Pharma Stocks Soothe Stock-Market Malady

Pharmaceutical stocks have been a safe harbor in a choppy stock market, and for good reason.

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Twitter Lightens its Load

Twitter is proving that smaller may be better, even in social media, as purging users makes Twitter’s advertising business more healthy.

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Blame the Fed for Budweiser Brewer's Dividend Cut

The U.S. Federal Reserve’s interest-rate increases are roiling the emerging-market currencies in which Anheuser-Busch InBev makes roughly two-thirds of its sales.

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Amazon Fails to Deliver

The company’s 15% growth is a significant number for a business generating more than $200 billion in annual sales, but it is not the kind of growth its investors have been banking on.

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No One's Feeling Chipper About Chips

Shares in Samsung and SK Hynix have suffered despite both companies reporting record earnings.

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Barclays Cruises While Deutsche Bank Spins

The diverging fates of Barclays and Deutsche Bank are connected by the amount of cheap funding they can offer clients.

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Goldilocks Economy Could Be a Bear for Stocks

The environment that the Federal Reserve envisions for the economy wouldn’t be all that friendly for stocks.

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Don't Bid on eBay Just Yet

PayPal results suggest eBay’s recent marketplace growth spurt may be short lived.

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Eurozone Squabbles Are a Problem for Stocks, Not Bonds

News of the eurozone’s demise is exaggerated, but that may not offer much comfort to stock investors.

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Consumer Giants' Have an Emerging Market Problem

Big footprints in emerging markets are often considered the crown jewels of European consumer-products giants like Nestlé and Unilever. But the downside is apparent.

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Wall Street's Fear Gauge Flashes Green Again

Panic in the stock market is officially over—at least according to derivatives markets.

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The Table Is Rigged Against Macau Stocks

Shares in major casino operators in the world’s largest gambling market have been tumbling, but it isn’t time for investors to up their bets.

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Hope Floats for Offshore Oil Drillers

The merger of Ensco and Rowan makes sense, but the rally in their shares so far this year is premature because there is no sign of improving rates for their rigs this year or next, despite higher crude prices.

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Disney's Magical Money Kingdom

Beating the crowds at Disney World early is going to cost you.

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Something Happened at Pfizer?

The other CEO announcement on Monday wasn’t quite as exciting.

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Florence Is a Tragedy for Homeowners, Not Insurers

People in the Carolinas are about to rediscover the difference between the damage a storm causes and what is covered by insurance. While wind damage is well covered by insurers, flood damage is absent from most policies.

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Marvel Gets a Leading Woman

The coming ‘Captain Marvel' marks an overdue milestone in the Marvel universe.

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Coca-Cola Goes Back to the Future

Many were surprised to see that Coca-Cola, the world’s largest beverage company, is considering dipping its toes into the cannabis market.

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Jack Ma's Retirement Is a Sign Alibaba's Heyday May Have Passed

Despite the fabled co-founder’s retirement, Jack Ma will still have influence at Alibaba. But the real question for investors is whether his departure means the company’s best days are behind it.

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CBS After Moonves

Les Moonves’s departure from CBS, and the deal with National Amusements, ends a messy chapter for the company, but there are still important issues to consider before CBS gets an all-clear.

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Deutsche Bank Won't Be Sad to Lose This Big Shareholder

The bank’s stock price is likely to remain under pressure as Chinese conglomerate HNA prepares to sell its 7.6% stake. But short-term pain should give way to a better longer-term foundation for the stock.

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Knight-Swift Is a Cheap Set of Wheels

Investors applauded and then cooled on trucking firm Knight-Swift following the merger that created it, but they should take another look.

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Amazon Won't Be Second to Apple for Long

The e-commerce giant is on track to be tech’s largest company in both market value and sales.

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Meituan Dianping Is Delivering an Overpriced IPO

The food-delivery company has a highly successful app but makes no profit. A $55 billion valuation looks a stretch, especially at a bad time for Chinese tech stocks.

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Why Markets Rallied on Trump's Trade Deal

The bilateral trade deal with Mexico and any subsequent agreement with Canada may create some frictions for companies and consumers, but it is a relief compared to what might have been.

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Regional Banks Still Need a Lending Boost

A promising rebound in loan growth now appears to be fading. That could become an issue, especially for small and midsize lenders.

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Why No One Can Catch Netflix

Streaming service is so far ahead of the competition and knows how to please its customers so well that it will be very hard to dislodge.

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App Tax a Hard One to Beat

Apple and Google’s app store commissions form a lucrative revenue stream that most app developers can’t sidestep in the way Netflix is attempting. That could spur regulators to take a closer look.

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HP's Ink Flow Slows

Concerns about slowing growth of printing supplies offsets strong PC sales for tech giant.

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Xiaomi's Founder Gets Closer to a Winning Bet

Lei Jun, founder of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, just enjoyed one of the biggest paydays in global corporate history. He could be in for another jackpot soon.

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H&M May Never Catch Up

The world’s second-largest fashion chain by sales has fallen behind as consumers have moved online. Despite a big decline, the stock hasn’t priced in the new reality.

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Videogames' Epic Shootout Coming This Fall

This fall the industry will launch a series of major first-person shooters, while “Fortnite” is poised to begin a new season. That may prove to be a bit too much action for some game publishers.

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Smucker Needs to Fix Peanut Butter and Jelly

Food company Smucker has made smart moves to adjust its portfolio, but without boosting its core brands the stock will keep struggling.

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Abbott Labs Is a Rare Growth Story in Health Care

The reason to buy shares in Abbott Labs is simple:The company is growing its top line faster than just about any health-care company of comparable size and since it doesn’t sell pharmaceuticals in the U.S., it is relatively insulated from regulatory risk.

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Indian Markets Look Headed for Further Extremes

The country’s stock market is close to all-time highs, while its currency is at all-time lows versus the dollar.

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Nvidia Clears Its Crypto Cloud

A volatile crypto market has been a distraction for the chip maker—and its investors.

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Good Isn't Good Enough at Macy's

The department store has solid earnings and raises guidance, but that isn’t enough for investors after a big stock run.

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Why Turkey's Trials Are Rippling Into Europe

Emerging-market currencies aren’t the only ones affected by Turkey’s crisis, the euro is too.

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This Year's Big Disrupter: The Dollar

Much of the disruption to global financial markets this year has come from a source close to home: the U.S. dollar.

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New Investor Guessing Game: What Is 'New Fox' Worth

Once Fox’s deal with Disney closes, the next question will be how to value what is left behind: Fox News and Fox Sports.

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Not the Streaming Deal 'Star Wars' Fans Are Looking For

Walt Disney’s streaming service could have a troublesome absence when it launches late next year.

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Latin America searches for redemption on the football pitch

The extra intensity of Latin American fandom

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Colombia’s new president will struggle to heal his country’s divisions

Iván Duque’s alliances and campaign promises will make reconciliation difficult

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[CORRECTED] Polio returns to Venezuela, and threatens the region

The country’s neighbours need to strengthen their defences against infectious diseases

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Donald Trump stomps on Canada’s economy

To avoid further damage, Justin Trudeau may have to stop coddling farmers

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Argentina’s central-bank president resigns

The peso plunges again and Federico Sturzenegger steps down

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Tesla's Go-Private Dream Doesn't Add Up

Tesla’s wildest day yet leaves far more questions than answers.

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A failed drone attack shows that Nicolás Maduro is vulnerable

Venezuela’s president has many enemies

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Brazil’s banks, profitable whatever the economic weather

The economy is sluggish, but banks are coining it

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Canada plans a crazy quilt of cannabis retailing rules

Recreational pot will be legal everywhere

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After a populist goring, Argentina’s beef ranchers are recovering

At least one group is happy about Mauricio Macri’s economic reforms

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Judging Latin America’s judges

Why is strengthening the rule of law so difficult?

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A failed drone attack shows that Nicolás Maduro is vulnerable

Venezuela’s president has many enemies

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Brazil’s banks, profitable whatever the economic weather

The economy is sluggish, but banks are coining it

from Americas https://ift.tt/2ADIU6O
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Canada plans a crazy quilt of cannabis retailing rules

Recreational pot will be legal everywhere

from Americas https://ift.tt/2MdMBkS
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After a populist goring, Argentina’s beef ranchers are recovering

At least one group is happy about Mauricio Macri’s economic reforms

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Judging Latin America’s judges

Why is strengthening the rule of law so difficult?

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A bubbling Islamist insurgency in Mozambique could grow deadlier

Militants have torched villages and carried out a spate of atrocities in the gas-rich north

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A bubbling Islamist insurgency in Mozambique could grow deadlier

Militants have torched villages and carried out a spate of atrocities in the gas-rich north

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AT&T Not Out of the Legal Woods Yet

The Justice Department’s appeal of a judge’s decision to allow AT&T’s purchase of Time Warner is highly unusual, but the odds of it achieving at least a partial victory aren’t trivial. That may only affect future deals, but there is a possibility of blowback for AT&T as well.

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CBS Analysts Aren't Clueless---They're Feckless

When analysts failed to ask questions about sexual harassment allegations on CBS’s conference call, it showed how badly their role is still misunderstood.

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Refugees have become a pawn in the struggle for Syria

Russia wants to help them return—if the West pays to rebuild Syria

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Saudi Arabia may relax its ban on Christian churches

New evidence suggests the Prophet tolerated churches in Arabia

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Why Hamas jails people who can’t pay their debts

Other countries abolished debtors’ prisons long ago. In Gaza, they are full

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Eritrea, Africa’s most repressive state, begins to open up

Peace may lead to reform in a country that enslaves its young

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A tarnished victory for Emmerson Mnangagwa in Zimbabwe

Will the West overlook the ruling party’s political gamesmanship?

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Refugees have become a pawn in the struggle for Syria

Russia wants to help them return—if the West pays to rebuild Syria

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via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Saudi Arabia may relax its ban on Christian churches

New evidence suggests the Prophet tolerated churches in Arabia

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Why Hamas jails people who can’t pay their debts

Other countries abolished debtors’ prisons long ago. In Gaza, they are full

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Eritrea, Africa’s most repressive state, begins to open up

Peace may lead to reform in a country that enslaves its young

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A tarnished victory for Emmerson Mnangagwa in Zimbabwe

Will the West overlook the ruling party’s political gamesmanship?

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Japan’s habits of overwork are hard to change

No one is happy with Japan’s workstyle, but it is proving hard to change

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Why the mayor of Seoul sleeps in a shack

He wants to learn how the hard-up live

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How will Imran Khan govern?

Perhaps he will surprise

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A controversial register of citizens in north-east India

Some 4m worry they may become stateless

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Japan’s habits of overwork are hard to change

No one is happy with Japan’s workstyle, but it is proving hard to change

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Why the mayor of Seoul sleeps in a shack

He wants to learn how the hard-up live

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How will Imran Khan govern?

Perhaps he will surprise

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A controversial register of citizens in north-east India

Some 4m worry they may become stateless

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Tesla Profits: Be Careful What You Wish For

Tesla’s guidance has investors cheering, but the good news comes with strings attached.

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Zimbabwe’s elections turn violent

Army brutality and allegations of vote-rigging dash hopes of a new start

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Zimbabwe’s elections turn violent

Army brutality and allegations of vote-rigging dash hopes of a new start

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Republicans inch towards action on global warming

The key is to avoid the language of guilt and repentance for climate change

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Republicans inch towards action on global warming

The key is to avoid the language of guilt and repentance for climate change

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What the #MeToo Allegations Mean for CBS

The potential removal of CEO Les Moonves, and even the weight of the charges, increase the chance of a merger with Viacom.

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A truck bomb in the Philippines tells peacemakers to make haste

A new law could resolve some of the grievances of Muslim separatists

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A truck bomb in the Philippines tells peacemakers to make haste

A new law could resolve some of the grievances of Muslim separatists

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Bonds Need to Catch Up on the News

The bond-market tide may be on the turn. After weeks of inaction, 10-year Treasury yields are eyeing 3% once more. Continued momentum in the global economy could lead yields higher still.

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Intel Serves Up an Opportunity for AMD

Much smaller chip maker will have a big head start with new data-center processors.

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Liberating trade

How much damage does protectionism do to the world economy?

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Migration and development

Easing the movement of people across borders is a political challenge more than an economic one

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Fighting corruption

Corruption enriches the venal, but hurts everyone else. Can it be curbed?

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The learning deficit

Lack of education holds much of the world back. Would more money help?

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Curbing disease

Across the developing world, disease causes a vast toll of avoidable suffering

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Essential Economics

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Double or nothing

Fixing failed firms should be based on economics, not revenge

from Economics https://ift.tt/2LKhlwN
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Liberating trade

How much damage does protectionism do to the world economy?

from Economics https://ift.tt/2LHFRyF
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Migration and development

Easing the movement of people across borders is a political challenge more than an economic one

from Economics https://ift.tt/2NTXHMu
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Fighting corruption

Corruption enriches the venal, but hurts everyone else. Can it be curbed?

from Economics https://ift.tt/2uWDNsT
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The learning deficit

Lack of education holds much of the world back. Would more money help?

from Economics https://ift.tt/2NTXCsa
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Curbing disease

Across the developing world, disease causes a vast toll of avoidable suffering

from Economics https://ift.tt/2uWDHS3
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Essential Economics

from Economics https://ift.tt/2LX5Ted
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Double or nothing

Fixing failed firms should be based on economics, not revenge

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Sources: New-year irresolution

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Sources: “Much ado about multipliers”

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Sources: New-year irresolution

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Sources: “Much ado about multipliers”

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An emoluments suit against Donald Trump gets the go-ahead

The legal challenge focuses on the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC

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Richmond’s monument commission says a statue of Jefferson Davis should go

No city in America is more closely entwined with the Confederacy and the civil war

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Brett Kavanaugh’s years as a government lawyer

A watchdog files lawsuits to produce the executive-branch papers of Mr Trump’s Supreme Court pick

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America’s cultural divide isn’t growing

So what explains increasing partisanship?

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The missing middle of the Trump-Putin meeting

The summit offered up a graphic reaffirmation of what was already known

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Robert Mueller indicts twelve Russians

How Russian prosecuted its cyber-war on American democracy

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An emoluments suit against Donald Trump gets the go-ahead

The legal challenge focuses on the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC

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Facebook's Terrible Timing and Why a Trade Deal Matters for Tech Stocks

Many tech companies were seen as immune from trade tensions, but Facebook released a worrying outlook just as that benefit may wane.

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How badly are sanctions hurting North Korea’s Kim Jong Un?

Not as much as people think

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A “slight correction on democracy” in Cambodia

Abolish the opposition, silence criticism and call it a fair election

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A dam disaster in Laos

A deadly flood and a torrent of criticism of Laos’s hydroelectric ambitions

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Why South-East Asia is fertile ground for mini-Trumps

Thaksin Shinawatra, who wrote the book on South-East Asian populism, ponders its next chapter

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How badly are sanctions hurting North Korea’s Kim Jong Un?

Not as much as people think

from Asia https://ift.tt/2mKqXcN
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

A “slight correction on democracy” in Cambodia

Abolish the opposition, silence criticism and call it a fair election

from Asia https://ift.tt/2Ad49fh
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

A dam disaster in Laos

A deadly flood and a torrent of criticism of Laos’s hydroelectric ambitions

from Asia https://ift.tt/2OldAMX
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT

Why South-East Asia is fertile ground for mini-Trumps

Thaksin Shinawatra, who wrote the book on South-East Asian populism, ponders its next chapter

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Why Shell's $25 Billion Buyback Program Isn't Enough

As oil prices and gas demand rise, Royal Dutch Shell needs to plow surplus profits into production—not just share buybacks.

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High-ranking officials claim immunity over poisonous water

The cases will run and run

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Trump tries a Nixonian move, but lacks Nixon’s skill

The independence of rate-setters protects him

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Catholic bishops’ opposition to Donald Trump emboldens church liberals

They may be disappointed

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Soon anyone will be able to learn how to print 3D guns

Gun-control advocates are terrified

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Jonathan Gold, poet of the strip-mall eatery

The first food critic to win a Pulitzer died on July 21st

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The questions over Carter Page’s links with Russia

Donald Trump denounces a “witch hunt”, but the surveillance seems justified

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High-ranking officials claim immunity over poisonous water

The cases will run and run

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Trump tries a Nixonian move, but lacks Nixon’s skill

The independence of rate-setters protects him

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Catholic bishops’ opposition to Donald Trump emboldens church liberals

They may be disappointed

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Soon anyone will be able to learn how to print 3D guns

Gun-control advocates are terrified

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Jonathan Gold, poet of the strip-mall eatery

The first food critic to win a Pulitzer died on July 21st

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The questions over Carter Page’s links with Russia

Donald Trump denounces a “witch hunt”, but the surveillance seems justified

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Israel's Jewish nationalist identity is outweighing its democratic one

The law seems designed to upset minorities

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Another power grab in the Comoros

The president wants to change the constitution to stay in power longer

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Mali goes to the polls amid huge insecurity

A presidential election may help bring stability

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Zimbabwe’s opposition is gaining ground ahead of upcoming elections

Will President Mnangagwa rig the vote, or send in the army to stay in power?

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Shias in southern Iraq are fed up with the government

Thousands of Iraqis are protesting against shortages of electricity and water

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Congo’s Catholics are standing up for democracy

Church bells urge the unpopular president, Joseph Kabila, to quit. But he may run again

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Israel's Jewish nationalist identity is outweighing its democratic one

The law seems designed to upset minorities

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Another power grab in the Comoros

The president wants to change the constitution to stay in power longer

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Mali goes to the polls amid huge insecurity

A presidential election may help bring stability

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Zimbabwe’s opposition is gaining ground ahead of upcoming elections

Will President Mnangagwa rig the vote, or send in the army to stay in power?

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Shias in southern Iraq are fed up with the government

Thousands of Iraqis are protesting against shortages of electricity and water

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Congo’s Catholics are standing up for democracy

Church bells urge the unpopular president, Joseph Kabila, to quit. But he may run again

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China Stimulates Again, but Don't Expect Fireworks

China analysts have spent the past three months arguing about whether Beijing will stimulate the economy as growth slows. The answer is now apparent, but what does that mean for markets?

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Judges issue contradictory rulings on freeing Brazil’s former president

WHEN Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva finished his stint as Brazil’s president in 2011, his approval rating was 83%. His social programmes and a commodity boom helped lift 30m people out of poverty. He hopes to run for president once again in an election this October, and leads the polls by a healthy margin. Only one obstacle seems to separate him from a third term: he is serving a 12-year prison sentence for corruption. He spends his days listening to samba and watching television in his cell.

Until this month, political observers mostly dismissed Lula’s chances of making a comeback. Formally, he has until August 15th to register to stand, which would trigger a review of his eligibility by the electoral tribunal. However, Brazil’s ficha limpa (“clean record”) law bars candidates whose convictions have been upheld by an appeals court, as Lula’s was in January. His only hope is for the supreme court to overturn the verdict. Some polling firms have already dropped him from...Continue reading

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Taiwan’s long relationship with Paraguay continues to pay off

NO PLACE on Earth is farther from Paraguay than Taiwan, its antipode. Yet Asunción, Paraguay’s steamy capital in the heart of South America, is full of symbols of friendship with an Asian island 20,000 km (12,400 miles) away.

In a leafy suburb looms a weathered statue of Chiang Kai-shek, who ran a Chinese government-in-exile in Taiwan until 1975. Not far away is the futuristic home of the Paraguayan Congress, built using Taiwanese funds in 2003. Just nearby is a replica of the Taipei 101 skyscraper. Unveiled in 2017 to mark 60 years of diplomatic ties, it is entwined with the national flowers of Taiwan (plum blossoms) and Paraguay (passion flowers).

United at first by anti-communist fervour, the two maintained a bond long past the end of the cold war. Today Taiwan sends Paraguay money, police vehicles and soap operas dubbed into Spanish, and trains students and army officers. Paraguay reciprocates with commodities, foodstuffs and diplomatic support.

The Chinese...Continue reading

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Why Mexico has not become more prosperous—and how it could

ONE of the main reasons for the landslide victory of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a left-winger, in this month’s presidential election in Mexico was the country’s mediocre economy. Between 1995 and 2015 real GDP per person increased by an annual average of 1.2%, less than in any Latin American country except Venezuela (see chart). Take into account the swelling labour force, and Mexico looks even worse: GDP per worker expanded by just 0.4% a year, while total factor productivity (a measure of the economy’s efficiency) barely grew. What makes this puzzling is that Mexico has embraced economic orthodoxy: sound monetary and fiscal policy, open trade, investment in education and, more recently, improved competition policy.

So what went wrong? In a groundbreaking book* Santiago Levy, the outgoing policy chief at the Inter-American Development Bank, argues that Mexico’s decision-makers have failed to fix distortions in the economy caused by the tax regime, social policy and legal institutions, and in...Continue reading

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Protests over fuel prices in Haiti derail the government’s reforms

OF ALL the bets placed on the football World Cup, the biggest gamble took place in the Caribbean. Lacking a competitive side, many football-mad Haitians have adopted Brazil as their team—some because they share African roots with Pelé, Brazil’s greatest player ever, others because Brazil has given Haiti financial and military aid. With the public glued to their screens watching the seleção on July 6th, the Haitian government discreetly raised fuel prices by around 40%.

A Brazilian victory might have left Haitians too ecstatic to protest. Instead, Brazil fell to Belgium. Soon after, Port-au-Prince burst into flames. Protesters burned cars, looted shops and closed much of the country with roadblocks. Jack Guy Lafontant, the prime minister, quickly reversed the policy, but could not save his job; he resigned ahead of a no-confidence vote on July 14th. Early estimates put the damage at some 2% of GDP. Three people have died.

Latin American nations far sturdier...Continue reading

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Google's Costly Traffic Jam Eases

The internet giant’s strong results help offset growing worries about costs and political risks.

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Mauritania ignores slavery, but jails those who protest against it

Almost born a slave

A FEW miles from the green grass of Mauritania’s presidential palace, in a slum where the Sahara washes into the capital, Mbarka shields her five-year-old son’s eyes from the dust. She was his age when her mother gave her away to be a slave.

Mbarka’s mother was herself a freed slave. But when her former master said he needed help at home, tradition dictated that she had to give up her daughter to him. Mbarka did all the chores she could but the family still beat her. She doesn’t remember how old she was when the father and his son started to rape her, but she had her first child at 13.

Mauritania, with its tiny economy and population of just 4.3m, would normally attract little attention. But its vast expanse—it is four times larger than Britain—and its position astride migration and smuggling routes across the Sahara have pushed it to prominence. This month France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, visited it to discuss co-operation...Continue reading

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Turkey struggles to keep the peace in Afrin

THE scene in the centre of Afrin, a Kurdish city in north-western Syria, hardly inspires confidence in the future. A destroyed statue of a mythical Kurdish hero is a reminder of the plunder of the city after its capture earlier this year by Arab and Turkoman rebels backed by Turkish tanks, from Kurdish rebels. The teenage son of one of the Arab rebels peddles cigarettes, a rifle across his knees. Another rebel directs traffic. Turkey argues it saved Afrin from terrorists and boasts of opening schools and hospitals. Residents are not exactly brimming with gratitude. “The Turkish soldiers are behaving decently,” says a Kurdish merchant. “But the bearded ones are big trouble,” he adds, referring to Islamist militants. “They’ve stolen so much.”

More than 100,000 civilians, and scores of Kurdish fighters known as the People’s Protection Units (YPG), fled Afrin when the Turkish army and its proxies swept in. Turkey considers the YPG an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party...Continue reading

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Nigeria has a high fertility rate. Why are infertility clinics booming?

IN A rough-and-ready church in Ifo, on the northern fringe of Lagos, Prophet Emmanuel Akanni and Prophetess Foluke Akanni do extraordinary things. During moments of religious ecstasy, Mr Akanni receives visions that indicate which of his congregants are struggling to conceive children. By holding a chicken’s egg over a woman’s belly, he claims to be able to spy into her womb. Then he uses herbs and prayers to effect a cure. “There is nothing God cannot do,” adds Mrs Akanni.

The fertility rate in Nigeria is estimated to be 5.4, implying that the average woman can expect to have that many children during her life. Yet many Nigerians experience infertility. Chelsea Polis of the Guttmacher Institute, a think-tank, and her colleagues estimate that 31% of Nigerian couples fail to conceive a child after 12 months of unprotected sex—a rate at least as high as in the West. In a country where a woman’s worth is defined largely in terms of her ability to bear children, there is a growth...Continue reading

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Why Morocco is cosying up to sub-Saharan Africa

The King and Buhari

KING MOHAMMED VI of Morocco has had a quiet year. The monarch, who has visited at least 14 African countries since October 2016, scaled back his travels after a heart operation in February. But he still managed to play host to Mali’s prime minister in March and visit Congo-Brazzaville in April. Last month he took the Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari, on a motorcade tour of the capital, Rabat, flattering him with cheering spectators.

Like their king, Moroccan companies are also lavishing attention on west Africa. The African Development Bank estimates that 85% of Morocco’s outward foreign direct investment (FDI) goes to sub-Saharan Africa. Trade lags behind, but this too is growing. Exports of Moroccan goods to west Africa tripled from 2006 to 2016. The king brings large trade delegations on his marathon African tours, usually signing a raft of deals with his hosts.

Politically, it is easier for Morocco to cultivate allies...Continue reading

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Djibouti risks dependence on Chinese largesse

Who is in the driver’s seat?

DJIBOUTI was the last of Europe’s African colonies. France clung to this sliver of Red Sea coast until 1977; even today it occasionally resembles occupied territory. In the black lava desert stands a hilltop garrison of the Foreign Legion. French tanks trundle along the narrow road to Ethiopia. This whiff of colonialism helps explain why many Djiboutians fret about their independence.

China is the country’s biggest investor. It plans to remake Djibouti as a staging post on President Xi Jinping’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative. In the past two years Beijing has lent Djibouti some $1.4bn, more than 75% of its GDP. In 2015 the country was Africa’s fifth-biggest recipient of Chinese credit, despite having barely 1m citizens, one of the continent’s smallest populations.

Djibouti’s experience shows how Chinese cash can transform even the smallest country. “None of this would have been possible without...Continue reading

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The UAE is scrambling to control ports in Africa

IT SEEMED an irrational decision 20 years ago. DP World is one of the world’s largest maritime firms. From a squat office overlooking Dubai’s bustling Jebel Ali port, it directs operations in 40 countries. Most are in busy shipping hubs such as London and Rotterdam. But in the 1990s it started making surprisingly big investments in the Horn of Africa. It built a large port in Djibouti, and is now working on another in Somaliland (see map). The combined GDP of the two African entities is smaller than that of Moldova. Yet the firm sees the region as a land of opportunity.

So do the rulers of United Arab Emirates (UAE), one of whose...Continue reading

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What the Fed Is Missing, Again

The Federal Reserve isn’t worried about the yield curve, and it has reason why. The problem: It is pretty much the same reason it wasn’t worried about the yield curve before the financial crisis.

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GE Will Be Dead Money for a While

General Electric’s quarterly results left Wall Street disappointed and signs of progress in the ailing power-generation division are likely far away.

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Richmond’s monument commission says a statue of Jefferson Davis should go

UNTIL his death in 1953, Douglas Southall Freeman, a historian and writer who venerated the Old South, would tip his hat to Robert E. Lee when driving past the towering statue of the Confederate general on Richmond’s Monument Avenue.

Douglas Wilder, America's first elected black governor and a Richmond native, said it was understood among the city’s African-Americans that Monument Avenue, a gracious boulevard flanked by mansions, was a white shrine, a place to be avoided—and not just because of segregation.

Such are the contradictory customs of Richmond, capital of the Confederacy for most of the American civil war. Today, the city is engaged in a surprisingly civil city-wide argument over whether to take down the statues of Lee and four other prominent rebels on Monument Avenue.

For some, this would amount to sacrilege. Others say it would be a white-wash of history. Still others want the statues removed as hurtful symbols of white supremacy. And there is a legal complexity: state laws recently affirmed by the...Continue reading

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Stranger swings

You might assume that the huge inflow of asylum-seekers since 2015 has made Europe more xenophobic. Opinion polls tell a more nuanced story. In November 2014 Eurobarometer began asking citizens of EU countries about their sentiments towards immigrants. Since then, the overall share of people who have negative feelings about arrivals from outside the bloc has fallen from 57% to 52%. Different regions, however, have been pulling in opposite directions. Western and southern European countries have generally become friendlier to foreigners, while northern and eastern countries have grown more hostile. Crucially, though, there seems to be no correlation between how many migrants and refugees a country admitted and its changing opinions of non-Europeans.

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President Erdogan’s alliance with the far right pays off

TURKEY’S right-wing nationalists have seldom had it so good. The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has embraced their main causes, bombing Kurdish insurgents at home and abroad, promoting militarism in education and using siege mentality as foreign policy. Their supporters have reaped the rewards of an alliance with the ruling Justice and Development (AK) party. The ulkuculer, as they are colloquially known, have landed scores of jobs in the bureaucracy amid the mass purges that followed the attempted coup of 2016.

Theyhave emerged even stronger from the presidential and parliamentary elections held simultaneously on June 24th. Ulkucu voters helped propel Mr Erdogan to a solid first-round victory. Their main political group, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), won over 11% in the parliamentary contest, twice as much as most polls predicted. The ruling AK party, which ended up a few seats short of an outright majority, depends...Continue reading

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An interview with Bruno Le Maire

Le Maire the transformer

LESS than two years ago, Bruno Le Maire was an outsider in the race for France’s centre-right Republican presidential nomination. Little over a year ago, he denounced another presidential candidate, Emmanuel Macron, as a “man without a project because he is a man without conviction”. Today, the “man without conviction” occupies the presidency and Mr Le Maire (who quit his own party) serves as his finance minister. Astonishingly, all this is regarded in France as perfectly normal.

If Mr Macron’s hybrid government, which has borrowed from the former left, right and centre, is ever a source of frustration for the self-described Gaullist, Mr Le Maire will not say so. “We are doing exactly what we need to do to be successful in the social and economic transformation of the French model,” he insists. In just over a year, the government has cut corporate tax, ended the wealth tax and introduced a flat tax on investment income. The budget...Continue reading

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An enemy of crooked politicians is fired in Romania

FOR Romania’s corrupt politicians, Laura Kovesi has been a nightmare. Appointed chief of the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) in 2013, the implacable prosecutor has overseen the convictions of more than 1,000 officials, businesspeople and politicians, including nine former ministers. In June the DNA won a felony conviction against Liviu Dragnea who, as head of the ruling Social Democrats (PSD), is Romania’s most powerful politician. He could face three-and-a-half years in prison for putting two PSD functionaries on the payroll of the state child-protection agency.

Yet Mr Dragnea’s allies have fought back, implausibly accusing Ms Kovesi of incompetence and of targeting only politicians she dislikes. In February the justice minister ordered her to be fired, but President Klaus Iohannis refused to sign her dismissal. The constitutional court sided with the government, and on July 9th Mr Iohannis reluctantly sacked her.

Ms Kovesi and the DNA have been a beacon of...Continue reading

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The Trump-Putin summit was spectacle, not substance

IF GEORGE W. BUSH once famously looked Vladimir Putin in the eye and saw his soul, Donald Trump, when he met the Russian president in Helsinki on July 16th, saw his own reflection: an alpha male who made his country “great again”; a fellow populist and disrupter who disdains the politically correct and hypocritical liberal elite, and the institutions they inhabit; a man guided by interests, who likes doing deals while trusting nobody and who uses the media to create his own reality show. Vladimir Putin saw in Mr Trump a confirmation of a long-held belief that Western leaders operate in exactly the same way as he does and only pretend to have “values”.

Appropriately enough, the meeting took place in the Hall of Mirrors at the presidential palace in Helsinki. It was both an imitation and a reversal of traditional foreign-policy engagements. Stylistically, it resembled cold-war summitry. But unlike past summits, it lacked a clear agenda or substance. There was little change in the official...Continue reading

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Charlemagne: the backlash against Airbnb

TO WAKE up in an Airbnb apartment can be briefly disorientating. Where are you? The brushed steel, the exposed lightbulbs, the mid-century furnishings. The lively walls and bookshelves (a guide for hosts recommends accentuating “personality, not personal items”). The laminated guide to the neighbourhood, the English slightly askew and peppered with exclamation marks. The excellent Wi-Fi. You could be in Lisbon; but perhaps it is St Petersburg? The Verge, an online magazine, describes this Airbnb aesthetic as the “hallucination of the normal”, a phrase borrowed from Rem Koolhaas, a Dutch architect. That is why it can also offer the jaded traveller the sense of a home from home.

Not all Europeans feel the same. Tourists packing for this year’s holiday season might brace themselves for an awkward welcome. Anti-tourist protests in some cities have become a summer ritual. Last August 200 locals occupied a beach in Barcelona to tell visitors to shove off (or at least to stay in hotels). In several...Continue reading

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Spain’s Socialist government plans to exhume Franco’s remains

Time for Franco to go

RATHER than a war memorial, it is a monument to a victory. Francisco Franco, whose military rebellion against a turbulent parliamentary republic triggered the Spanish civil war and his 36-year dictatorship, conceived of the Valley of the Fallen as a place to pay tribute to those who died for what he called his “Crusade”. Erected over 19 years, using forced labour, it is designed to inspire fear rather than sorrow. Its massive cross on a rocky outcrop in the foothills of the Sierra de Guadarrama is visible from the outskirts of Madrid, and its basilica is a cold vault bored 250 metres into the mountainside. It contains the remains of 33,847 dead from both sides in the war. Only two graves, both in the basilica’s transept, are named: those of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of Spain’s fascist party, and Franco himself.

In a vibrant democracy, the site has become an aberration. Last year parliament approved a resolution sponsored by the...Continue reading

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Tariffs Threaten Retailers' Inventory Discipline

Proposed tariffs on Chinese goods are forcing retailers to buy early for the holidays to beat the tax but that could leave them with bloated inventories.

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As inequality grows, so does the political influence of the rich

SQUEEZING the top 1% ought to be the most natural thing in the world for politicians seeking to please the masses. Yet, with few exceptions, today’s populist insurgents are more concerned with immigration and sovereignty than with the top rate of income tax. This disconnect may be more than an oddity. It may be a sign of the corrupting influence of inequality on democracy.

You might reasonably suppose that the more democratic a country’s institutions, the less inequality it should support. Rising inequality means that resources are concentrated in the hands of a few; they should be ever more easily outvoted by the majority who are left with a shrinking share of national income.

Indeed, some social scientists think that historical expansions of the franchise came as governments sought credible ways to assure voters that resources would be distributed more equitably. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson argue that in the 19th century governments across the West faced the threat of...Continue reading

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David Solomon will be the new CEO of Goldman Sachs

Songs of Solomon

LAME-DUCK periods can last for only so long. It was clear beforehand that a Goldman Sachs earnings call this week would be packed with questions about succession. When would the chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, step down? (He had said in March he was leaving, but gave no date.) What would his departure mean for the firm’s other over-achievers? Several had already decamped, including Harvey Schwartz, the bank’s co-president and co-chief operating officer. Left as heir-apparent was the man he had shared both jobs with, David Solomon, but with no hint of when his elevation would take place.

On July 17th Goldman ended the speculation by confirming the choice of Mr Solomon as CEO and saying that he would take over in October, earlier than predicted. Quarterly results presented that day by Martin Chavez, the chief financial officer, who is thought to be in his own succession battle to replace Mr Solomon, beat forecasts. Still, the share price sagged....Continue reading

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Income-share agreements are a novel way to pay tuition fees

What Venezuelan savers can teach everyone else

ASK the chief investment officer of a fund-management firm how to spread your investments and you will be told to put so much in stocks, so much in bonds and something in hedge funds or private equity. Chances are that white-elephant buildings, eggs and long-life milk will not feature. But in Venezuela, where the inflation rate is in the tens of thousands, things that people elsewhere would shun for fear they will lose value have become stores of real wealth.

That is why you can see scaffolding and other signs of a building boom dotted around Caracas, the capital of a country that has endured an economic collapse. Businesses need to park their earnings where they will not be wiped out by inflation. A smaller-scale response to galloping prices is the emerging “egg economy”. Eggs hold their value better than cash, for a while at least. They make for a convenient currency, too. It is easier to carry around a half-dozen eggs than a trunkful of banknotes. And many tradespeople would be happier to...Continue reading

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Football talent scouts become more rational

Making a Kylian

CHEERS erupted from Calais to Cannes when Kylian Mbappé, a 19-year-old striker, thumped in France’s fourth goal in the World Cup final on July 15th. Among the smuggest onlookers were the accountants at Paris Saint-Germain, Mr Mbappé’s club. He was already a prized asset before the tournament, having broken the record for goals scored by a teenager in the Champions League, Europe’s premier-club competition. CIES Football Observatory, a research organisation, reckoned then that his club could charge €190m ($223m) for him. But an electrifying World Cup, with four goals, has surely increased his value.

That, at least, is how the transfer market usually responds to international tournaments. According to 21st Club, a consultancy, each time a player found the net in the World Cup and European Championship tournaments in 2004-16, his price went up by, on average, 13%. After the 2014 World Cup James Rodríguez, whose six goals for Colombia made...Continue reading

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In China, a rare public spat between officials as debt pressures build

Mario Draghi’s replacement is already being discussed

A LOT rests on the shoulders of the euro zone’s top central banker. The president of the European Central Bank (ECB) is not just in charge of ensuring monetary and financial stability in one of the world’s largest economies. In the absence of a single European fiscal authority, it also falls to the ECB to act as a backstop for the currency bloc. In times of crisis, the very survival of the monetary union seems to depend on the president’s words and actions. Central-bank bosses in America, Japan or Britain bear no burden as great.

With such demands, though, comes great influence. Those in need of convincing need only cast their minds back to July 2012. Greek interest rates were soaring and investors were entertaining the possibility that the euro zone would break up. But Mario Draghi, the ECB’s boss, soothed markets with a promise to do “whatever it takes” to save the euro. Six years on, that commitment still helps to contain Italy’s sovereign-bond yields, despite unease about its new...Continue reading

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Donald Trump’s defensiveness about Russian hacking is revealing

AMONG the Republicans cowering before President Donald Trump, the presence of Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan has been especially disheartening. Yet both threatened to regrow spines this week. “Russia is an adversary,” declared Senator Rubio, in response to the president’s fraternising in Helsinki. “Russia is a menacing government that does not share our interests,” said the Speaker of the House of Representatives. These were, if not stinging rebukes, better than Mr Rubio’s usual habit of keeping shtum and tweeting Bible verses whenever Mr Trump does something horrid, or Mr Ryan’s of offering a wry half-smile and a comment on tax reform. Yet both men, formerly known as principled conservatives, sullied their moment of revertebration. Both claimed the Russian election-hacking effort on Mr Trump’s behalf had been a failure. “It is also clear,” said Mr Ryan, that “it didn’t have a material effect on our elections.”

Not so. The margin of Mr Trump’s victory in the electoral college...Continue reading

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How the decline of unions will change America

EVEN before the Supreme Court piled in, American unions were in a bad way. In their heyday in the mid-1950s, more than 30% of workers were members. Today just 11% are. With only a toehold in the private sector—where they cover a mere 7% of workers—unions have become increasingly reliant on faithful public-sector employees, 34% of whom are members, to stay financially afloat and politically relevant. The Supreme Court’s ruling in the case of Janus v AFSCME at the end of June will shrink the rump of union members even further. What will the consequences of even lower union membership be?

Unions engage in both collective bargaining for their workers and political lobbying, typically for progressive causes and Democratic candidates. Among white Americans, blue-collar workers have had their heads turned by President Donald Trump even as union bosses remain steadfast Democrats, so that many members disagree with their union’s politics. Opting out of union membership—and its...Continue reading

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The flourishing Midwest

The sun rises in the west

AS HE gesticulates on the rooftop terrace of the new Kimpton Hotel, Dennis Klein, a retired property developer, is visibly proud. One of his sons developed the hotel in Milwaukee’s third ward, a project that attracted scepticism from local grandees, who doubted anyone wanted it. Another son developed some of the buildings that are visible below. The third ward was once a dreary part of town filled with warehouses. In 1984 it had only 28 residents, says Mr Klein. Today it has boutiques, cafés, bars and many thousands of oat milk-drinking hipsters.

The Midwest is not monolithic but rather a tale of at least two rustbelts, says John Austin of the Michigan Economic Centre, a think-tank. Bigger old industrial cities such as Minneapolis, which used to live off flour-milling, Pittsburgh, which made steel for the whole country, and Indianapolis, once home to dozens of carmakers, have turned a corner. Not long ago Milwaukee was in decline, like many old...Continue reading

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Male voters are sticking with the Republican Party

MEN have long tended to favour Republican candidates; women have voted more for the “mommy party” than men in every election since 1992. Yet the gap now looks like a chasm. In 1992 women and men disagreed over which party they identified with by 11 points. The margin has since widened to 23 points (see chart). For comparison, Donald Trump won white voters by 21 points in 2016 and lost Hispanics by 36 points.

It is no mystery why so many women are abandoning the Republican Party. Lots of the party’s elected officials have vowed to defund Planned Parenthood, which in addition to its other activities provides abortions. They often have...Continue reading

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Voting machines in America are reassuringly hard to hack

IN THE run-up to the attacks of September 11th 2001, said George Tenet, the former director of the CIA, America’s intelligence system was “blinking red”. On July 13th Dan Coats, the current director of national intelligence, invoked Mr Tenet’s language to convey the magnitude of the threat posed by foreign hackers. “The digital infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack,” he said. “The warning lights are blinking red again.” Although Mr Coats expressed concern about infiltration from numerous countries, he called Russia “the most aggressive foreign actor”. Meanwhile, the president seems indifferent when it comes to the risk of Russian meddling with the mid-terms in November. How vulnerable are American elections?

If Vladimir Putin’s hackers did seek to intervene in the congressional elections in November, they would have two avenues. One, familiar after 2016, is to use social media and pretend news sites to spread disinformation or propaganda. It seems...Continue reading

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Why the Cook Islands fears rich-country status

How not to blow your own trumpet

MOST political leaders play up their country’s economic performance. Those on the Cook Islands, a collection of 15 islets spread over 2m square kilometres in the South Pacific, are doing the opposite.

At issue is whether the country of 17,000 people has become wealthy enough to warrant a reassignment by the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, from upper middle-income to high-income status. The rub is that “graduation” would make it more difficult for the country to claim it qualifies for aid. This amounted to NZ$33m ($22m) in 2016, or just under 8% of the islands’ GDP. However, New Zealand, the biggest donor country to date, has said it will continue to give an unspecified amount of financial assistance if the Cook Islands graduates. 

Henry Puna, the prime minister, has acknowledged that achieving high-income status would be a source of national pride. It would be a first for a Pacific-island...Continue reading

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Violence and claims of election-rigging overshadow Pakistan’s election

“FOR the first time in our history, fair elections are going to be held,” insisted Fawad Chaudhry, a spokesman for the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, this week. Unfortunately, this view is not universally held. The national and state elections on July 25th, in which 100m people are registered to vote, should mark a further stage in the country’s progress towards democracy, for the transfer of power thereafter will be only the second from one civilian government to another in the country’s seven decades of coup-studded history. But the poll takes place amid accusations that the powerful military establishment is tilting the field in favour of the PTI and its leader, a former cricket star, Imran Khan (pictured, on the flag).

There is another dark cloud over the campaign: violence. On July 13th a suicide-bomber, alleged to have links with Islamic State, killed 149 people in an attack on a rally in Mastung, a town in the south-western province of Balochistan. It was the...Continue reading

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The idea of Eurasia is once again the subject of geopolitics

OH, EAST is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet. Perhaps that was true when an Iron Curtain ran down the middle of Europe, and Mao Zedong’s China had turned disastrously inward. But now? This week leaders of the European Union and China met at a summit in Beijing to praise “EU-China connectivity”. It is more than an empty phrase, even if European leaders, distracted by political and migrant crises at home, are less clear-sighted about its implications than are their Chinese counterparts. China has hugely ambitious plans to connect the commercial worlds of Europe and East Asia via infrastructure links that will knit the vast—and till now seemingly inchoate—land mass of Eurasia together. But Chinese efforts are only the most notable of many modernising impulses that are beginning to mesh Eurasia into something resembling a whole.

In a stack of recent books and papers, a growing number of strategists argue that the emergence of a cohering Eurasia is the key feature of a new...Continue reading

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In Singapore, thousands will attend this year’s LGBT rally

Out and proud in Singapore

BLACK-and-white photographs in the foyer of an arts cinema are filled with smiling, pouting and laughing faces—young and old, of various races. The portraits are of members of Singapore’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. The fact that those pictured are willing to be identified publicly, in such a conservative country, is part of what makes the display striking. A grandson of Lee Kuan Yew, the country’s modern founder, is among them, as is a Paralympian medallist and a policewoman. Leslie Kee, a Singaporean photographer who lives in Japan, took the 150-odd pictures for the exhibition, called “Out in Singapore”. It is one event of many which comprise a festival linked to Pink Dot, a rally on July 21st which thousands are expected to attend.

Pink Dot has been held annually since 2009. It is the city-state’s version of a pride celebration and is tightly regulated (participants in last year’s event are pictured)....Continue reading

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Stopping the flow of arms to South Sudan

IS THAT a light at the end of the tunnel? Since South Sudan’s war began nearly five years ago, tens of thousands have died and more than 4m—one in three South Sudanese—have been forced from their homes. The country teeters, for the second year running, on the brink of famine; more than half the population do not have enough to eat. At least nine ceasefires have been struck, none lasting longer than a month, including the latest, which was signed on June 30th and has already been violated. Observers have warned repeatedly of genocide. Yet tentative signs offer hope that the world may act to stop the bloodshed.

On July 13th the UN slapped an arms embargo on the world’s youngest nation, in the hope of stopping atrocities against civilians. Under the resolution all countries are barred from supplying arms until May 2019, following in the footsteps of America, which imposed its own embargo in February, and the European Union, which has barred weapons sales to Sudan since 1994 (this was...Continue reading

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France’s victorious footballers do Emmanuel Macron a favour

WHEN Emmanuel Macron was a child, growing up in the northern French town of Amiens, he was a fervent supporter of a southern club, Olympique de Marseille. In 1993, the year they won the European Champions League, the club’s captain was a certain Didier Deschamps. On July 15th, under torrential rain after France’s victory at the World Cup final, it was as president that Mr Macron clasped in a tight embrace the same Mr Deschamps, captain of the French team that won the World Cup back in 1998, and now manager of the French champions.

Today France welcomes home Les Bleus, their national team, after a 4-2 defeat of Croatia in Moscow. A million people descended last night on Paris as the sun began to set, chanting, rocking Metro carriages, clambering onto bus shelters and up lamp posts, and setting off flares and firecrackers. The capital’s arteries emptied of cars and turned into a flag-waving, chanting human flow.

The team will this afternoon parade down the Champs-Elysées...Continue reading

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Biotech IPO Boom Comes With Side Effects

Biotech stocks are hot tickets once again on Wall Street and that is bringing a wave of initial public offerings. The risk is the high demand for these companies is offset by a wave of new supply.

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Brett Kavanaugh’s years as a government lawyer

WHEN Donald Trump was considering his choice for Justice Anthony Kennedy’s seat on the Supreme Court, Senator Mitch McConnell reportedly asked the president to steer clear of Brett Kavanaugh, the long-time circuit court judge Mr Trump tapped on July 9th. Mr McConnell is said to have told Mr Trump that someone with a paper trail as long as Mr Kavanaugh’s could hit more snags and give Democrats more to gripe about than one of the greener judges on the list. Mr McConnell’s hesitations seem to have since vanished. The 12-year veteran of the Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit is a “superb” choice, he says. 

But Mr Kavanaugh’s documentary history is indeed extensive. It includes not only 300-some opinions he wrote as an appellate judge but untold thousands of documents connected to his near-decade of service in the executive branch. Before donning his black robe, he spent four years in the 1990s as an assistant to Kenneth Starr (pictured above, centre) investigating Bill Clinton and five years in the George W. Bush...Continue reading

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Why Binyamin Netanyahu is fudging east European history

YAD VASHEM, Israel’s national authority for research and commemoration of the Holocaust, is a staid institute, as befits its role, and usually shies away from political controversy. So a public announcement by its leading historians on July 5th, denouncing a joint statement by the prime ministers of Israel and Poland, which it said contained “grave errors and deceptions”, was highly unorthodox.

The statement had been issued a week earlier by Binyamin Netanyahu and Mateusz Morawiecki, to end a crisis in relations between the two countries caused by a new Polish law on the death camps in Poland. It had threatened fines or imprisonment for anyone who blames the Polish nation or state for their part in the Holocaust. Many historians viewed this law as an attempt by the conservative Polish government to revise history, by playing down the willing participation of many Polish citizens in the murder of 3m Polish Jews by Nazi Germany. After months of talks, the Polish government agreed to...Continue reading

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America’s cultural divide isn’t growing

THE idea of two Americas is a trope of political commentary: a population divided in mutual incomprehension by income, race, religion or region—flyover country versus coastal elite. The idea that cultural fissures are growing is used to explain increasing political rancour and the rise of Donald Trump. But those explanations may need tempering. Two papers on cultural distance, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in June, suggest the idea of cavernous and expanding cultural fissures is over-wrought.

The papers both use data from the General Social Survey, a long running poll of Americans’ attitudes towards issues including free speech, same-sex relations and crime. They examine how closely respondent’s characteristics including where they live, what they earn, their education level and religion, are associated to particular attitudes and suggest that, at the level of individual attitudes, the relationship is weak. Marianne Bertrand and Emir Kamenica, the authors of “Coming Apart? Cultural Distances in the United States...Continue reading

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Big Tech's Growth Comes With a Big Bill

Tech giants like Amazon, Apple and Google are delivering above-average growth, but the cost of staying competitive is rising more.

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Netflix's Intermission Was Long Overdue

Streaming company’s market value got too rich even despite strong growth.

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Why Tapping the U.S. Oil Reserve Is an Awful Idea

Using the reserve to curb summer pump prices at a time the economy is booming and midterm elections loom would be a strategic blunder, leaving the country exposed in the event of an actual oil shortage.

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The Dark Side to Rising Consumer Spending

Retail sales are strong, but shoppers are borrowing more to fund their purchases. That may make sense, or leave people struggling to pay off debt.

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The missing middle of the Trump-Putin meeting

THE story of the meeting between President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki has a beginning and an end, but no middle.

It began with a statement from the president that the lowly state of Ruso-American relations were not the fault of the Russian government for seizing Crimea, shooting down a passenger airliner, interfering in America’s presidential election or using a banned nerve agent to kill citizens of a close ally on its own soil. No, they were the fault “of US foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt”.

It ended with a joint press conference that Senator John McCain described as, “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.”

In the middle was a void, in which the two presidents met with nobody else in the room but their interpreters. For those who watch Mr Trump daily and have observed his habit of being confrontational with other people when at a safe distance and then seeking to please them when face-to-face, this encounter seemed freighted...Continue reading

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Vladimir Putin’s hopes for his long-awaited meeting with Donald Trump

THE summit had yet to finish when Vladimir Putin decided to split. That was in the autumn of 2014: war was raging in eastern Ukraine, the Group of 20 was meeting in Australia, and the Russian president faced a frosty reception from Western leaders. He had been booted out of the Group of Eight (G8) and, in Barack Obama’s words, “isolated”. Cameras captured him eating lunch alone like a shunned schoolboy.

Though Russia’s posture has hardly changed since, the times have. This week Mr Putin has been hosting his own parade of world leaders in the run up to the World Cup final in Moscow on July 15th. The following day he will be in Helsinki to meet Donald Trump, who has called for Russia to be readmitted to the G8. Their tête-à-tête, to be held, as it happens, on the eve of the anniversary of the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014, will double as the death knell for the West’s policy of isolating Russia. “There’s an asymmetry: for Russia, the...Continue reading

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Growth Still Trumps Politics for Markets

For fans of high political drama, recent months have been packed with excitement. For markets, not so much. In the battle between economics and politics, faith in growth still has the upper hand for now.

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The Real Growth Numbers to Watch in China

A sharp slowdown in investment and contracting shadow-banking credit are reliable signs of difficulties ahead for China.

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The Netflix Squeeze

Netflix has had an astonishing year. Its shares surpassed $400, up 110% since January, and it was nominated for 112 Emmy Awards, more than any other television network, including HBO, which had held that distinction for 17 years.

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Nawaz Sharif returns to Pakistan, and jail

SITTING stony-faced at the back of a business-class cabin on an Etihad flight from London to the Pakistani city of Lahore, Nawaz Sharif waited patiently for his arrest on the evening of July 13th. His only sign of stress was a balled-up napkin in his right fist. Journalists ignored the pleas of cabin staff to stay in their seats. They clustered around the former prime minister of Pakistan and jabbered reports into smartphones held out on selfie-sticks. Mr Sharif sat still. To his left his 44-year-old daughter, Maryam, occasionally adjusted her white veil. At last around a dozen camouflaged paramilitary police in red berets boarded the plane. Those who reached Mr Sharif first paused by his seat. Supporters yelled from economy class. Mr Sharif slowly rose.

A week earlier Pakistan’s National Accountability Bureau (NAB), an anti-graft court, had sentenced Mr Sharif, in absentia, to ten years in prison for corruption in connection with the purchase of luxury apartments in London’s Park Lane...Continue reading

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The president of Kazakhstan throws himself a modest birthday bash

Happy birthday, Mr President

IT WAS in June of 1998 that oil-rich Kazakhstan officially inaugurated its purpose-built capital, Astana. But when the 20th anniversary of the city’s founding rolled round this year, the government decided to mark the occasion a few weeks late, on July 6th, as it has in previous years. That, after all, is the birthday of a much older fixture in the country’s life: the president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has run it since it became independent in 1991.

On the day, a colourful cascade of fireworks illuminated Astana’s gleaming space-age facades. There was also a tournament of kokpar (a traditional game played on horseback with a dead goat instead of a ball) and a circus featuring elaborate shows of horsemanship. The latter ended with an acrobatics display in which the performers’ costumes fanned out to send the turquoise and yellow of the Kazakh flag rippling across the stage.

At Bayterek Tower, a...Continue reading

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Pakistan’s former prime minister embraces jail to rally his party

WHEN Nawaz Sharif recently announced that he would return to Pakistan, not everyone believed him. On July 6th the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), an anti-graft court, had sentenced the 68-year-old former prime minister to ten years’ imprisonment. In such circumstances, Pakistani politicians usually head to London, rather than leave it. Moreover, Mr Sharif’s wife is on a ventilator in a London hospital. Yet as The Economist went to press, Mr Sharif continued to insist that he would board a flight back to Lahore, his home town, on July 13th. His advent could alter the course of national and state elections on July 25th.

That the NAB, pronounced “nab”, convicted Mr Sharif had come as little surprise. In part, it was because he did not satisfactorily explain how his family came to own four luxury apartments on Park Lane, a posh street in London. The ownership of the flats was made public by the leak in 2016 of the Panama Papers, a trove of...Continue reading

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India’s government claims to subsidise farmers, but actually hurts them

INDIA’S farmers should be the happiest in the world. For decades governments have showered them with perks including a blanket tax exemption; subsidies on fertiliser, seeds, energy and water for irrigation; low-interest loans; cheap crop insurance; high tariffs to block food imports; and price supports for more than 20 crops. Lately, the authorities have become more generous still. Since 2014 no fewer than eight states have waived a total of well over $25bn in farmers’ debts.

Narendra Modi, the prime minister, for whom elections loom, has promised to double farm incomes by 2022. Recently he announced a fresh bonanza. Sharply raising support prices for the coming harvest, he vowed that henceforth the government would pay growers 150% of the cost of their inputs, guaranteeing a healthy profit.

How can it be, then, that experts speak of a chronic and deepening crisis in agriculture, that polls show mounting rural anger and that farmers are protesting ever more forcefully? Last year, for...Continue reading

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On the hanging of Shoko Asahara, Japan’s nerve-gas guru

ON THE morning of March 20th 1995 your columnist arrived at work to see the pavements outside his office covered with poisoned commuters. Some were unconscious. Some were twitching or choking, like soldiers in a Wilfred Owen poem. Men in hazmat suits were everywhere. Office workers sat in a nearby park repeating like a mantra: “It’s so terrifying.”

It was the worst terrorist attack in modern Japanese history. Members of Aum Shinrikyo, an apocalyptic cult, had released nerve gas on the Tokyo subway. Their targets were crowded trains that converged on Kasumigaseki, in the heart of Japan’s government district. The aim was to kill officials on their way into work, and somehow hasten the end of the world. Twenty-three years later, on July 6th, Shoko Asahara, the bearded guru who masterminded this atrocity, was hanged, along with six accomplices.

He was the first truly modern terrorist. As David Kaplan and Andrew Marshall note in “The Cult at the End of the World”, Aum was the first...Continue reading

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