On the trail

Donald Troubadour
“Love can kill, too.”
Donald Trump is worried that his supporters might stampede for love of him. Los Angeles Times

Street style
“I think Death Row [Records] and a lot of other fashion sources have influenced my look.”
Hillary Clinton acknowledges hip-hop influence on her clothing choices. Power 105.1 radio station

Turn down for what?
“We have three major voter-suppression operations under way.”
The Trump campaign hopes to lower turnout among Mrs Clinton’s voters. Bloomberg

Make America eat their greens again
“Now [Michelle Obama] also planted an amazing vegetable garden at the White House. And I can promise you if I win, I will take good care of it.”
Hillary Clinton appeals to locavores.

Class struggle
“Trump has chosen his own way of reaching the hearts of the voters...He is representing the common people, and he is acting like a...Continue reading

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In America, who votes may matter more than how they vote

ON A crisp autumn afternoon, armed with “I’m with her” balloons, a boombox and a clipboard, Eli Clark-Davis sets out dancing down the street with his friends to get out the Democratic vote in Fishtown, a gentrifying neighbourhood in Philadelphia. The group’s mission is to knock on as many doors as possible, reminding registered voters of whom they should back, when election day falls and where to cast their ballots. They ask potential supporters to sign an “I commit to vote for Hillary” slip, which the campaign hopes will adorn refrigerator doors. Hillary Clinton’s campaign has set up 300 of these “staging posts” across the Pennsylvania, from which armies of volunteers set forth to mobilise her party’s base. On the campaign’s penultimate weekend, they knocked on 500,000 doors—roughly one-tenth of the households in the whole of the Keystone State.

From a distance, such laborious work might seem a questionable investment. Advertising scales up far better than street-to-street glad-handing. And there is no guarantee that whomever these ground-game battalions convince to vote will in fact plump for the intended candidate: a...Continue reading

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Tiptoeing around

FIVE 17-year-old students take turns to give a three-minute presentation at Koishikawa high school in Tokyo. The first speaks about government services for pregnant women; next come the risks of childbearing for women older than 35, then the history of contraception, the morning-after pill and infertility. The teacher gives a brief outline of abortion law in Japan before turning to sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and the 45-minute sex-education lesson is over.

Japan has a complex relationship with the birds and the bees. Sex is everywhere, in gleefully commercialised form, from explicit manga comics to love hotels where rooms are rented by the hour. Some of these businesses involve young people: “JK” services, for example, involve men paying schoolgirls to lie next to them or go for a walk. Yet in many respects Japan is very conservative: sex remains a subject that parents and teachers are embarrassed to discuss. When they do, it is usually in the context of having a family.

That makes good sex education all the more important, but critics say schools teach too little, too late. Government guidelines,...Continue reading

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Bashing the boat people

A fair dinkum Aussie welcome

IT HAS become something of a parlour game among Australian politicians. Ever since 2001, when John Howard, the prime minister of the day, turned away a trawler that had rescued 433 refugees from the sinking boat smuggling them to Australia, successive governments have competed to come up with ever harsher measures to deter asylum-seekers.

They have been detained, children and the elderly included, in remote desert camps. They have been locked up for years on the Pacific islands of Manus (part of Papua New Guinea) and Nauru while their claims of asylum are processed. One government declared that the Australian islands closest to Indonesia, and hence easiest for refugees to reach, would no longer be considered Australian for the purposes of claiming asylum; a subsequent one went further and declared that all of Australia would no longer be considered Australian for the purposes of claiming asylum. Since December 2013 the navy has simply turned or towed boats of refugees entering Australian waters back out to sea.

Now Malcolm Turnbull’s conservative government has found a way to tighten the screws yet further....Continue reading

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Duterte waters

LIKE the dog that didn’t bark in the night, Chinese coastguard vessels around one tidal atoll in the South China Sea have recently distinguished themselves through inaction. For the past four years—ever since Philippine naval inspectors tried to arrest some Chinese fishermen for illegally harvesting endangered species—Chinese ships have blocked Filipino fishermen from plying their trade near Scarborough Shoal. This week, however, Philippine television has shown fishermen returning from the shoal grinning, their boats full.

After China began its blockade, the president of the day, Benigno Aquino, filed a complaint against it at an international tribunal in The Hague, which ruled in the Philippines’ favour earlier this year. The shoal, after all, is only some 220km from the Philippine mainland, within its exclusive economic zone, but almost 900km from China. Mr Aquino also signed an Enhanced Defence Co-operation Agreement (EDCA) with America, which lets American troops operate out of five Philippine military bases. He called for a military response from America were China to begin building on the shoal—as it has on several other disputed reefs and...Continue reading

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No confidantes

“ARE we living in the Republic of Choi?” asks the Korea Times, a local newspaper. It is the question that has consumed South Korea for the past fortnight, and filled columns of conjecture. Park Geun-hye, the conservative president, has admitted that she turned to an old friend, Choi Soon-sil, for advice on matters of state, even though she had no official position in government. But press reports and opposition politicians suggest that Ms Choi’s influence went much further: that she was in effect a puppeteer controlling Ms Park’s administration, deciding everything from cabinet appointments to policy on North Korea and, prosecutors claim, using her clout to obtain money and favours.

In an effort to contain the explosion of popular anger at the revelations, Ms Park has in the past week fired ten of her aides, including her chief of staff; reshuffled the cabinet; and appointed a new prime minister, Kim Byong-joon. Mr Kim was an aide to Roh Moo-hyun, a liberal former president, and so is notionally a political opponent of Ms Park. His appointment is therefore supposed to be an overture to the opposition. On November 3rd Mr Kim...Continue reading

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Suspended animation

Flowers for Mother

FOR 40 days and counting, the 78m citizens of Tamil Nadu have neither seen nor heard their chief minister, Jayaram Jayalalithaa. In her absence admirers have organised marches and mass prayers, pleading to higher powers for her speedy recovery from an undisclosed illness. Last week a different Tamil lady in her 60s was killed when a procession in Ms Jayalalithaa’s honour turned into a stampede.

The epicentre for the well-wishers’ demonstrations is the Apollo hospital in the state capital of Chennai, formerly known as Madras. Ms Jayalalithaa has been there since September 22nd, her condition a closely guarded secret. Phalanxes of police stop and search everyone entering the building, including ambulances. Clusters of anxious citizens, many of them party workers, sit on the street outside, taking turns singing hymns, laying offerings of fruits and flowers, chatting and sometimes weeping openly. Men from her party, the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), wear white shirts with a filmy pocket sewn over the heart. Tucked in each, a photograph of the chief minister smiles through the fabric. The men express faith that...Continue reading

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Lost in transition

AIR-CONDITIONING doesn’t feel like much of a luxury in parts of India, but the taxman begs to differ. Cooled restaurants are deemed posher. Their patrons are liable to additional taxes the unventilated masses do not bear. Luckily for sweat-prone diners there is a catch: the tax only applies to the service and not the food, so only part of the tab incurs the extra levy. In their wisdom, India’s bureaucrats once decided that 60% of a restaurant’s offering is food, and so air-conditioning triggers a service tax payable on just 40% of the bill.

Indirect taxation in India often seems the product of a micromanaging bureaucracy run amok. The result of combined taxes levied by its 29 states, union territories and the central government is that the same products in different regions, or different products in the same region, are taxed at different rates. This makes it difficult to trade between states. Tariffs are enforced by internal borders at which lorries languish for hours. It also distorts the economy in favour of goods and services taxed at lower rates (usually as a result of energetic lobbying). The agreement in August to subsume all manner of...Continue reading

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Remember, remember

“HE WHO controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past,” George Orwell wrote in “1984”. As Russia’s politics grows more Orwellian, the fight over its past is heating up. The Kremlin’s latest target is Memorial, the country’s most respected human-rights group, set up in the 1980s to commemorate victims of Stalin’s terror.

On October 29th thousands of people queued in a park opposite the headquarters of the agency once known as the KGB to read out the names of some of those whom Stalin had executed. The park features a monument to those victims, a large stone brought from the Solovetsky Islands, site of one of the first Soviet labour camps. Volunteers handed out bits of paper with names printed on them: “Zherebenkov, Dmitry Filatovich, 57, a worker in a cement factory. Executed on September 21st 1937. Zherikov, Semen Nikiforovich, 26, a labourer in a limestone quarry. Executed on March 9th 1938.”

The event has been held annually for ten years, but Arseny Roginsky, Memorial’s chairman, said he had never seen so many people. Ordinary Muscovites kept arriving from 10am until 10pm,...Continue reading

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Egypt devalues its currency, at last

“WE ARE in the bottleneck and we are on our way out, but if we want to get out, we have to take tough decisions,” says Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, the president of Egypt. In the face of a growing economic crisis, the government has indeed made some difficult calls, such as implementing a value-added tax (VAT) to shore up state finances. Cuts to generous subsidies are expected. And on November 3rd it made its toughest decision yet: to allow a big devaluation of the Egyptian pound.

For months the official exchange rate sat at 8.88 pounds to the dollar, while black-market traders sold the greenback at a premium that reached 100%. An overly cautious devaluation in March provided only temporary relief. This time the government went further, letting the pound fall to about 13 against the dollar. The precise rate will be based according to demand after a central-bank auction of dollars “This is a more realistic level, putting the currency below the long-term average on the basis of real exchange rates,” says Simon Kitchen of EFG Hermes, a Cairo-based investment bank. The central bank also raised key interest rates by 300 basis points.

The...Continue reading

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Seeking asylum—and jobs

Unskilled, unemployed and unhappy

WHEN Ameen first arrived from Aleppo, he was thrilled to have made it to Sweden. Speaking as he takes a break from a protest near parliament, he says he thought there would be plenty of jobs. But none was available. Now that the government has made it harder for family members to join the refugees, some have taken to Stockholm’s cobbled streets. The rules on asylum-seeking in Europe mean refugees like him have to stay in their country of arrival. “If we could leave, many of us would,” he says.

A big reason refugees cause alarm across Europe is the fear that they will steal jobs. But a more serious problem may be their joblessness. France, Germany and Norway all have big employment gaps between native- and foreign-born workers. But the gap is widest in the Netherlands and Sweden—and these figures do not yet include the 163,000 asylum-seekers who arrived in Sweden last year (see chart).

Continue reading

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Why Adidas's New Boss Is Talking Down Prospects

It was always going to be tough for the sports brand to keep up the pace.

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Credit Suisse Swings the Ax But Chops Mostly Revenue

The Swiss bank is making some headway on costs but returns are a long way from recovering.

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Goodbye, “Republic”

It’s our last real newspaper, leave it alone

LOADED with page-turners such as the latest exam procedures for food inspectors, Turkey’s official gazette, the journal that archives the everyday business of state, used to be as good a cure as any for insomnia. No longer. In the wake of this summer’s violent attempted coup against the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, no newspaper in Turkey is read with more trepidation. With its lists of thousands of universities, news outlets and hospitals closed since the coup, and of the 100,000 officials sacked from state institutions, the gazette has turned into the chronicle of a seemingly insatiable purge. Under a state of emergency that allows Mr Erdogan to rule by decree, it may soon become the only Turkish paper worth reading.

Much of the media were already controlled by government loyalists. Now nearly all are muzzled or intimidated. Over a hundred journalists have been jailed. On October 31st the crackdown hit Cumhuriyet (“Republic”), a flagship daily of the secular left as old as modern Turkey itself. Police detained the paper’s editor, Murat...Continue reading

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Jihadists told: surrender or die

THE fighters of Islamic State (IS) took less than a week to capture Iraq’s second-largest city in 2014. Weakened by years of neglect and corruption, the Iraqi army and its security forces crumbled, abandoning Mosul to the jihadists. The boot is now firmly on the other foot: Iraqi forces are battling to drive IS from the city. But it has taken them weeks even to reach the city limits.

On November 1st Iraqi special forces said they had penetrated Mosul’s eastern suburbs for the first time since the operation to recapture the city began on October 17th. The troops faced stiff resistance from snipers as they punched through IS lines in the Gogjali neighbourhood, an area best known for cattle farming. The soldiers have begun to search houses as they clear the area of militants and booby traps. “We will close in on Daesh [IS] from all angles and, God willing, we will cut the snake’s head. They will have no way out and no way to escape,” said Iraq’s prime minister, Haider al-Abadi. “Either they surrender or they die.”

For weeks Iraqi troops, Shia militias and Kurdish fighters, backed by Western special forces and American-led...Continue reading

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What’s going on

What makes them tick

ON A building site outside Youngstown, Ohio, a crowd of workmen are labouring through drizzle to get a nursing home finished on schedule. None is eager to talk politics with a nosy reporter. But your correspondent’s guide is Rocco DiGennaro, boss of the Local 125 construction-workers union to which they belong, and he urges them to speak freely.

“I’m not voting for the c**t. Why? Because she’s a no good fucking c**t!” says Paul, a carpenter, and no fan of Hillary Clinton. “I’m voting for Trump.” There are two dozen builders and joiners on the site, all middle-aged white men, and most say much the same. “She pisses me off,” says Don, a cement-mixer. “I’d be interested to see what a non-politician can do.” “I don’t trust that broad with my guns,” says Clyde, another cement man. “Since I’ve been voting, it’s always been Clinton or Bush; I want a different name,” says Rob, the site superintendent.

On the face of it, this is irrational. The men’s union membership brings privileges, including pay a third higher than their non-unionised colleagues make, which...Continue reading

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Wynn Macau: Too Much Casino Bling for Mass-Market Times

Business is ramping up slowly at Wynn Macau’s new luxury-oriented mega casino.

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Can Facebook Conquer TV?

Market reaction to Facebook’s third-quarter results shows investors are concerned about how the company will kick-start its next phase of growth.

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Starbucks Shares Ready to Perk Up

Starbucks looks to bounce back in Thursday’s results after missing same-store sales targets for three quarters in a row.

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American voters overseas: The 51st state

AROUND 30m Americans have already voted in the 2016 election. This includes military ballots and early voting. Yet it also includes a cohort that is poorly represented: overseas Americans. Where Virginians and Nevadans militate for their concerns in the capital, expatriate issues like double-taxation are largely mute. The government bizarrely doesn’t keep tabs on their numbers, but estimates range from 9m (the State Department) to 1m (the number of overseas tax filers, representing an estimated 2.1m people). The Federal Voter Assistance Program estimates 5.7m.

Taking 5.7m would make American expatriates the 21st largest state, giving it seven members of the House of Representatives—the same as Colorado, Alabama, and Minnesota. It would grant the bloc nine electoral college votes (see chart). That would have been enough to swing the 2000 election. (The next election where the cohort might have made a difference was in 1876,...Continue reading

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Market Says No, But Math Says Yes on Baker Hughes Deal

The lack of a benchmark share price for General Electric’s oil-and-gas business makes it tougher to value the offer to Baker Hughes owners, but it seems like a deal worth accepting.

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Fed Won't Make the Same Mistake Twice

A better understanding of the slack in the labor market will keep the Fed from threatening to raise rates rapidly.

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South Africa’s Public Protector finds wrongdoing at the heart of government

ON THE day that Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s president, was due to meet his Zimbabwean counterpart in Harare, an anti-corruption ombudsman back home released a report that may make his continued rule every bit as precarious as that of the ailing Robert Mugabe.

The report into “State Capture” by the former Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela, details a disturbing web of influence exerted by a powerful family friendly with Mr Zuma over various parts of the South African state. The report does not provide proof of criminal wrongdoing by Mr Zuma. But it provides more than enough evidence to suggest that Mr Zuma’s wealthy benefactors—Atul, Ajay and Rajesh Gupta—were involved in the firing and appointment of government ministers and the award of large contracts by Eskom, the state-owned electricity utility.

Mr Zuma’s dwindling band of supporters will, no doubt, argue that the report exonerates him of any wrongdoing. But that would be to misread the nature of Ms Madonsela’s findings; for this is but a first salvo in a legal barrage that may see Mr Zuma out of office before the end of 2017. All that Ms Madonsela had to do in this...Continue reading

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Democrats seem unlikely to turn the House map blue

THE polls have tightened since the news, late last week, of fresh e-mail difficulties for Hillary Clinton, but the Democratic nominee still seems likely to win the White House on November 8th. If she is victorious, however, Mrs Clinton is likely to take the helm of a divided government.

For while Democrats still have a chance at wresting control of the Senate—punters peg their chances at 62%—something more dramatic would be needed to give them the House of Representatives, where their hopes are deemed to be about one in ten. As Barack Obama knows well, passing legislation through a recalcitrant Republican opposition, as Mrs Clinton is almost sure to face, can be a difficult undertaking.

The lack of polling at the house-district level makes empirical forecasting difficult. Nonetheless qualitative projections, given by experts, give some guidance. Even in an American election as tumultuous as this, 213...Continue reading

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Bellwether election counties do not merit the epithet

WHEN predicting how America will vote, one popular crystal ball is the “bellwether county”. “Magic Town”, a 1947 film, envisioned a fictional town of Grandview that was a perfect microcosm of America, where everyone “thinks the way the whole country does.” Vigo County in Indiana, home to 100,000 people, appears to be America’s real-life Grandview: it has voted for the winner in 24 of the past 25 presidential contests. Every four years journalists flock there in the hope of taking the pulse of the nation.

Vigo’s record is remarkable, but many other counties are close on its heels. During the past century, 110 different counties (there are more than 3,000 in total) have voted for the winner in at least 12 consecutive presidential elections. It is natural to assume that such places must at least be broadly representative of the country as a whole, even if they are not necessarily populated entirely by soothsayers. The data suggest otherwise. Just two-thirds of these counties went on to pick the president correctly the 13th time.

Perhaps this test is too stringent. Even if a county misses the winner, there is no shame in giving...Continue reading

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France’s president self-destructs

THE French have an expression, l’appel du vide (“the call of the void”), to refer to the compulsive urge to do something self-destructive, such as leap off a cliff. It captures the frisson felt in contemplating the act, but resisting it. President François Hollande, however, seems to have surrendered. In a 662-page book published last month by two journalists, based on recorded interviews with the Socialist president, Mr Hollande insults all and sundry: judges, footballers, his own ministers and more. That a leader seeking re-election could engage in such a politically suicidal exercise, six months before France’s presidential election, has left his allies dumbstruck and his political future in freefall.

It was surprising enough that a sitting president in such turbulent times chose to meet the reporters, Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme, fully 61 times over four years. Often they chatted at the Elysée Palace; sometimes he dined at their place. More shocking was what Mr Hollande said. He called the judiciary a “cowardly institution”, the national football team “badly brought-up kids”, the poor “toothless”. He...Continue reading

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Alibaba Is Pricey and Confusing​

Alibaba is difficult to value given its many moving parts.

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The chances of a Cyprus settlement look better than ever

THERE have been several failed rounds of talks to reunify Cyprus since 1974, so scepticism about the latest is in order. Yet this round seems the most propitious to date. Speaking at The Economist’s Cyprus conference on November 1st, President Nicos Anastasiades expressed optimism that a deal would be done by the end of the year. The United Nations special envoy, Espen Barth Eide, added that more progress had been made than in any previous talks.

Mr Anastasiades and his Turkish-Cypriot counterpart, Mustafa Akinci, have agreed on a structure for a loose bizonal, bicommunal federation. Next week they move to Switzerland to talk about territory. This will be tough for Mr Akinci, as the Turkish-Cypriots, who make up some 20% of the population, must give up some of the 37% of the island they control. The Greek-Cypriots want the region of Morphou, a dusty town surrounded by lemon groves, as well as Varosha, a ruined beach resort outside Famagusta, and they may bristle at being offered the rugged Karpas peninsula. Yet observers reckon the two leaders would not be going to Switzerland unless they were confident of agreement.

What has...Continue reading

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Hillary Clinton targets Arizona in the final stretch

ARIZONA’s voters aren’t accustomed to being courted so late in a presidential election. The state, which Mitt Romney won by nine percentage points in 2012, has been reliably Republican in almost every presidential contest for decades—historically, candidates from both parties have accordingly focused their attention elsewhere. But Hillary Clinton’s plans to hold a rally on November 2nd in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe, less than a week before election day—her first appearance in the state since the eve of Arizona’s Democratic primary in March—suggests that 2016 may be different. 

“I think this kind of adds … the exclamation point to the fact that we are a battleground,” said Alexis Tameron, chairwoman of the Arizona Democratic Party, of Mrs Clinton’s scheduled visit. It will be preceded, by few hours, by a campaign stop in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa by Mike Pence, Donald Trump's running mate. A handful of recent polls show Mrs Clinton  and Mr Trump within the margin of error of each other; some have Mrs Clinton sporting a narrow lead. Arizona, at least for one election, has become a battleground state.

Many still believe Mr Trump will...Continue reading

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The Curious Pre-Election Calm in Corporate Bonds -- Heard on the Street

There is a fine line between keeping cool and being complacent. Credit markets appear to be skating on it.

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Hugo Boss Is Back In Charge

The worst seems to be over for Hugo Boss. It could be time to pick up a storied European brand at a knockdown price.

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Will the dollar rise or fall on a Trump victory?

YESTERDAY's decline in the American stockmarket, on news of a narrowing in the poll gap between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (under two points according to Real Clear Politics), confirms the argument made in last week's column. A combination of Mr Trump's adverse policy proposals on trade, foreign policy and the Fed, and uncertainty about how much of this agenda would get through Congress, would hit equities hard were he to be elected.

But what about the dollar? The picture is far from clear. Over the last 24 hours, the US currency has lost ground against the Swiss franc, euro, yen and sterling but gained against emerging market currencies like the Mexican peso and Brazilian real. That makes some sense. A Trump victory would make international investors less confident about the direction of US economic policy. This in turn might lead to the Fed being less willing to tighten...Continue reading

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Money talks

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In Tata's Boardroom Battle, TCS Has Most to Lose

For investors monitoring Tata’s drama, the most important piece to watch is Tata Consultancy Services.

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Valeant Gets Some Breathing Room

Finally, some positive news for Valeant Pharmaceuticals investors.

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Tronc Got Too Greedy

The failure of Gannett’s bid for Tronc suggests the Chicago Tribune publisher may have demanded too much and blown up a lucrative deal.

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What is at stake in the first Supreme Court case on transgender rights

THREE years ago, Gavin Grimm, then a high-school freshman in Virginia, struggled with his gender identity. Born a girl but feeling like a boy, Gavin’s stress was so great that he often found himself skipping class. After talking to a psychologist and receiving a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, Mr Grimm began to live as a boy, with a treatment plan that asked others to treat him “as a boy in all respects, including when using the restroom”. Mr Grimm started his sophomore year by dashing off to the bathroom in the nurse’s office, but after a few weeks, with the principal’s assent, he began using the boys’ room. Soon, in response to some parents’ complaints, the school board scuttled this arrangement, decreeing that “male and female restroom and locker room facilities...shall be limited to the corresponding biological genders”.

Mr Grimm sued the Gloucester County School Board with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, losing initially but winning on appeal. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in April 2016 that in keeping with the Obama administration’s plausible reading of Title IX, a civil-rights law barring gender discrimination, Mr Grimm must...Continue reading

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Colonial Pipeline's Brief Trading Bonanza

An explosion Monday on a critical energy pipeline sent traders looking for companies that would benefit or suffer as a result.

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A Trust-Me Story at Software Maker PTC

Software maker PTC’s fiscal fourth-quarter results didn’t ease concerns surrounding its business-model transition.

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Irrational tossers

THERE are few sure things in investing. But the chance to bet on a rigged coin sounds like a good one. Alas, a paper by two fund managers, Victor Haghani of Elm Partners (and co-founder of the collapsed Long-Term Capital Management) and Rich Dewey of Pimco, shows that it is possible to get even that wrong.

The paper invited 61 people, a combination of college-age students in finance and economics and some young professionals at finance firms (including 14 who worked for fund managers), to take a test. They were each given a stake of $25 and then asked to bet on a coin that would land heads 60% of the time. The prizes were real, although capped at $250. 

Remarkably, 28% of the participants went bust, and the average payout was just $91. Only 21% of the participants reached the maximum. 18 of the 61 participants bet everything on one toss, while two-thirds gambled on tails at some stage in the experiment. Neither approach is in the least bit optimal.

Apparently the right strategy is to use the Kelly criterion, named after a...Continue reading

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Big Pharma Sales Need a Booster Shot​

Slowing sales, rather than election worries, are pressuring pharmaceutical stocks.

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There are better and worse arguments for keeping interest rates low

With the Federal Reserve set to raise interest rates in December, my colleague R.A. argues that:

Fed members argue that they are choosing to raise rates now, before inflation has returned to target, so that inflation will not jump above 2%, forcing them to raise rates in a much more rapid manner. If the choice is between above target inflation and a recession, the Fed will take the latter. They are prepared to risk keeping inflation from ever getting to target in the first place (and also a recession) by raising rates with inflation below 2%…

and that:

…recent experience has probably distorted central bankers' perspective, and made them excessively quick to see inflation in the data and react to it

His criticism of the Fed combines multiple lines of argument. One is that central bankers are too keen to spot inflation in the data. That is probably...Continue reading

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Standard Chartered's Precarious Balancing Act

Standard Chartered is investing to lift revenue prospects but third-quarter results will stoke concerns over when it might generate a decent return on equity and resume dividends.

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Panasonic: A Safer Bet on Tesla Than Tesla Itself

A plunge in Panasonic’s shares offers a safer entry point for exposure to electric cars.

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Why Everything Isn't All Right With China's Economy

Good news on manufacturing data will only hasten China’s need to close the credit taps.

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Why the Clinton campaign is targeting white suburban women

KAREN KATZ has campaigned for the Democrats at every general election since Robert F. Kennedy’s fateful bid for the presidency in 1968. Now aged 70, she had planned to sit out this year’s campaign. But she became alarmed by the number of women in her suburb of Philadelphia who said they were going to vote for Donald Trump. So in August, when Hillary Clinton’s campaign opened an office in Bucks County, one of four “collar counties” that surround Philadelphia, Ms Katz volunteered to work the phones three evenings a week. “It’s exhausting,” she says. “But I’ve got two daughters and I’m doing this for them.”

This has put Ms Katz at the centre of one of the election’s biggest battles. Mr Trump’s lead over Mrs Clinton with men, especially working-class white men, means she must win women by a big margin, which in turn means capturing college-educated white women, a group that tends to lean Republican. Suburban white women, who tend to be college-educated and thickly concentrated in battleground states, have therefore emerged as one of the most important groups of swing voters in this election.

Polls tend not to publish data about suburban white...Continue reading

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The Only Thing on Sale at Coach Is Its Stock

Coach’s shares have lost about 17% over the past three months and look undervalued relative to peers.

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Cloud Bill: Why Amazon, Microsoft and Google Are Likely to Keep Spending

Trailing 12-month capital investments are now at $30 billion for three largest cloud vendors.

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Oil Is Slicker Than Water at GE

General Electric is dumping its water business while combining the oil and gas unit with Baker Hughes, but probably not because it needs the cash.

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Big Mergers May Face a Higher Bar in Washington

The White House is looking at the impact on jobs and pay when approving corporate deals, including planned mergers like General Electric-Baker Hughes and AT&T-Time Warner.

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