a company at death’s door gets to shuffle off its old debts, often gain new owners, and start a new life. Might the idea catch on in India? A first wave of cadaverous firms are seeking rebirth under a bankruptcy code adopted in December 2016. In a hopeful development, tycoons once able to hold on to “their” businesses even as banks got stiffed seem likely to be forced to cede control.

India badly needs a fresh approach to insolvent businesses. Its banks’ balance-sheets sag under 8.4trn rupees ($130bn) of loans that will probably not be repaid—over 10% of their outstanding loans. But foreclosure is fiddly: it currently takes over four years to process an insolvency, and recovery rates are a lousy 26%. Partly as a result, bankers have often turned a blind eye to firms they ought to have foreclosed on.

This is bad for the banks and worse for the economy, which has slowed markedly, in part as credit to companies has dried up. The problem festered for years, not...Continue reading

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Brazil puts its state development bank on a diet

Lula spots an Anglo-Saxon

IN 2009, as Brazil was buffeted by the global financial crisis, its president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was seething. The mess, he complained, was the fault of “blue-eyed white people, who previously seemed to know everything, and now demonstrate they know nothing at all”. For him the crisis was a repudiation of Anglo-Saxon liberalism and a vindication of state capitalism. Like many countries, Brazil cut interest rates and increased spending. Unlike many other governments, however, Brazil’s used its state development bank, BNDES, to funnel subsidised credit to Brazil’s largest companies. Thanks to cheap loans from the Treasury, the bank doubled its lending, which reached a peak of 4.3% of GDP in 2010. For most loans the interest rates were half the level of Selic, the central bank’s benchmark.

The plan worked, for a while. Brazil emerged from the crisis relatively unscathed: after a short recession in 2009 the economy...Continue reading

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A regulatory tempest lashes China’s markets

Europe’s banks face a glut of new rules

FOR those oddballs whose hearts sing at the thought of bank regulation, Europe is a pretty good place to be. No fewer than five lots of rules are about to come into force, are near completion or are due for overhaul. They will open up European banking to more competition, tighten rules on trading, dent reported profits and boost capital requirements. Although they should also make Europe’s financial system healthier, bankers—after a decade of ever-tightening regulation since the crisis of 2007-08—may be less enthused.

Start with the extra competition. On January 13th the European Union’s updated Payment Services Directive, PSD2, takes effect. It sets terms of engagement between banks, which have had a monopoly on customers’ account data and a tight grip on payments, and others—financial-technology companies and rival banks—that are already muscling in. Payment providers allow people to pay merchants by direct transfer from their bank accounts. Account aggregators pull...Continue reading

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How to spot the next crisis

WHILE the world of geopolitics looks as risky as ever, the markets seem to go on their sweet way, recording new highs for equity indices. In large part, of course, this is down to signs of an improving global economy and a sense that politics doesn’t really matter, despite the tweets of President Donald Trump (defending Vladimir Putin and attacking Theresa May is a first for American diplomacy).

Where might trouble first emerge? The most likely venue is the corporate bond market. This has changed a lot over the past ten years. As late as 2008, more than 80% of non-financial corporate bond issuance was rated A or above, according to Torsten Slok of Deutsche Bank; in the past five years, the proportion has been consistently under 60%. That means the average corporate bond is riskier than before. At the same time, the reforms that followed the crash of 2008 mean that banks have to hold more capital (quite rightly). But this also means they are less willing to devote capital to market-making; as a result, the bond market is less liquid...Continue reading

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Why scan-reading artificial intelligence is bad news for radiologists

THE better artificial intelligence gets, the greater the popular concern that smart machines will soon usher in a labour-market catastrophe. In Chandler, Arizona, Americans can at this moment hail a ride from a car without a human at the wheel. Web users can read high-quality, instant translations of foreign-language newspapers—no professional translation service needed. And developers of machine-learning technologies are moving rapidly to apply their tools across a vast array of medical tasks.

Despite this, economists, with rare exceptions, are relatively sanguine about the possible labour-market effects of AI. Technological change always raises fears of mass unemployment, after all, and yet there are more people working worldwide than ever. Count me among those who reckon this approach is a bit too dismissive of the threat. On the one hand, while the very broad story of technological progress over the past two centuries has been one in which employment has grown massively, across...Continue reading

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Myanmar’s awful schools are a drag on the economy—and politics

ON THE first floor of a crumbling colonial building in Yangon, a teacher taps the words written on the board with a bamboo rod. “Repeat after me so you will remember this by heart,” she instructs. The whole class chants back in unison. The children have been regurgitating sentences all morning. No hands are raised, no questions asked. To earn promotion to the next form, there is no need to gain a proper understanding of the subject; memorising textbooks is all that is required. For the 40 pupils, rote learning will continue for years to come, until they complete high school.

Only one in ten students remains in school that long and passes the final exams. Although the vast majority of children in Myanmar enroll in primary school, half of them drop out by the second year of secondary school. Some do so because their families need the income they could earn by working. But most cite boredom, not poverty, as the main reason.

Myanmar’s schools were not always so bad. A centuries-old tradition of monastic education gave...Continue reading

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Fiery Mount Agung is just one of 127 active volcanoes in Indonesia

“THE hardest bit of the job is having enough sleep,” admits Martanto, a 29-year-old geophysicist at the monitoring centre for Agung, a volcano in Bali which started erupting on November 25th. For the past two weeks he and half a dozen others have relocated from Bandung, in West Java, to keep watch on Agung every hour of the day, occasionally in continuous 32-hour shifts. Their base is rudimentary: a room plastered with maps, graphs and lists of telephone numbers. In one corner sits a seismometer, a cylindrical machine which measures earthquakes; in another corner a radio is on standby, in case of an emergency. Outside, a huge plume of ash spews from the crater at Agung’s peak. The smell of sulphur hangs thickly in the air.

Indonesia is the most volcano-pocked country in the world, with 127 active ones. It was home to both the biggest eruption of modern times, that of Tambora in 1815, and the second-biggest, of Krakatoa in 1883. Agung’s previous eruption, in 1963, was the most...Continue reading

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Pakistan’s army is once again undermining the civilian government

HIS protest camp had been blocking a busy motorway for more than three weeks. He had been giving speeches to the protesters denouncing politicians as “pigs”, “pimps” and “dogs”. Yet Khadim Rizvi, a Muslim cleric, was not worried about being forcibly evicted by the army. “Why would they take action against us,” he asked, “when we are fulfilling their goals?” He meant that they all wanted to defend Islam, but he might just as well have been referring to humiliating and undermining the ruling party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).

On October 30th the wheelchair-bound Mr Rizvi and around 5,000 supporters gathered at Faizabad interchange, an important junction on the road between Islamabad, the capital, and the nearby city of Rawalpindi. They brought in tents and water-tankers. Clerics riled up the crowd. Protesters vowed not to leave “even if they behead us”—which was hardly likely.

The fervour was prompted by a change the government approved on...Continue reading

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A film about heroism brings out the coward in India’s politicians

THE plot was made for Bollywood: a princess so beautiful that a lustful prince besieges a spectacular fortress to catch her, and so virtuous that she hurls herself into a fire rather than surrender. Movie producers were not the first to be inspired by the story of Padmini, the loyal wife of the Rana of Chittor. The French composer Albert Roussel’s “Padmavati”, an opera about this paragon of princesses, debuted in Paris in 1923. A century before that James Tod, a British officer and amateur historian, incorporated the tale in his “Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan”, a work widely translated and reprinted in India. His romantic version appealed especially to Rajputs, the Hindu warrior caste that supplied the rulers of numerous princely states in western India. The image of the radiant Padmini foiling a Muslim invader fitted a narrative of heroic resistance that was far more enchanting than the messy truth, which was that Rajput rulers generally fought each other as much as they did...Continue reading

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A very British row

In happier times

EARLY morning fusillades of gibberish are nothing new in the Trump presidency. Nor is a tendency to attack allies, or to give encouragement to racist groups. On November 29th, though, the president achieved a rare triple. On waking he seems to have grabbed his phone to attack CNN, give air to an old conspiracy theory and broadcast propaganda from a hitherto obscure band of British xenophobes to his 43.6m Twitter followers. Later in the day he had a go at Britain’s prime minister, Theresa May, whose office had earlier criticised him for thinking with his thumb. One sound strategy for staying sane in 2017 has been to ignore Mr Trump’s tweets. Yet this morning barrage revealed traits that go to the core of the man in the Oval Office.

One is an astonishing lack of curiosity about where information comes from. Britain First, whose nonsense the president retweeted, was until this week at the fringe of the fringe of far-right English politics. Its...Continue reading

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Honduras’s disputed election provokes a crisis

JUAN ORLANDO HERNÁNDEZ (pictured), Honduras’s president, boasts that he has brought stability and security, but his run for re-election has caused turmoil. As The Economist went to press on November 30th it was unclear who had won the election held four days before. After Mr Hernández’s rival, Salvador Nasralla, posted an early lead, vote-counting slowed to a crawl and the incumbent closed the gap. With 89% of the vote counted, Mr Hernández led by 0.8 percentage points.

If the electoral tribunal (TSE) proclaims him the winner, that will not settle the matter. Mr Nasralla told The Economist there will be protests. The tension evokes the mood after a coup in 2009 against then-president Manuel Zelaya, after he tried to scrap presidential term limits. He now backs Mr Nasralla. University classes have been cancelled, probably to keep Mr Nasralla’s young supporters at home. On the night of November 29th police fired tear gas at rock-throwing protesters near a building where ballots...Continue reading

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America’s neglect and confusion aggravate problems in the Arab world

WHEN it is finished, America’s imposing new embassy in Lebanon will be its second-biggest in the world. Yet it was France, not America, that stepped in to resolve Lebanon’s latest political crisis. Speaking from the Saudi capital, Riyadh, on November 4th, Saad Hariri, the Lebanese prime minister, abruptly announced his resignation. What followed was a bizarre two-week saga in which he seemed to be under house arrest in the kingdom. Though America’s State Department criticised the move, it fell to France to negotiate Mr Hariri’s return to Beirut. He has since suspended his resignation.

Nearly a year into his presidency, Donald Trump’s Middle East policy could best be characterised as one of neglect and confusion. His term coincides with a period of radical change in Saudi Arabia. King Salman and his son, Muhammad, the all-powerful crown prince, have abandoned the Al Sauds’ plodding caution in favour of a more aggressive foreign policy. Their actions have unsettled friends and neighbours. Even Israeli diplomats, no fans of...Continue reading

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How Retailers Can Fight Back at Christmas

In an Amazon-free world, retailers would be singing in the streets. Unemployment and inflation are low and consumer confidence is high. Yet e-commerce continues to cannibalize store profits.

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Credit Suisse Decides the Best Target Is One You Can Hit

Tidjane Thiam has learned to be a little more cautious since he took the reins at Credit Suisse. The Swiss bank’s CEO set fresh profit and payout goals its investor day, but the strong share-price reaction is a slight surprise.

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Why Electric Car Companies Don't Need Batteries

Batteries are the heart of the electric car, yet for a host of reasons car companies shouldn’t be the ones to make them.

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José Antonio Meade is the PRI’s candidate for Mexico’s presidency

ONE custom in Mexico’s era of one-party rule was the dedazo (big finger), the president’s choice of his successor, who would inevitably be elected to a single six-year term. The authoritarian rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ended in 2000, but the dedazo returned on November 27th this year, when Enrique Peña Nieto, the president, chose his finance secretary, José Antonio Meade, as the PRI’s candidate in the presidential election to be held in July. This time, though, the dedazo that counts belongs to the voters.

Mr Meade’s selection begins a seven-month race for a tough job. The next president will have to deal with a soaring crime rate, anger about corruption, a weak economy and Donald Trump, who may by then have decided to tear up or drastically change the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Mexico, the United States and Canada. Mr Peña’s successor will also have to decide whether to carry on with reforms of the economy, energy and education that he began.

Mr Meade is by no means guaranteed to win. On the contrary, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a left-wing populist who has twice run for president, is ahead in most polls. If his lead holds, he will win the one-round election. A third contender is Ricardo Anaya, the head of the...Continue reading

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A Bitter Winter for China's Entrepreneurs

As the U.S. reaffirms China’s status as a nonmarket economy, the latest data shows China’s economy is holding up well—as long as you are a large, state-owned manufacturer. China’s private factory owners are taking fire from multiple sides, however.

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Big Tech's Bad Day

The selloff in tech stocks was less surprising than the rally in downtrodden names.

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A row over a wedding cake pits religious liberty against LGBT rights

THE contours of two First Amendment rights—freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion—will be on the Supreme Court’s plate on December 5th when the justices take up Masterpiece Cakeshop v Colorado Civil Rights Commission, a key battle over same-sex marriage. This post examines the religion question; next week, your blogger will look at the issue of free speech.

The conflict in Masterpiece Cakeshop dates to 2012, when Charlie Craig and David Mullins were shopping for a wedding cake and walked into a bakery near Denver, Colorado. Jack Phillips, the proprietor of Masterpiece Cakeshop, told the couple he would be willing sell them a birthday cake or some cookies but that he does not, as a policy, “provide cakes for same-sex weddings”. Mr Phillips, a Christian who “strives to honour God in all aspects of his life”, considers gay marriage “sacrilegious” and refuses “to express through his art an idea about marriage that conflicts with his religious beliefs”.

In many corners of...Continue reading

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North Korea tests its most powerful missile yet

FOLLOWING a brief hiatus in its testing programme, North Korea launched a missile in the small hours of November 29th that, unlike any previous missile, appeared to have the range to strike any city in America. It was the third test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) since July, and 20th missile test this year. After watching the launch the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, who had spent the previous day visiting a catfish farm, announced: “We have finally realised the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force, the cause of building a rocket power.”

Mr Kim eschewed the extravagantly bellicose rhetoric he normally indulges in after a successful missile launch. His “solemn declaration” emphasised that North Korea would be a “responsible nuclear power” that “would not pose any threat to any country and region” as long as the interests of North Korea “are not infringed upon”. It sounded like a plea for North Korea to be respected as a nuclear state, not vilified as a...Continue reading

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Suspicions of vote-rigging in Honduras’s election

ON NOVEMBER 25th The Economist published an article suggesting that Honduras’s ruling party may have had plans to distort the results of a general election to be held the next day. Here we present excerpts and transcripts from the tape of what appears to be a training session for National Party poll workers, on which the article was based. The Economist received the recording from a participant, who also described what was happening in the room at the time. Our descriptions of the gestures of the woman leading the session are based on that testimony. We have distorted her voice.

With roughly 75% of ballots counted, Salvador Nasralla of the opposition Libre party leads the presidential race by less than one percentage point. Both he and the incumbent, Juan Orlando Hernández of the National Party, are claiming...Continue reading

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The Australian state of Victoria legalises assisted dying

THE quest has failed many times. The past 20 years have seen around 50 attempts to pass laws in different Australian states to allow doctors to help terminally ill people to end their lives. All have suffered defeat, three in the past year alone: in New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania. But on November 29th Victoria finally made history, when its parliament passed Australia’s first state law to legalise doctor-assisted dying.

The law, which will take effect in 2019, allows people with an advanced, incurable illness to request “assisted dying” if their suffering cannot be relieved “in a manner that the person considers tolerable”. Patients must make three successive requests for such help; doctors are banned from initiating discussion of it as an option. The original bill had proposed limiting eligibility to those who were expected to live no more than a year. Victoria’s lawmakers reduced that to six months, with a few exceptions.

Most earlier attempts to legalise assisted dying were private members’...Continue reading

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Will Tesla Die for Lack of Cobalt?

Cobalt, a critical part of batteries, has nearly tripled in price since last summer as concerns grow about whether there will be enough cobalt to meet demand.

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Why Tax Cut Winners are Losing

Many of the stocks that would benefit the most from a tax cut have fallen out of favor with growth-obsessed investors.

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Shell's Gift to Investors Could Prove Premature

Shell is finally scrapping its much-hated scrip-dividend program, with its accompanying shareholder dilution. Great news—but a closer look at the company’s financials and strategy raises some questions.

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German Banks: Chronically Sick and No-One Has a Cure

For all of Germany’s economic strength and discipline, its banking system remains a mess.

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Heads Roll at LSE and the Timing Is Terrible

The fight to keep Xavier Rolet as chief executive of the London Stock Exchange is over, but that doesn’t mean its problems are too.

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HUD embodies the pathologies afflicting the White House

BEN CARSON, a celebrated neurosurgeon and unsuccessful presidential candidate, had no experience in political office or housing policy before Donald Trump nominated him to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). It was unclear what Dr Carson, a longtime sceptic of government assistance, and of social engineering more generally, would do with an agency that funds rental-assistance schemes for the poor, only half of whom actually live in cities—despite what the department’s name would suggest. The administration proposed a 13% cut in HUD funding in its first budget. Dr Carson seemed not to know how individual programmes would be affected when testifying before Congress. HUD, with its annual budget of $46bn is a tiddler compared with other federal departments, but in several ways it is a sort of miniature version of the Trump administration.

In the nine months since he took the post, Dr Carson has stayed inconspicuous and inscrutable. The agency seems directionless. Only four of the 13 top positions, which must be...Continue reading

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The outsize influence of the gun lobby

GUN violence killed 34,000 people in America in 2014, the most recent year for which data is available. That is about the same number of people who died in traffic accidents. But firearms are considerably less regulated than vehicles, thanks largely to a powerful political machine that in recent years has rolled back some of the few limits to gun ownership. It is surprising, therefore, that while the industry may have political might, the economics point to a diminutive industry dealing predominantly with a niche consumer group. 

While domestic production has increased from 4.2m firearms in 2008 to 8.9m in 2015, the firearms industry remains relatively small. The National Shooting Sports Foundation, an industry group, produces an economic impact report that claims arms and ammunition production and sales support 141,500 jobs. That is less than 0.1% of total employment in America, fewer than the number of people who work in wholesale bakeries and tortilla manufacturing, and about the same as the number employed in gift, novelty...Continue reading

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Amazon's Early Christmas Bonus

Projections for retail and cloud businesses are growing as Amazon’s already-rich valuation gets another boost.

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Batteries Are Taking Over the World

The battery industry is mustering for exponential growth as car makers electrify their fleets. But for investors the path to profitability is far from clear, and technological breakthroughs could upset the competitive order.

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UnitedHealth Reaches an Unhealthy Altitude

UnitedHealth’s stock has more than quadrupled over the past five years. But its high valuation means that the health insurer has a lot to live up to.

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Barclays at the Back of the Class in U.K. Stress Tests

Even though all seven banks passed, some will still face higher capital demands to counter a consumer credit boom in which they are systematically underestimating the risk of losses.

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Trump Is Ignoring a Healthy Opportunity in China

What’s the highest-margin, protected growth industry in China? Hint: It isn’t energy, finance or beef.

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Is Honduras’s ruling party planning to rig an election?

IN THE days leading up to Honduras’s contentious national election on November 26th, one might expect to see candidates tossing bags of beans from pickup trucks and party workers handing out benefit cards. Such methods to sway poor voters have been used before by the National Party of Juan Orlando Hernández, who is running for re-election as president. Opposition parties have used the same techniques, which are frowned upon but not illegal.

Allegations of outright vote-rigging are widespread in Honduras but difficult to prove. The Economist has obtained a recording that, if authentic, suggests the ruling party has plans to distort results in the upcoming elections. Hondurans will be voting in congressional and municipal elections as well as the presidential one.

Roughly two hours long, the recording appears to be of a training session for members of the National Party who will be manning voting tables at polling stations on election day. The Economist received the recording from a participant. At the...Continue reading

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Coal becomes a flashpoint in a close election in Australia

Crooks in Japan are getting older and more hardened

THE 74-year-old burglar evaded police in Osaka, Japan’s second-largest city, for eight years. He committed more than 250 burglaries, making off with items worth some ¥30m ($266,500), the police said, before he was finally caught last month. But he has at least told his captors that he is ready to retire.

Not all Japan’s elderly criminals are willing to follow suit. New figures from the government show that almost a quarter of criminals aged over 65 reoffend within two years, more than double the rate of those under 29. Some 70% of the wrinkly wrongdoers in prison in 2016 had previously spent time behind bars. And there are ever more of them: in 2015 more than 20% of arrests were of people aged over 65—up from 6% in 2005. In America, in comparison, over-65s account for barely 1% of arrests.

The majority of crimes the grey-haired commit are petty, such as theft and shoplifting. Analysts reckon it is a sign of poverty, which is relatively widespread among the old (by the...Continue reading

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A kickback scandal ensnares the speaker of Indonesia’s parliament

Incapacitated by a fender-bender

IT WAS a sight many Indonesians thought they would never see. On November 19th the speaker of parliament, Setya Novanto, was taken into custody after being wheeled out of a Jakarta hospital wearing the bright orange vest of a suspected criminal. He is accused by the anti-corruption commission, the KPK, of playing a pivotal part in a huge kickback scheme—the biggest scandal it has ever investigated.

Mr Setya, who is also the leader of Golkar, the second-biggest party in parliament, denies wrongdoing. But he has been dodging the KPK’s investigators for months. Most recently, while supposedly on the way to present himself for questioning, he suddenly changed course and rushed to hospital instead, after a minor traffic accident. Police ruled that the accident was genuine, but the sturdy four-wheel-drive vehicle in which Mr Setya was travelling was barely dented. It was the second time he had been admitted to hospital—where the...Continue reading

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Nepal’s election may at last bring stability

No one is paying the politicians much attention

THE people of Nepal are said to be a stoical lot. But fatalism is not the only reason for the Himalayan republic’s palpable lack of excitement on the eve of what ought to be a historic election. The vote, to be held in two stages on November 26th and December 7th, is for both a new national legislature and new state governments, under a crisp new constitution. It follows nearly three decades of what C.K. Lal, an acerbic columnist, describes as “history on steroids”, during which Nepal’s 29m people endured a ten-year armed insurgency that left some 18,000 dead, a machine-gun rampage by an angry prince who slaughtered nearly the entire royal family, a revolving door of governments under 25 different prime ministers, including spells of arch-conservative dictatorship and of rule by Maoist guerrillas, the abolition of the 240-year-old monarchy, a massively destructive earthquake, devastating floods and a ruinous...Continue reading

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South Korea’s spymasters admit giving the former president cash

President and cashier

“WE WORK in the shadows to protect the sunlit land.” So ran the founding motto of South Korea’s most secretive agency, the National Intelligence Service (NIS), tasked with foiling North Korean plots. Recently other branches of government have been exposing the shadows to a little sunlight. Earlier this year massive protests led to the impeachment of the president, Park Geun-hye, who was found to have abused her authority for personal ends. Prosecutors investigating how far the rot went have discovered that successive directors of the NIS had been delivering bags of cash to Ms Park on a regular basis. Two have been arrested, pending trial; a third has been questioned.

All deny wrongdoing. Although they admit to handing over the money, they say they thought it was for some legitimate, if unknown, purpose. The payouts came from the NIS’s “special activity funds”. This money is set aside for classified operations, and is disbursed...Continue reading

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The Philippines has the most persistent poverty in South-East Asia

“JACKFRUIT is really good because you can make proper money from it,” confides Dominador Villasis, an elderly farmer whose fields lie near the town of Inopacan on the island of Leyte. Nineteen years since he planted his first tree, money from the fruit, which tastes faintly of pineapple with wafts of banana, has allowed him to swap a bicycle for a motorbike and to care for his extended family. Jackfruit trees can be planted alongside coconut palms, the main local crop, and a hectare of them can bring in $12,000 a year, says Joe Bacusmo of Visayas State University.

Leyte lies among the islands of the Eastern Visayas, one of the most deprived parts of the Philippines. About 30% of the people in the region are poor, according to the government; in the country as a whole the share is around 17%. This represents progress of a sort. Over the past three decades extreme poverty has more than halved in the Philippines by the World Bank’s measure. But several nearby countries, such as Vietnam,...Continue reading

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The Supreme Court takes up a major digital privacy case

FOR all its convenience, the digital age has made privacy an increasingly rare commodity. Search engines are familiar with users' favorite haunts. Internet service providers share individuals' web browsing habits with other companies. And as Timothy Carpenter found out when he was arrested for masterminding a string of armed robberies in 2011, mobile-phone companies have data showing roughly where their owners are at any point in time.  

On November 29th, the Supreme Court will consider whether Mr Carpenter’s constitutional rights were violated when authorities obtained several months of mobile-tower data placing him near the scene of the robberies in Michigan and Ohio. Under the Stored Communications Act of 1986, investigators who have “reasonable grounds to believe” that a suspect’s electronic data includes “specific and articulable facts” that are “relevant and material” to their investigation can secure an order compelling providers to hand it over. That’s a far easier bar to reach than reasonable...Continue reading

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Tax Reform Is a Game Changer for Buyouts

Proposed tax changes could shift incentives for private equity, changing how deal making is done in the U.S.

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Samsung's Tumble Sounds a Warning for Tech Stocks

The 5% fall in the Korean tech giant’s shares followed a mild analyst report on its outlook—a sign of the market’s current high state of nervousness.

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Julius Baer Loses CEO and Some of Its Luster

When a chief executive jumps ship suddenly it is a cause for concern. When that CEO had led an aggressive, acquisitive expansion, investors may worry even more. So it is with Boris Collardi’s departure from Julius Baer.

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Beijing is Making Its Most Serious Effort Yet to Tackle Its Financial-System Issues

New rules to crimp China’s ballooning shadow banking system are a healthy step. The government must persist through any market fallout.

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Will Investors' Low-Rate Mistake Kill the Stock Market?

Why are stocks so expensive? In part it may come down to a behavioral quirk that could be putting the market at risk.

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Investors Must Focus on Big Picture on Black Friday

There is a predictability to Black Friday stories each year, yet there also is a predictability to what they tell us about how stores will do over holidays—not much.

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The Keystone XL pipeline has won approval in Nebraska

IN THE nine years since Keystone XL was first proposed it has become the most political of pipelines, pitting environmentalists, ranchers and Native Americans against oil companies, state officials and unionists. Barack Obama’s administration delayed its construction in 2011, then rejected it in November 2015. Shipping oil from Canada’s tar sands, which is one of the dirtiest sources of crude, threatened to undercut the leadership role the government wanted to play on climate change. “So sad that Obama rejected Keystone Pipeline. Thousands of jobs, good for the environment, no downside!” tweeted Donald Trump, then a presidential candidate.

As soon as Mr Trump was in office he revived the proposal for a large tube running from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf of Mexico. Russell Girling, boss of TransCanada, the Canadian operator of Keystone, said he was “very relieved” to see the $8bn project finally approved. On November 20th Nebraska’s regulators had more good news for Mr Girling. The...Continue reading

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Teenagers are growing more anxious and depressed

BlackDog.gif

THE final bell rings at a high school in downtown Los Angeles, and nearly every pupil spilling onto the pavement either clutches a smartphone or studies a screen, head bowed. A group of boys strolls down the street laughing at a YouTube video, while a girl waiting for her lift home catches up with the Kardashian sisters on Instagram. Since 2007, when Apple released the first iPhone, such scenes have become the norm in America. The Pew Research Centre found that three-quarters of teens have access to a smartphone. According to one Facebook executive, millennials look at their phones on average more than 150 times a day.

Over the past decade, the number of American children and teenagers admitted to children’s hospitals for reporting suicidal thoughts has more than doubled. Some have not received help in time; after declining for years, the suicide rate for 15-to-19-year-olds shot up between 2007 and 2015, increasing by 31% for boys and more than...Continue reading

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Conservative lawyers are among the president’s biggest enablers

ADDRESSING over 2,000 conservative lawyers and friends at a banquet in central Washington, DC, last week, Neil Gorsuch was in jocular form. “If you’re going to have a meeting of a secret organisation, maybe don’t have it in the middle of Union Station!” quipped the newest Supreme Court judge. This was disingenuous. The reason many worry about the Federalist Society, the legal organisation whose annual bunfight Justice Gorsuch was addressing, is not because it is shadowy, but because its influence is vast, brazen and part of a wider politicising of the last branch of American democracy to succumb to partisanship. His speech suggested those worries are if anything underplayed.

Two things about it were most striking. First, the triumphalist tone Mr Gorsuch, a supposedly impartial steward of the constitution, struck in celebrating the legal philosophy and activism of a group closely linked to the Republican Party. “Tonight, I can report, a person can be both a committed originalist...Continue reading

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Replacing bail with an algorithm

Freedom just across the Jersey line

“HE WAS listed as a three, your honour.” “He’s a two on the raw score.” “On danger to the community, he scores a five.” The defendant, a lean, bearded man in an orange jumpsuit and shackles, sits next to his lawyer, listening intently to his rankings on a six-point scale. Welcome to the world of pre-trial hearings in New Jersey, which on January 1st became the first state to eliminate almost completely the use of bail. Instead of relying on hunches, or a fixed schedule matching bail amounts to crimes and lawyers’ arguments to set bail, judges there now use a nine-factor algorithm to assess whether a defendant is dangerous or likely to flee. Those thought to be in either category can be detained; the rest are released, but monitored.

Defenders of New Jersey’s experiment point to a dramatic decline in the state’s jail population, driven by a reduction in the number of poor, non-dangerous offenders who are...Continue reading

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A performer, a parasite and the prickliness of Egypt’s courts

Egypt’s terrorist sexpot

AFTER centuries of abuse, the Nile river will finally get its day in court. At a concert in the United Arab Emirates, a fan asked Sherine Abdel-Wahab to perform her patriotic song “Mashrebtesh Min Nilha?” (“Haven’t You Drunk From the Nile?”). The Egyptian chanteuse replied with a joke about the notoriously polluted river: “You’ll get bilharzia [a disease caused by parasitic worms] if you do.” Better to drink Evian, she said. It was sound advice. Though the government insists that the water is safe, people are often poisoned by it. But her comments sickened a lawyer called Hany Gad, who sued Ms Wahab for insulting Egypt. She will stand trial in December.

In many countries this case would be laughed out of court. No one has standing to sue on behalf of a resentful river. But in Egypt judges are often eager to restrict free speech and promote a paranoid strain of nationalism. In 2014 they investigated a puppet after...Continue reading

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Although persecuted, Sudan’s Christian population is growing

“IF SOUTH SUDAN secedes,” Omar al-Bashir told supporters at a rally in 2010, “we will change the constitution”, paying no attention to “diversity of culture”. The Sudanese president revisited the subject two years later. “Our template is clear: a 100% Islamic constitution,” he said in a speech to Muslim leaders in the capital, Khartoum. As for non-Muslims: “Nothing will preserve your rights except for Islamic sharia.”

The south seceded in 2011, taking with it most of Sudan’s Christians. After the split churches in the north were burned. Then came demolitions: at least 20 since 2011. Four took place in August this year. About 27 other churches are listed for bulldozing. The government says it is merely removing unlicensed buildings. But only churches seem to be getting knocked down. In any case, the government announced in 2013 that it would no longer grant licences for the construction of new churches. “Christians have no rights here any longer,” says Reverend Kuwa Shamal of the Sudanese Church of Christ, one...Continue reading

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Saudis applaud the anti-corruption drive, but investors fret

CHECKING into Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton usually costs about $300 per night. Checking out could cost the current guests billions. This month the Saudi authorities commandeered the hotel to serve as a gilded prison for more than 200 princes, ministers and businessmen held in an anti-corruption sweep. Though the kingdom has not released a list of suspects, some big names have been leaked. Among them are Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a billionaire investor; Khaled al-Tuwaijri, the former head of the royal court; and Waleed al-Ibrahim, the chairman of the region’s largest satellite broadcaster. The arrests were engineered by King Salman and his son, Muhammad, the young crown prince.

Some of the suspects could soon buy their way to freedom. A new anti-corruption committee, led by Prince Muhammad, is offering release in exchange for a portion of their assets. Officials hope to recover at least $50bn this way. That figure may be too optimistic, and represents only a fraction of what graft has cost the kingdom. Still, it would boost a government...Continue reading

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Decoding Donald Trump’s efforts to draw a road map for Israel and Palestine

How hard can this peace thing be anyway?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP casts himself as a master negotiator. But when he talks of trying to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians, he often sounds less confident. It is a “complex subject”, the “toughest deal of all”, said Mr Trump in September. Still, he rates his chances of success as “very, very good”.

A peace plan from the administration, expected in September, is now due in January. Mr Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner (pictured, centre), is leading the effort. He is being helped by Jason Greenblatt, the president’s envoy to the Middle East; David Friedman, the ambassador to Israel; and Dina Powell, a deputy national-security adviser. The first three are orthodox Jews who do not conceal their pro-Israel sympathies.

Initially dismissed as neophytes, the team has won over sceptics with its willingness to listen. Even the Palestinians admire their readiness to take...Continue reading

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Will Zimbabwe’s new president make things better?

IT TOOK time for the dancing and honking of horns to die down. After 37 years in power, Robert Mugabe resigned on November 21st. Long-suffering Zimbabweans went wild. But as the party ended, many began to ask whether and how his successor, Emmerson Mnangagwa, would be any better. Mr Mnangagwa, a former Mugabe henchman notorious for persecuting the opposition and for organising the rigging of elections, returned from a short exile on November 22nd, promising “a new democracy”. “We want to grow our economy, we want peace, we want jobs,” he told supporters in Harare, the capital.

Hope that Mr Mnangagwa will deliver any of these rests on two pillars. The first is that he plainly realises that Zimbabwe desperately needs economic help from abroad. The fiscal deficit, according to various analysts, is a whopping 12-15% of GDP. Inflation, variously measured, is 25-50%. Foreign reserves could run out in months. The infrastructure is falling apart. “Harare is the pothole capital of the...Continue reading

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Pictures of Robert Mugabe are being torn down all over Zimbabwe

ROBERT MUGABE SQUARE, a grassy patch in central Harare, will host a congress of Zimbabwe’s ruling party in December. Unforeseen events have made this an awkwardly named venue. Since Mr Mugabe was booted from power his comrades have scrubbed his image from the home page of the party’s website. As the congress tent goes up, everyone is trying to remember to call the spot by its informal name, Freedom Square. Like countless other places in Zimbabwe—including Harare’s airport—it had been renamed in honour of the man who bragged that he would rule until he died.

At the corner of Robert Mugabe Road and Rotten Row, a hawker describes how people celebrating Mr Mugabe’s ouster shimmied up poles to tear down street signs. Some kept them as souvenirs. Others stamped on them. “I saw one tied to a dead dog,” says Raymond Gotora, who sells bottled water and airtime at the intersection (the dog was hit by a car in a separate incident). “People now have a lot of freedom to express...Continue reading

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Sustainable investment joins the mainstream

IN 2008, when she was in her mid-20s and sitting on a $500m inheritance, Liesel Pritzker Simmons asked her bankers about “impact investing”. They fobbed her off. “They didn’t understand what I meant and offered to screen out tobacco,” recalls the Hyatt Hotels descendant, philanthropist and former child film star. So she fired her bankers and advisers and set up her own family office, Blue Haven Initiative. It seeks investments that both offer market-rate returns and have a positive impact on society and the environment. “Financially it’s sensible risk mitigation,” she says. “Our philanthropy becomes far more efficient if we don’t need to undo damage done in our investment management.”

Such ideas are gaining ground, particularly among the young. Fans of “socially responsible investment” (SRI) hope that millennials, the generation born in the 1980s and 1990s, will drag these concepts into the investment mainstream. SRI is a broad-brush term, that can be used to...Continue reading

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Italy’s new savings accounts fuel a boom in stockmarket listings

ITALY seems an unlikely place to be enjoying a boom in new listings on the stockmarket. It is full of family-run small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that mostly rely for their finance on banks; and Italy’s banks are notorious for the bad debts still lingering on their balance-sheets. But Borsa Italiana, Milan’s stock exchange, has already seen 33 share issues so far this year, of which 24 have been full-fledged initial public offerings (IPOs). The number of listings so far already equals that seen in previous boom years in 2007 or 2015. With more expected before January, the exchange is likely to achieve the highest number of listings since the height of the dotcom bubble in 2000 (see chart).

A big reason for the surge is the Italian government’s roll-out in February of new individual savings accounts, known as PIRs, which offer favourable tax treatment. These have done better than expected. Asset managers have amassed €7.5bn ($8.3bn) in new PIR funds in the first three quarters of...Continue reading

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A purge of Russia’s banks is not finished yet

Elvira’s mad again

WHEN Elvira Nabiullina took over the governorship of the Russian Central Bank (CBR) in 2013, she faced a bloated and leaky finance sector with over 900 banks. Since then, more than 340 have lost their licences. Another 35 have been rescued, including, in recent months, Otkritie, once the country’s biggest private lender by assets, and B&N Bank, its 12th largest. The costs have been steep. According to Fitch, a ratings agency, over 2.7trn roubles ($46bn, some 3.2% of GDP in 2016) have been spent on loans to rescued banks and payments to insured depositors. Fitch reckons another few hundred banks could go before the clean-up concludes. More large private banks are whispered to be among them.

The CBR has rightly been praised for preventing a wider crisis and undertaking a clean-up during a punishing recession. Non-performing loans are at a manageable level, of around 10%. Bringing Otkritie and B&N under CBR stewardship calmed panicked markets. Yet nationalisation also raises...Continue reading

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Wealth inequality has been widening for millennia

THE one-percenters are now gobbling up more of the pie in America—that much is well known. This trend, though disconcerting, is not unique to the modern era. A new study, by Timothy Kohler of Washington State University and 17 others, finds that inequality may well have been rising for several thousand years, at least in some parts of the world. The scholars examined 63 archaeological sites and estimated the levels of wealth inequality in the societies whose remains were dug up, by studying the distributions of house sizes.

As a measure they used the Gini coefficient (a perfectly equal society would have a Gini coefficient of zero). It rose from about 0.2 around 8000BC in Jerf el-Ahmar, on the Euphrates in modern-day Syria, to 0.5 in around 79AD in Pompeii. Data on burial goods, though sparse, point to similar trends.

The researchers suggest agriculture is to blame. The nomadic lifestyle is not conducive to wealth accumulation. Only when humans switched to farming did people...Continue reading

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Does Hong Kong’s Octopus card have too many tentacles?

Your extensible friend

IN 1997, two months after Hong Kong reverted to Chinese sovereignty, it acquired a cutting-edge payment technology. People could rush through turnstiles with a wave of their colourful Octopus cards—stored-value cards pre-loaded with cash. Its latest advance, however, is risibly low-tech. On October 30th Octopus launched an extensible pole with a plastic hand to help drivers pay at toll booths. Critics of Hong Kong’s cautious approach to fintech snorted in derision. Meanwhile, a government official was quoted as blaming Octopus for stifling the city’s shift to cashlessness. Both criticisms are unfair. Hong Kongers enthusiastically embrace electronic payments and do well from the fierce competition between different platforms.

The Octopus card, designed for journeys on Hong Kong’s trains, buses, trams and ferries, soon stretched its tentacles into shops. In 2016 the company generated revenues of HK$956m ($122m) for its owners (mostly...Continue reading

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How to survive as a bank in Afghanistan

ECONOMISTS think of the opportunity cost of money as one reason to hold a bank deposit: rather than skulk under a mattress, cash could earn interest. In volatile, war-torn Afghanistan, neither option appeals. Money has to be kept secure somehow, but a bad bank might make off with its depositors’ money. In 2010 Kabul Bank collapsed after a spree of insider loans to shareholders, including a brother of the then president. A central-bank bail-out cost nearly 7% of GDP. Much of the nearly $1bn stolen has not been recovered.

A bank that customers trust, though, is in a strong position. So Afghanistan International Bank (AIB) does not pay any interest on its deposits, says Anthony Barned, its British chief executive. AIB was set up by the Asian Development Bank and private investors in 2004, and is the largest private bank in Afghanistan, holding $790m in deposits, around one-fifth of the country’s deposit base. It is also the most profitable.

As the only private institution with a dollar-clearing facility with big...Continue reading

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