Healthy Skepticism About Walmart and Humana

There is a method to the madness of retailers that want to buy health insurers, but Wall Street still isn’t crazy about it.

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Retailers' Tariff Troubles May Undo Recent Gains

Tariffs on imports from China threaten to wipe out the benefits of tax cuts and a strong holiday season.

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Can K-pop bring the two Koreas closer together?

K-POP is a serious business, especially when put to the service of peace, mutual understanding and denuclearisation. So the three-day visit beginning on April 1st that will bring some of South Korea’s biggest stars to Pyongyang to play a joint concert with North Korean colleagues needed careful preparation. Before southern officials went to check out the venues, an advance party of South Korean performers discussed line-up, staging and the delicate question of costumes with their northern counterparts. Both sides were keen to avoid the hiccups at similar previous events. In 2003, the last time a southern songster delegation went north, the bare skin they displayed left northern officials nonplussed. This time the task is to “make sure nothing is awkward”, said Yoon Sang, a musician and producer who is leading the southern jamboree. 

 

Awkwardness is the last thing the government of President Moon Jae-in, which has been angling for the visit since a troupe of North Korean artists performed at the...Continue reading

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Israel has killed over a dozen Palestinians in Gaza

IT WAS billed as the “Great Return March”, the first step in the return of Palestinians in Gaza to the homes their grandparents lived in before Israel’s establishment in 1948. But there was little marching. Most of the estimated 30,000 Palestinians who showed up on March 30th set up tents about half a kilometre from a border fence erected by Israel. They remained there, on the Gaza side, listening to Palestinian politicians make impassioned speeches. Some protesters played football.

Israel warned the Palestinians not to get within 300 metres of the fence and said that it would see any attempt to cut through it as an act of violence. Small groups of Palestinians nevertheless moved closer. When some tried to dart all the way to the fence, the Israeli army dropped tear-gas grenades from small drones and Israeli snipers opened fire. According to the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza, at least 13 people were killed and hundreds hurt.

This was meant to be the first in a series of marches over the next six and a half weeks. They are...Continue reading

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Why Advertisers Won't Rush to Unfriend Facebook

As frustrated as advertisers may be with Facebook these days, a bigger challenge may be finding a suitable alternative.

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Why 2018's Profits May Disappoint

Thanks to the U.S. tax overhaul, first-quarter earnings are going to be very good. But analysts are too optimistic that the goodness will persist through the following quarters.

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Why Investors Are Too Negative on Banks

Bank stocks have been hit hard in recent market declines, despite good business outlooks.

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Barclays Gets Penalty It Can Live With

Barclays’s decision to stand up to the U.S. Justice Department over accusations that it improperly sold mortgage bonds has paid off.

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Why Banks Will Cheer CME Snapping Up NEX

Companies that run financial plumbing are doing their best to improve the flow of global liquidity. Bank executives will thus have high hopes for the latest takeover between exchanges.

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The Supreme Court struggles with partisan redistricting

THE toughest part of being a Supreme Court justice is not deciding who wins. It is writing the opinion explaining why the winning party should prevail. And since Supreme Court decisions serve as guides to courts in future cases, a majority opinion needs to do more than provide a justification for why A wins over B. It must anticipate similar cases that could arise and draw lines showing how those ought to be resolved.

On March 28th, in a case contesting Maryland map from 2011 that painted a solidly red congressional district blue, the justices seemed to feel a particularly heavy burden. This is not surprising. Benisek v Lamone marks the second time the court has stepped into an electoral politics minefield this term, and in three months’ time, the justices must decide whether to try to put the brakes on partisan gerrymandering—a scourge of American democracy whereby politicians rig elections in their own favour. The problem is, defusing some mines risks tripping others.

Benisek concerns a rather brazen move by Maryland...Continue reading

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Donald Trump ousts David Shulkin as VA secretary

“WE’LL never have to use those words on our David" said Donald Trump last June. He was referring to his reality-television catchphrase, “You’re fired”, and David Shulkin, his secretary of veterans affairs. But on March 28th Mr Shulkin was fired, by tweet, and Mr Trump announced that Ronny Jackson (pictured), his personal doctor and a career naval officer, would succeed him. Mr Shulkin, the lone member of Barack Obama’s cabinet still in the job, had been in a precarious position since news emerged in February of a luxurious trip to Europe last year, taken on the taxpayer’s dime. The ensuing controversy revealed a VA department in a state of revolt. Staffers were disobeying Mr Shulkin’s direct orders and were, in his telling, scheming to subvert him. But veteran affairs groups, which exert an unusual degree of influence in Washington, DC, supported Mr Shulkin because they considered him a bulwark against the creeping privatisation of veterans’ health-care services (which are currently operated through a single purchaser which owns its...Continue reading

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There's Much to Fear As Brexit Nears

At a time when tariffs and the upending of global trade deals are a key risk, the U.K.’s coming exit from the European Union points to the complexity and cost of withdrawing from trade agreements.

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Uruguay’s record-setting economic growth streak

AFTER long recessions, Brazil and Argentina still cheer when good economic news comes out. In tiny Uruguay, sandwiched between them, it is old hat. On March 22nd the central bank reported that GDP grew by 2.7% in 2017, bringing the country’s growth streak to 15 years, the longest expansion in its history. Uruguay’s growth since 2011, when global prices of commodities started to fall, puts its neighbours to shame (see chart). Its success shows the value of openness, strong institutions and investment in know-how.

Uruguay’s most recent economic disaster was in 2002, after Argentina defaulted on its debt. Argentines pulled their money out of banks in Uruguay, triggering a bank run there. Thanks to a bail-out from the IMF, it avoided default. That won it a lot of trust with investors, says Jesko Hentschel, the World Bank’s director for Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Thereafter, Uruguay’s leaders realised that the economy needed to diversify. The Broad Front (FA), a leftist coalition that has governed since 2005, began an...Continue reading

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How AMLO could win Mexico’s election

WHEN campaigning for Mexico’s general election officially begins on March 30th, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a left-wing populist, will be the clear front-runner for the presidency. His two main challengers are political moderates, but their rivalry is no less bitter for that. One is backed by the government. The other is feeling heat from the federal prosecutor. To many Mexicans, that smacks of political bias. It also increases the chances that Mr López Obrador will win the presidency—a prospect that terrifies markets and puts economic reforms in jeopardy.

On February 21st the office of the acting attorney-general, Alberto Elías Beltrán, confirmed that it was investigating a property deal involving Ricardo Anaya, the brainy presidential candidate of the centre-right National Action Party (PAN). This has shaken up a campaign in which the main issues are crime and corruption.

Few voters think that José Antonio Meade, the nominee of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), is the best candidate to tackle these...Continue reading

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Peru’s President Pedro Pablo the Brief

EVER since it began in July 2016 the presidency of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in Peru looked like an accident waiting to happen. He squeaked into a run-off election only after his supporters in Peru’s media and business establishment helped to press the electoral authority to disqualify a more popular rival, Julio Guzmán. After he unexpectedly defeated Keiko Fujimori, a conservative populist, in the run-off by just 0.2% of the vote, she exercised her pique by using the congressional majority gained by her Popular Force (FP) party to harass Mr Kuczynski’s government. After narrowly surviving one impeachment attempt in December last year, PPK (as Peruvians know him) resigned on March 21st when defeat in another became inevitable. Having served just 20 months, he became the 19th elected president in Latin America in the past 30 years to fail to complete his term.

Many of these were victims of the instability inherent in Latin America’s unique combination of directly elected presidents and legislatures chosen by proportional representation. This...Continue reading

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Nvidia Feels the Pain of Tech's Great Success

Nvidia investors are learning that the chipmaker’s big new market opportunities also bring big new risks.

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Fifteen bloody years after America’s invasion, Iraq is getting back on its feet

WHISKY is back on the tables in Mosul, one of Iraq’s biggest cities. Until last year, boozing was punishable with 80 lashes. These days a refurbished hotel with a nightclub on the roof, set in a wood that had sheltered the high command of the so-called Islamic State (IS), is fully booked. Shops around the ruins of Mosul’s university have new fronts. Families queue at restaurants on the banks of the Tigris. There is not a niqab, or face-veil, in sight.

The revival of Mosul is a metaphor for Iraq as a whole. When IS captured the city in 2014, Iraq seemed a lost cause. Its armed forces had fled. The government controlled less than half the country and the jihadists stood primed to march into Baghdad. With the collapse of oil prices in 2015, the government was broke. Iraq was a byword for civil war, sectarianism and the implosion of the Arab state order established at the end of the first world war.

Now Iraq, home to nearly 40m people, is righting itself. Its forces have routed the...Continue reading

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Europe is sending African migrants home. Will they stay?

ONCE considered the smartest hangout in town, the Benin Plaza motel in southern Nigeria’s Benin City has seen better days. Its chalet-style rooms are normally empty, and the Moat Bar, which promises “groovy nights and exotic cocktails”, has fallen into disrepair.

For the Plaza’s recent influx of guests, though, the motel is the first comfortable night they have had in rather a long time. Requisitioned by the government for migrants repatriated from Libya, it offers new arrivals free accommodation for a few days while they find their feet.

The repatriation programme is part of a joint UN and EU effort to stem the flow of migrants to Europe. It encourages those who have made it to Libya to go home voluntarily, rather than risk a rickety boat across the Mediterranean. People who turn back get a free flight—cutting out the need for a perilous return journey across the Sahara.

The programme, launched in December 2016, repatriated some 15,000 migrants to various west African countries in its first year. Most of them were in...Continue reading

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How illegal charcoal fuels war and harms the environment

DRESSED in a faded T-shirt bearing the face of the American rapper 50 Cent, Samson Okenye leans on a shovel in Nyakweri forest in south-western Kenya. A 62-year-old from the Rift Valley, he has a new gig for his retirement. Having worked in a factory for most of his life, he is now chopping down trees and burning them for charcoal. He sells each bag he produces from his crude earthen kilns for 400 Kenyan shillings (about $4). Men carry it off on motorbikes to Nairobi, the capital, and Kisumu, Kenya’s third-largest city.

Charcoal is one of the biggest informal businesses in Africa. It is the fuel of choice for the continent’s fast-growing urban poor, who, in the absence of electricity or gas, use it to cook and heat water. According to the UN, Africa accounted for three-fifths of the world’s production in 2012—and this is the only region where the business is growing. It is, however, a slow-burning environmental disaster.

In Nyakweri, the trees are ancient and rare. Samwel Naikada, a local activist, points at a blackened stump...Continue reading

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The success of “Black Panther” is spurring demand for African comics

SINCE the release of “Black Panther”, a film based on a Marvel comic, internet searches for African travel have spiked. But those seeking the African kingdom over which the titular superhero reigns will be disappointed. Wakanda does not exist, unless one counts a water park of that name in Wisconsin.

Africa has been affected in more tangible ways by “Black Panther”, which has a predominantly black cast and is one of the highest-grossing superhero movies of all time. Its popularity extends to the continent, where filmgoers from Lagos to Nairobi dress in Afro-futurist garb for screenings. Fashion designers have received a boost from the film’s distinctive mix of traditional and contemporary African styles.

African comic-book artists are perhaps the biggest beneficiaries. Take “Kwezi”, a comic by Loyiso Mkize about a South African superhero who battles baddies in Gold City, a proxy for Johannesburg. Kwezi is a cocky teenager, but as his powers grow he draws closer to his ancestors and embraces his heritage. South Africans love it; bookshops sell out fast. At one in Johannesburg, customers demand versions in Zulu and Xhosa (which, incidentally, is what Wakandans speak in the film). “Our superhero”, says a display box.

Bill Masuku, the Zimbabwean creator of a comic about a vigilante superhero called Razor-Man, says “Black Panther”...Continue reading

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Banking System Alarm Bell That Doesn't Signal Danger

A crisis-era red light is flashing and provoking old fears about banks. But the world has changed a lot since 2008: this signal no longer means banks are struggling to find cash.

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Appalled by a chemical attack on Britain, western governments expel Russian diplomats

 

IT IS one thing to stand defiant and aloof on the world stage, another to be a pariah. That is the message that Western governments hope President Vladimir Putin will absorb as he digests the co-ordinated expulsion of over 130 Russian diplomats by more than two dozen countries, in response to a nerve-agent attack in Britain. America’s decision to throw out 60 Russian officials accused of spying under diplomatic cover was that country’s largest such action, exceeding even expulsions in the chilliest years of the cold war. President Donald Trump’s government also ordered the Russian consulate in Seattle to close, citing its proximity to a nuclear submarine base and to the headquarters of Boeing, an aircraft maker.

Foreign leaders, notably those from Britain, France and Germany, used a European Union summit and a flurry of telephone diplomacy to urge allies to act in concert. Suspected spooks were given their marching orders from Oslo to Ottawa, and from Copenhagen to Canberra. New Zealand shyly admitted it knew of no undeclared...Continue reading

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Catalonia’s separatist leader is arrested in Germany

SPAIN’S intelligence service was humiliated last year when it failed to stop supporters of Carles Puigdemont’s separatist Catalan government from smuggling in ballot boxes for an unconstitutional independence referendum. The spies got their revenge on March 25th when they tipped off German police, who arrested Mr Puigdemont after he drove across the border from Denmark. He was remanded to prison and is likely to be extradited to Spain within two months.

Mr Puigdemont’s arrest ended five months of self-imposed exile, mostly in Belgium, after he organised a post-referendum declaration of independence on October 27th. It came two days after a judge of the supreme court in Madrid charged Mr Puigdemont and 24 other separatist leaders with crimes ranging from rebellion to disobedience. He sent five to prison (four more were already there) and ordered European arrest warrants against six, including Mr Puigdemont.

Tens of thousands demonstrated in Barcelona to denounce what they see as repression of a peaceful, democratic cause. A...Continue reading

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Noroc (cheers) for Moldovan wine

Bowled over by Moldovan plonk

“LET’S try this!” Victor Bostan selects a 1984 red from the cellar of his Purcari winery. He is in a bullish mood. Last month Purcari shares began trading on the Bucharest stock exchange. In 2017 sales from his four wineries were up 35% on 2016. Bad weather in the big western European winemaking countries caused production to plummet to its lowest level in 60 years. But in Moldova, where the weather was good, producers can scarcely contain their excitement at how well things are going.

In Soviet days almost all Moldovan wine went to the rest of the Soviet Union. In the 1980s its vineyards were uprooted when Mikhail Gorbachev began his anti-alcoholism campaign. With the collapse of the Soviet Union much of Moldova’s industry also collapsed; but the wine and brandy businesses did not. Indeed, says Mr Bostan, these were the best times ever. Russia, to which 80% of the country’s booze went, had an unslakable thirst for it. “It was like pumping oil from the...Continue reading

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How the Dutch will take Britain’s place in Europe

“ALL the North Sea’s people are connected to each other,” muses Hans de Boer, president of VNO-NCW, the Dutch business lobby, as he gazes from his 12th-floor office in The Hague. It is not a bad place for a Dutchman to consider the consequences of Brexit. The port of Rotterdam, Europe’s busiest, is just visible in the morning haze. Eighty thousand Dutch firms trade with Britain; 162,000 lorries thunder between the two countries each year. Rabobank, a Dutch lender, calculates that even a soft Brexit could lop 3% off GDP by 2030. Bar Ireland, no country will suffer more. “Brexit was not our preferred option,” offers Mr de Boer, drily.

Dutch governments spent the 1950s and 1960s trying to get their British friends into the European club; when Britain voted to leave, in June 2016, some wondered if they might drag the Dutch out with them. The EU’s economic and migration traumas had tested the patience of voters for years, and Mark Rutte, prime minister since 2010, seemed unwilling to make the...Continue reading

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How “identitarian” politics is changing Europe

THE Flemish city of Ghent is so packed with medieval antiquities that it is in no danger of forgetting its history. Nonetheless, cultural identity is a burning political issue there. On March 22nd marchers led by a conservative Flemish student group, the Nationalist Student Union (NSV), filed into the square of the Cathedral of St Bavo. The march was a protest over the large number of murders of white South African farmers by blacks. It was also part of a growing movement led by young European activists aimed at reshaping identity politics, long the province of the left, into a right-wing cause.

White Afrikaners, like Flemings, speak a form of Dutch, so there is a cultural bond. The NSV, founded in 1976 as part of the Flemish independence movement, wanted to show solidarity with them, said Bavo Janssens, one of the group’s leaders. Behind him flew flags bearing the Flemish lion and a banner reading “ANC murderers”. In a jab at multiculturalism everywhere, Mr Janssens said the Belgian media were too politically correct to admit that “the...Continue reading

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Asia’s small open economies may suffer in America’s trade war

CHINA is the stated adversary in Donald Trump’s incipient trade war. But 30% of the value of the goods China exports to America is added elsewhere. If the row escalates, countries entwined in Chinese supply chains will suffer.

In absolute terms, Japanese suppliers will fare worst. Japan is the country that exports most to firms in China that export onwards to America. But relative to economic size, such suppliers are a bigger part of several small, open Asian economies (see chart). Between 1% and 2% of some countries’ total output is shipped first to China and then on to America. If Chinese exports to America were to fall by 10%—an extreme but not impossible scenario—it could knock 0.1-0.2 percentage points off their economic growth.

China’s competitors in industries that have been threatened with tariffs, namely aerospace, machinery and IT, however, would benefit. There are many of these in Mexico, Germany and Japan. Tariffs also encourage companies to switch their investment plans....Continue reading

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Wakandanomics

“THIS will require a quick lesson in global economics…bear with me,” says Erik Killmonger, the muscular villain in “Black Panther”, a long-running Marvel Comics series. In that saga and the recent film it inspired, Killmonger and the Black Panther vie for the throne of Wakanda, a fictional African kingdom little known to the outside world. A land of great wealth and technological sophistication, it lends itself to several quick lessons in economics. Bear with us.

The source of Wakanda’s riches is its “great mound” of vibranium, a versatile ore left behind by a meteor strike, which can absorb sound and motion. Like other deposits of natural treasure, Wakanda’s vibranium attracts some vicious intruders. But unlike some other resource-rich countries, Wakanda has never succumbed to outside foes.

That has helped it escape the “resource curse”, in which natural riches keep a country poor by crowding out manufacturing or ushering in predatory government. The curse is...Continue reading

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America’s trade strategy has many risks and few upsides

AMERICA’S president claims to view China as a friend. But the friendship is going through a rocky patch, to say the least. America’s trade deficit with China, “the largest deficit in the history of our world”, is “out of control”, Donald Trump groused on March 22nd. “A tremendous intellectual-property theft situation” also irks him. And so, after laying out his concerns, he announced plans for some tough love. Litigation against China at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), investment restrictions and tariffs are all on the cards.

The announcement early in March of tariffs on steel and aluminium imports to America was chaotic, even prompting the resignation of Gary Cohn, the head of Mr Trump’s National Economic Council. The latest targeting of China, by contrast, is the culmination of months of planning and commands broader support. It was masterminded by Robert Lighthizer, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) and a seasoned trade lawyer. As a deputy USTR under Ronald Reagan...Continue reading

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China wants to reshape the global oil market

TRADITIONALLY, to count as an oil power a country had to be a big producer of the black stuff. China is the world’s biggest importer but still wants to break into that exclusive club. On March 26th it launched a crude futures contract in a bid to gain more clout in the global market. Some think that, if successful, the yuan could start to displace the dollar in oil trading. For now, though, that is fanciful.

A previous attempt by China to introduce oil futures, in the early 1990s, failed because of unstable pricing. This time regulators prepared methodically. To ward off speculators, notorious in Chinese markets, they made the storage of oil very expensive. Volumes were light in the first few days of trading—less than a tenth of the averages for similar contracts in New York and London. But all went smoothly. It was a good, if modest, start.

China has two goals. The basic one is to help its companies hedge against volatility. Chinese refiners and traders have struggled to...Continue reading

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India’s economy is back on track. Can it pick up speed?

Along for the ride

IT IS easy to be awed by the Indian railway network. The 23m passengers it carries daily travel, in total, over ten times the distance to the sun and back. It is just as easy to find it unimpressive. Delays are frequent and trains antiquated. It takes 14 hours to get from India’s capital, Delhi, to its commercial hub, Mumbai. The equivalent trip in China—from Beijing to Shanghai, a similar distance—takes just over four hours.

Similarly, India’s economy can be seen in two lights. Its long-term growth rate of 7% a year has proved far more dependable than the rail timetable. GDP has doubled twice in the past two decades. Yet deep poverty still lingers and jobs are scarce. And Indian growth has been left in the dust by the Chinese express (see chart).

After slow running for much of 2017, India is now near to full throttle. Growth of 7.2% in the three months to December put it ahead of China (which grew at a relatively leisurely 6.8%) and...Continue reading

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The average American is much better off now than four decades ago

JUST how bad have the past four decades been for ordinary Americans? One much-cited figure suggests they have been pretty bad. The Census Bureau estimates that for the median household, halfway along the distribution, income has barely grown in real terms since 1979. But a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a non-partisan think-tank, gives a cheerier rise of 51% for median household income between 1979 and 2014. Which is nearer to reality?

The gap between the two is accounted for by three methodological differences (see chart). First, the CBO takes demography into account. This seems sensible: more Americans are living alone and American women are having fewer children, so households have fewer mouths to feed.

The second is that the CBO uses the personal-consumption expenditures (PCE) index to measure inflation, whereas the Census Bureau uses the consumer-price index (CPI). These differ in two main ways. The CPI includes only what consumers spend on themselves, whereas the...Continue reading

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Insurers and undertakers profit as people prepay their last bill

With all the trimmings

“WHEN are you thinking of dying?” asks John Cleese, a British comedian, in a recent television ad. Dressed as the Grim Reaper, he addresses the viewer as he prepares a cup of tea. “Your loved ones could be left all alone and distressed and facing a whacking great bill,” he warns. His advice? Phone in and buy a funeral plan.

As populations age, ads of this sort, imploring people to make financial preparations for their demise, are appearing on both sides of the Atlantic. Some 1.3m Britons now have a pre-paid funeral plan, up from just over 400,000 in 2005. An estimated 2.5m more have a funeral-insurance policy. Millions of Americans prepay some or all of their funeral costs.

The average American funeral now costs nearly $9,000, according to the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA). In Britain prices have risen by 5.5% on average each year over the past decade, faster than inflation. Add to that stories in the press of...Continue reading

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Pakistan’s top court is eager to take on any brief

Judge, benefactor, milkman

THE chief justice of Pakistan, Saqib Nisar, peers through a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles at the ingredients list on a packet of powdered milk, shakes his head in sadness and then shoos 20 lawyers for the industry away from the bench. He has a busy schedule. Consumed in recent months by a mission to deliver “clean air, clean water and pure milk” to Pakistan, the 64-year-old is spending a Saturday hearing 16 cases that he has taken up suo motu, or on his own initiative. Crowds throng the courthouse in Lahore, the capital of the state of Punjab, drawn by the spectacle of a judge dispensing verdicts like a king. The powder, he rules, must be relabelled post-haste. After milk, he turns to the owners of a factory allegedly dumping effluent into a river. An elderly villager in a white turban breaks forward, begging the justice to punish them. “I cannot let my children be poisoned,” thunders Mr Nisar (pictured).

Mr Nisar is not Pakistan’s first celebrity judge. In...Continue reading

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Nepalese nationalists force a Bollywood muscleman to retreat

The president of the Philippines wants to close paradise

STAND where the warm sea laps the gleaming white sand of the 4km-long beach on the resort island of Boracay and whip out your selfie stick. You can capture an image of yourself against the impossibly beautiful backdrop of an orange sun dropping from a pink sky into a deep blue sea. Or you could, if the parasailors and banana-boat riders would only get out of the way. And then there is the local feature that your camera cannot capture: the peculiar whiff wafting up from the water at your feet.

“Boracay is a cesspool,” President Rodrigo Duterte declared, with customary frankness, in a speech last month. “You go into the water, it’s smelly. Smells of what? Shit.” Look down, and your toes curl up in the green algae washed ashore from the shallows where it grows, fed by sewage that seeps untreated into the sea from the resorts and ancillary businesses that cram the island. Look up, and you see the start of the evening parade of tourists up and down the beach-front. They are Chinese or Koreans,...Continue reading

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India spends a fortune on defence and gets poor value for money

IN FEBRUARY India quietly passed a milestone. The release of its annual budget showed that defence spending, at $62bn, has swept past that of its former colonial master, Britain. Only America, China, Saudi Arabia and Russia lavish more on their soldiers. For nearly a decade India has also been the world’s top importer of arms. In terms of active manpower and the number of ships and planes, its armed forces are already among the world’s top five.

Measured by ambition, India may rank higher still. Its military doctrine envisages fighting simultaneous land wars against Pakistan and China while retaining dominance in the Indian Ocean. Having revealed its nuclear hand in 1998 with a series of tests, India has developed its own ground-hugging cruise missiles and is trying to perfect submarine-launched intercontinental ones, too. Since the Hindu nationalist party of the prime minister, Narendra Modi, took power in 2014 it has also adopted a more muscular posture. Last summer it sparred with China atop the Himalayas in the tensest stand-off in...Continue reading

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China’s Communist Party meets the world

A spate of hiring, firing and quitting leaves fewer checks on Donald Trump’s impulses

THE revolving door of Donald Trump’s administration is spinning fast. In the past couple of weeks the president has fired his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster (pictured, top left), and his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, and lost his chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn (bottom left), who resigned after failing to stop Mr Trump putting tariffs on aluminium and steel. John Dowd, the top lawyer representing the president in Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference, has also quit. Mr Trump is trying to hire his fifth communications director, following the resignation of Hope Hicks.

While such turnover is rarely good for morale or the crafting of coherent policy, a bigger problem lurks. The replacement cast will now be made up of advisers who could indulge Mr Trump’s worst instincts on national security, trade and legal defence rather than temper them. The next phase of his presidency could therefore be one of the unfettered id: Trump unbound.

Start with national security. In place of Mr McMaster, a...Continue reading

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How the Supreme Court and the next census could affect the electoral map

AS LONG as elections have been held, candidates have sought to bend the rules to their advantage. American political parties have taken gerrymandering to new heights, using computer models that enable districts to be crafted block by block for maximum partisan gain. The Supreme Court is now taking notice, having accepted two cases that question whether it is constitutional for legislators to choose their voters, rather than the other way round. But Republicans, whose victories in 2010 put them in a position to doctor far more districts than Democrats have, are taking no chances. A change to the questionnaire for the decennial census in 2020 is expected to increase the share of districts whose voters prefer Republicans.

The Supreme Court has ruled on gerrymandering before. In 2004 a majority of the justices agreed that it should be reined in, but they could not decide how. Now they are poised to re-evaluate that question.

On March 28th they were to hear Benisek v Lamone, a case pitting Republican voters in...Continue reading

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How and where growing numbers of Americans are taking their own lives

A bridge too fatal

THIRTY-THREE people leapt from the Golden Gate Bridge last year, plunging 75 metres to their deaths. Yet the tally could have been much worse. Another 245 contemplating suicide were talked down by the police patrols who diligently comb America’s most famous suicide site. Plans to construct a suicide-prevention barrier (a large net) have now been agreed on: it will be completed in 2021 and cost $204m.

Though jumping is a relatively rare way to end one’s life, it is on the rise. There were 1,123 such deaths in 2016 compared with 788 in 2010. The same trend holds for suicides by gunshot, overdose and hanging, according to an analysis by The Economist of mortality files from the Centres for Disease Control. In almost every demographic category—men and women, young Asians and elderly whites, city dwellers and rural folk—the problem is getting worse.

In nearly all other OECD countries, suicide has declined since 2000...Continue reading

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Republican governors try to avoid holding special elections

“WE SHOULD call him Walker the Rigger,” fumes Martha Laning. The chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin is up in arms about plans by Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s Republican governor, to change a law so that Republicans can avoid losing another special election. “He has already rigged the system so much that he thought he would not have to worry any more,” says Ms Laning, referring to districts gerrymandered to favour Republicans, which voters are challenging at the Supreme Court (see article), and voter-identification laws that make it harder for minorities and poor people to vote.

Until a few months ago Mr Walker expected to cruise to re-election in November for a rare third term. Yet the year started with a shock for him. In January a historically Republican district in a rural western region in Wisconsin voted for Patty Schachtner,...Continue reading

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Republicans seek alternatives to Obamacare’s pricey insurance markets

Religion to the rescue

REPUBLICANS may have abolished the “individual mandate”, an unpopular part of Obamacare that fines Americans for not buying health insurance. But most of the law’s rickety architecture remains intact. Having given up, for now, on sweeping legislative reform, the Trump administration and Republican-leaning states are seeking ways to help consumers circumvent the law.

During the latest annual enrolment period, which ran from November 1st to December 15th, just before the individual mandate was repealed, 11.8m Americans signed up for coverage on Obamacare’s “exchanges”. Several million more will have bought similar plans direct from insurers. These markets are designed so that anyone, however ill, can buy generous coverage at the same price as a healthy person. The individual mandate was designed to bring in enough low-risk customers to make the market profitable for insurers. Without it, enrolments for 2019 are likely to fall (though no one...Continue reading

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Why Donald Trump is unlikely to start a catastrophic conflict

AFTER Donald Trump gave the order to fire 59 cruise missiles at an air base in Syria last year, no one seemed more surprised than the president himself. Ordering military action wasn’t like deciding to buy a building, he mused on CBS News. “These decisions are unbelievable—you know, in terms of importance because it’s human—it’s…it’s…it’s killing. I hate it.” Is it credible that someone so shocked and tremulous after launching a strike that mangled a few planes and killed fewer than a dozen people could start a war in North Korea or Iran that might claim hundreds of thousands of lives?

Mr Trump seems to want people to think so. Despite denouncing America’s invasion of Iraq as “the single worst decision ever made” earlier this month, he has hired as his national security adviser one of the few people who still defends it. John Bolton has also advocated pre-emptive strikes against North Korea and Iran. “When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you don’t wait until it...Continue reading

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Can Spanish avoid America’s language graveyard?

IN A sunny classroom scattered with Spanish translations of “Green Eggs and Ham” and Spanish-English dictionaries, Anabel Barrón reads aloud to her second-grade class from a book about penguins. “Y los pingüinos vuelan?” she asked. “No, they don’t fly!” answered an eager boy with a neat crew cut. “En español, por favor, Justin,” Ms Barrón gently chided him.

The classroom is one of several that offers bilingual instruction at the Sandra Cisneros Campus, a charter school in the Echo Park neighbourhood of Los Angeles that serves mostly Latino children. Kindergarteners in its dual-immersion programme spend 80% of their days in Spanish and 20% in English. Each subsequent year they spend an extra 10% of their time in English until fifth grade, when 70% of their instruction is in English and 30% in Spanish.

The original theory underpinning such programmes was that they helped Spanish-dominant children perform better by easing them into English. Today, says Melissa Mendoza, the school’s principal, Latino parents are seeking...Continue reading

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Italy’s populists edge closer to forming a government

THE first duty of a newly elected Speaker of the chamber of deputies, Italy’s lower house, is to visit the president in his palace on the Quirinal hill. On March 24th Roberto Fico of the maverick Five Star Movement (M5S) was chosen for the job. But instead of following custom by slipping into an official limousine for the one-kilometre journey, Mr Fico walked up with his partner.

His election signalled not just a change of style, but a shift in the political landscape that shortened the odds on an all-populist government emerging from the consultations that President Sergio Mattarella is to initiate after Easter. Mr Fico, who began in politics as an environmental activist, won with the help of the populist-right Northern League and Silvio Berlusconi’s conservative Forza Italia party. Yet more strikingly, his colleagues in the Senate voted to make Elisabetta Casellati the new Senate president. Ms Casellati was the candidate of an electoral alliance including the League and Forza Italia. She is known for her loyalty to Mr Berlusconi, whose...Continue reading

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More market volatility seems likely

“FASTEN your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.” Those famous lines of Bette Davis in “All About Eve” may turn out to be the motto for the markets in 2018. After the “volatility vortex” in February, sparked by concerns about inflation, markets have thrown a “tariff tantrum” after President Donald Trump sparked fears of a trade war with China.

In February stocks sank on heavy hints of American levies on imported steel and aluminium. The prospect of trade measures against China, signalled on March 22nd, again hit shares. Then reports that China and America were making progress in trade talks caused the S&P 500 index to rise by 2.7% on March 26th, its best day since August 2015. It promptly fell again by 1.7% the next day (see chart).

Further volatility seems likely, not least after the appointment of John Bolton, an ultra-hawk on foreign policy, as Mr Trump’s national security adviser. That raises the possibility of increased tension with North Korea, despite the...Continue reading

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We have seen the future and it twerks

CYNTHIA NIXON is the latest celebrity to run for office in America; the “Sex and the City” star is trying to be governor of New York. If she succeeds, she will follow in a long line of celebrities-turned-politicians including Sonny Bono, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse Ventura and most notably, Presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.

This may not be a uniquely American phenomenon. Beppe Grillo, a comedian, launched the Five Star movement, now Italy's biggest party. Silvio Berlusconi cultivated the celebrity style. George Weah, a footballer, has just been elected president of Liberia. Joseph Estrada, a movie star, was president of the Philippines.

Even conventional politicians are expected to show a bit of star quality. Al Gore failed in his run for president in part because his public demeanour was seen as wooden and dull (it was said he reminded women of their first husbands). The attempts in last year’s election campaign to create...Continue reading

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The Clock is Ticking Faster at Tesla

Tesla will soon need money again. The trouble is, raising it suddenly looks a lot more challenging.

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Kim Jong Un visits China

ON MARCH 28th a sandstorm descended on Beijing like a chemical-weapons attack, sending pollution-monitoring equipment off the charts and reducing visibility to a few metres. The same day the Chinese government announced that Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s leader, had met his Chinese opposite number, Xi Jinping, in Beijing, sending diplomatic speculation off the charts and leaving the prospects for talks about North Korea’s nuclear weapons as hard to discern as ever.

Mr Kim’s visit was shrouded in secrecy from the moment an armoured train, similar to the one his father and grandfather used for foreign trips, pulled into Beijing station, unannounced. The mystery continued throughout his two-day stay, Mr Kim’s first meeting with any head of state and his first known foreign trip since he took power in 2011. The visit was not even confirmed to have taken place until he had returned to Pyongyang. But if it added new puzzles to the geopolitics of North-East Asia, it also made a few things...Continue reading

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Why Apple Got Schooled by Google

Apple’s business model makes it hard to compete with Google in budget-conscious education market.

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BYD: Buffeted by Beijing

The electric vehicle maker is no longer the best—or only—way to bet on China’s new energy car market

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Lululemon Gets a Boost From E-Commerce

Reports of athleisure’s death have been greatly exaggerated.

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Tech's Risk Bill Comes Due

High valuations haven’t fully reflected new world of risks.

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Turkey’s last big independent media firm is snapped up by a regime ally

RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN has been on a roll lately. On March 18th the Turkish president announced the army’s capture of Afrin, a Kurdish stronghold in Syria, after two months of relentless attacks. Barely a week later, he scored another victory when a pliable mogul snapped up the last bastion of semi-independent journalism in Turkey, the Dogan group, for $1.2bn.

For one of the country’s largest media conglomerates, the sale must have felt like a coup de grâce. Dogan outlets, including two of the country’s four biggest newspapers, Hurriyet and Posta; a leading television channel, CNN Turk; and a news agency, among many others, have been squirming under government pressure for years. The group’s ageing owner, Aydin Dogan, one of the symbols of Turkey’s deposed secular order, has been hounded by tax inspectors and prosecutors. People close to his group say Mr Dogan conducted the sale without consulting any associates. Some believe the mogul faced arrest unless he sold his empire to one of the president’s men. Had that...Continue reading

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Paint Giants Prepped for Merger Endgame

The sale of Akzo Nobel’s specialty-chemicals business for $12.6 billion will create a pure-play coatings company potentially attractive to U.S. paint giants Sherwin-Williams and PPG Industries.

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A Trade War Might Be a Commodities Buying Opportunity

Oil and metals would probably take a big hit initially. But industrial metals in particular might benefit from China’s likely response.

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Turkey Is the One to Watch for Emerging Markets Risk

For investors concerned more broadly about problems being masked by a world awash in easy money, Turkey is the one to watch.

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A blaze in a shopping mall leaves scores dead

THE Winter Cherry mall in Kemerovo, a Siberian mining city, advertised itself as a family-friendly entertainment centre, complete with a cinema, trampolines and a petting zoo. On Sunday, when flames engulfed the four-storey building, it was filled with parents and children enjoying the first days of the school holidays. Some fled the fire by jumping from windows; harrowing footage from inside the building showed others trying to break through locked exit doors. Many did not make it out. As of late Monday, at least 64 people were reported dead in one of the deadliest fires in recent Russian history. Reports from Kemerovo suggest the final toll could be higher.

The tragedy appears to have been the result of corner-cutting on the part of the mall’s owners, as well as incompetence on the scene. Witnesses told Russian media that the fire alarm had failed to go off. Investigators say a security guard shut off the public-announcement system alerted to the fire. Four people have already been detained in connection with the incident. Russia’s...Continue reading

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Why Facebook Isn't So Easily Deleted

Facebook’s huge and highly profitable business makes it difficult to hurt.

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Barclays: Too Big For a Deal, Too Small to Compete

Does a leading U.K. retail and commercial bank belong with a mid-ranking U.S.-focused investment bank? If you were pitching this as a new business, you’d surely struggle to find backers. But this is where Barclays finds itself.

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Trade Wars Are A Pig of An Issue for WH Group

Assessing the macroeconomic impact of potential trade wars is hard enough: The effect on individual companies can be pretty tricky to gauge too.

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Donald and Jerome's Excellent Economic Adventure

Rising trade tensions and stimulative fiscal policy are similar to what would be seen in a recession while the Fed continues to tighten policy, creating an unusual situation.

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Something's Gotta Give in the Fed's Forecasts

A big slug of fiscal stimulus will hit the economy over the next two years, but the Federal Reserve doesn’t seem all that impressed.

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Students lead a vast protest against gun violence

ON MARCH 24th, less than 40 days after a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, hundreds of thousands gathered near Capitol Hill in Washington, DC to protest against America’s lax gun laws and implore Congress and President Donald Trump to fix them. The vast crowd—which included toddlers perched upon shoulders, students, teachers and parents—thronged down Pennsylvania Avenue, block after block. Many carried signs denigrating the National Rifle Association (NRA) and chanted a modern version of an old protest slogan: “Hey, hey, NRA, how many kids did you kill today?” 

Thanks to the impressive efforts of the eloquent survivors of the Parkland shooting, the media have not yet moved on from the tragedy. Parallel marches took place in 800 locations across the world. Whether the students’ new movement will bring serious policy change remains unclear. The Parkland survivors have banded together under the banner of #NeverAgain. Yet it has already happened again. On March 20th, a 17-year-old pupil,...Continue reading

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Did Kenya get a loan to build a railway, or vice versa?

WHEN Kenya launched its new railway last year, connecting the coastal city of Mombasa to the capital, Nairobi, passenger tickets sold out. Travelling between the country’s two biggest cities overland had meant crowding into a bus for 12 hours, or riding the old British-built railway, which might have taken 24 hours. The new line, run by Chinese engineers who wander up and down the carriages, has cut the journey to between four and six hours, depending on the number of stops. The seats are comfortable and, at just 700 shillings (about $7), affordable. Lucky passengers see elephants along the way.

Shuttling passengers, however, is not what the new line was built for. When Kenya borrowed $3.2bn from China for the railway in 2014, the aim was to move freight efficiently between the capital and the port at Mombasa, 484km (301 miles) apart. Unlike the passenger service, the cargo one has been a disaster. The second train out of Mombasa arrived a day late, because it didn’t have enough goods to leave the port. Passengers may find the biggest...Continue reading

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Most of Nigeria’s kidnapped Dapchi schoolgirls are freed

On their way home

IT WAS a crisis that ended as suddenly as it began. On the morning of March 21st gunmen from Boko Haram, a jihadist cult, swept back into Dapchi, a remote town in north-east Nigeria, and dropped off most of the 110 schoolgirls they had snatched a month earlier. The return was a rare victory for Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s president. It is also a sharp contrast to the kidnapping of 276 girls from Chibok, another remote town, in 2014. Many of them remain in captivity.

The abduction of the “Chibok girls” by Boko Haram drew international attention and came to define the administration of Mr Buhari’s predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan: incompetent, detached and corrupt, unable even to provide security to threatened schools. That played no small part in Mr Jonathan’s defeat at the ballot box in 2015, the first by an incumbent president since the end of military rule in 1999.

A year ahead of presidential elections scheduled for February, the...Continue reading

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After taking Afrin, Turkey looks for new targets in Syria

FOR President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the timing of Turkey’s victory in the Afrin region of northern Syria could not have been better. After a two-month offensive against Kurdish militants, Turkish troops took control of the enclave’s main town on March 17th. The next day Turkey celebrated the anniversary of the battle of Gallipoli, the only big Ottoman victory of the first world war. True to form, Mr Erdogan rolled the two conflicts into one, accusing Western powers of backing the Kurdish forces against Turkey. “In Gallipoli they attacked us with the most powerful army,” he said. “Now that they do not have the courage to do so, they come at us with the world’s basest, bloodiest, specially trained and equipped terrorist organisations.”

Capturing Afrin was easier than expected. By the time Turkish tanks rolled into the main town, the Kurdish militia known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, had melted away. Nearly 200,000 residents had already fled, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Britain-based...Continue reading

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Forty-four African countries sign a free-trade deal

“LET’S get together,” sang the choir to the rhythm of Bob Marley, as a succession of African leaders signed an ambitious, continent-wide free-trade agreement in Kigali on March 21st. Although all 55 members of the African Union (AU) had been involved in negotiations around the grandly named Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA), not all were ready to sign as one. On the day, 44 put pen to paper. Among the holdouts was Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy. Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president and the host of the AU summit, had no time for sceptics. “Some horses decided to drink the water. Others have excuses and they end up dying of thirst.”

The logic of the deal is sound. Trade in Africa is still shaped by relationships and infrastructure dating back to the colonial era. Countries mostly sell primary commodities to other continents. Only 18% of their exports are traded within Africa, where they often face high tariffs. The CFTA is meant to change that by creating a “single continental market for goods and services”. UNCTAD, a UN agency,...Continue reading

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Egypt’s sham election features two candidates, but no choice

SINCE one in four Egyptian voters cannot read, political candidates pick symbols to identify themselves on the ballot. Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, the president, chose a star. It shines down from billboards across the country alongside his ubiquitous visage, smiling on a farm or peering through binoculars aboard a warship. His opponent in the coming election, Moussa Mustafa Moussa, chose an aeroplane. Walking past a poster of Mr Moussa, a man laughs at his choice: “It’s because he’ll need to fly away if anyone votes for him.”

There is little else to say about the election itself, which begins on March 26th and lasts three days. Mr Sisi will win. His opponent has lived up to a promise not to challenge the president. Across the whole of Cairo your correspondent has seen only four banners in support of Mr Moussa. The only question is whether the electorate will turn out in greater numbers than they did for the last presidential election, in 2014, when 47% voted. Mr Sisi’s critics have called for a...Continue reading

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A short history of Kurdish women on the front lines

A British warrior abroad

WHEN Anna Campbell heard that Kurdish women were fighting the jihadists of Islamic State in Syria, she left her job as a plumber in Britain and joined them. Ms Campbell (pictured), who was privately educated, said she wanted to defend the “revolution of women” in Kurdish-held parts of the country—even though the British government regards such volunteers as, in effect, terrorists. On March 15th a missile killed her as she fought with the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), the Kurds’ all-female militia, against the Turkish army.

Kurdish women first took up arms in the early 1990s, as members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a decades-long war for self-rule in Turkey. Inspired by Murray Bookchin, an obscure American philosopher, Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK’s leader, sought to empower his female comrades. “The 5,000-year-old history of civilisation is essentially the history of the enslavement of women,” wrote the...Continue reading

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Britain pulls off a diplomatic coup against Russia at the EU

ONE question confronting Britain and the European Union is how to maintain foreign-policy and security co-operation after Brexit. Theresa May, Britain’s prime minister, often notes that failure to find agreement would harm the security interests of both sides. On March 22nd that observation found a pointed form of expression at an EU summit in Brussels, following the recent nerve-agent attack on a Russian émigré and his daughter in Salisbury. After some agile British diplomacy the EU’s 28 leaders issued a joint statement declaring that the only plausible explanation for the attack was that Russia was responsible for it. 

This language, tougher than Mrs May had dared to hope, clears the way for further collective EU action, including on beefing up defensive instruments against Russian hybrid warfare, later this year. Nor was the European response limited to words. The EU’s ambassador to Russia has been temporarily withdrawn to Brussels, and on March 26th several countries, possibly including France and Germany, are expected to...Continue reading

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Another jihadist killer strikes in France

THE attack appears depressingly similar to several others in recent years in France. On March 23rd a young man, reportedly of north African origin and of declared allegiance to the so-called Islamic State, spread terror by shooting random unarmed victims: the occupants of a passing car in the south-western town of Carcassonne; policemen out jogging; and finally shoppers in a supermarket in Trèbes, a village of 5,000 people a few kilometres to the east. He might have imagined the police would be slow to react in such a small community.

The attacker, who screamed “Allahu akbar” (God is great) as he went about his work, tried to prolong the assault by taking hostages, a tactic used by other violent extremists in France and elsewhere, most notably at the Bataclan theatre in Paris in November 2015, where 90 people died. The goal, in such cases, appears to be to attract as much attention as possible, and to stir up public frustration if police are slow to respond. This time, the reaction was relatively swift. By mid-afternoon, three hours after...Continue reading

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Mauricio Macri fights Argentina’s tradition of handouts for votes

JUST off Leonardo da Vinci Avenue, a long street of modest shops and foul-smelling gutters in the district of La Matanza outside Buenos Aires, stands La Juanita, a co-operative. Founded by unemployed workers in 2001, it occupies a former school. It runs a free kindergarten, a microcredit programme, a call centre and, nearby, a large community bakery, all with the aim of helping the unemployed get work. Since Mauricio Macri, a former businessman of the centre-right, was elected as Argentina’s president in 2015 La Juanita has become part of a political experiment.

La Matanza is in the heart of the conurbano, a sprawl of poor and crime-ridden suburbs around Argentina’s capital which contains some 10m people. It was a bastion of support for Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the populist Peronist president from 2007 to 2015. Peronism long controlled the conurbano through clientelism, providing handouts in return for political loyalty. This system stopped...Continue reading

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Lessons from a murder in Rio de Janeiro

Marielle Franco, now silenced

ON THE sweltering afternoon of March 18th some 2,000 people crammed the narrow streets of Maré, a favela in the north of Rio de Janeiro, to protest against the murder of a friend. Marielle Franco, a city councillor who grew up in Maré, was shot dead four days earlier in the city’s centre (along with her driver) after a meeting she had organised for young black women. “She was killed for trying to make things better,” said Diony, a supermarket employee watching the protesters parade slowly through Maré.

The assassination of Ms Franco, a young, black, gay activist, has reverberated far beyond her birthplace. It was the subject of 3.6m tweets in 34 languages in less than two days. Thousands of people marched in cities across Brazil. In February the president, Michel Temer, made Rio’s crime a national issue when he ordered the army to take control of the state’s police, prisons and fire services until the end of this year. This is the...Continue reading

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Why Canada’s prime minister is homeless

MOST heads of government have an official residence. It is normally an uncontroversial perk. Not so in Canada. Since 1951 the country’s prime ministers have lived in 24 Sussex, a 34-room limestone mansion in Ottawa. Justin Trudeau, the current prime minister, did as a child, when his father, Pierre Trudeau, had the job. But he has taken up residence at Rideau Cottage on the neighbouring estate of the governor-general, the queen’s representative in Canada. The problem is that 24 Sussex is too run-down to house Mr Trudeau, his wife and three children. And he does not want to take the political heat for approving repairs.

No one doubts that the 150-year-old house, built by a lumber baron, needs work. Ceilings and walls are impregnated with asbestos, a mineral so carcinogenic that Canada will ban its export next month. Some of the paint is lead-based. The place is infested with mice, which may be why Mr Trudeau’s predecessor, Stephen Harper, liked cats. The auditor-general warned a decade ago that the plumbing was clapped out, the 50-year-old...Continue reading

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