A breakdown of trust between Donald Trump and America’s spy chiefs

“I WON”. It is hard to overstate the psychological weight carried by those two words, offered by President-elect Donald Trump as evidence that “the American public” does not care that he has not released his tax returns. The defiant words were flung out near the start of a rowdy press conference in the marble and brass lobby of Trump Tower in Manhattan—the businessman’s first formal question-and-answer session with reporters in half a year.

Many mainstream Republicans, including members of Congress or business types excited by the chance to advance a conservative agenda of tax cuts and deregulation once they control the White House and both chambers of Congress, had hoped that by this moment, nine days from his inauguration, victory might make Mr Trump more magnanimous.

That was not the President-elect Trump who turned up. Instead, the man who spoke to the world on the morning of January 11th was, whether judged in terms of his character or on questions of substance, the same bullying, thin-skinned but brilliantly populist man who campaigned with such success.

The press wanted, first and foremost, to ask about an extraordinary few days in which...Continue reading

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Nintendo Needs the Right Price to Switch Back On

Nintendo’s new console comes as the Japanese game maker has lost share to PlayStation, Xbox.

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A mutiny in Ivory Coast

WAR, said Carl von Clausewitz, is politics by other means. In Ivory Coast, the country at the heart of Francophone West Africa, so too is mutiny. On January 6th soldiers seized Bouaké, the second largest city in the country. Over the weekend they briefly kidnapped the country’s defence minister and shooting was heard in Abidjan, the commercial capital.

Purportedly, the dispute was about soldiers’ pay. On January 8th, having been promised generous bonuses, the soldiers returned to their barracks. Alassane Ouattara, the president, sacked the army and police chiefs. However, many Ivorians found the timing of the mutiny suspicious. It came a few days before Mr Ouattara dissolved his government in anticipation of implementing a new constitution.

In economic terms, Ivory Coast has in recent years been one of Africa’s star performers. Between 2012 and 2015 its GDP grew at an average rate of 8.5% per year. Abidjan’s crumbling 1970s brutalist skyline has been transformed by a wave of foreign projects. New offices, malls, a Heineken brewery and various factories have sprouted. This is largely thanks to the policies of Mr Ouattara, an...Continue reading

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Merck's Blockbuster Dreams Look More Realistic

Merck’s cancer therapy Keytruda looks set to live up to its lofty expectations after the FDA approved an application to sell the immunotherapy drug in combination with chemotherapy to lung cancer patients.

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Thailand’s new king rejects the army’s proposed constitution

FOR more than two years Thailand’s ruling junta—which seized power in a coup in 2014—has been cooking up a constitution which it hopes will keep military men in control even after fresh elections take place. In August the generals won approval for the document in a referendum made farcical by a law which forbade campaigners from criticising the text. Yet on January 10th, only weeks before the new charter was supposed to come into force, the prime minister said his government was tweaking the draft. Prayuth Chan-ocha said changes were necessary because King Vajiralongkorn, the country’s constitutional monarch, had declined to give the document royal assent.

There is much to dislike about the proposed constitution, which will keep elected governments beholden to a senate nominated by the junta and to a suite of meddling committees. But Mr Prayuth says the king’s objections relate only to “three or four” articles—all of which appear to limit the sovereign’s power slightly. The generals say the palace has asked them to amend a rule which requires the monarch to nominate a regent when he is absent from the kingdom (probably because King...Continue reading

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Banks Hold Best Cards in Rewards Contest

While consumers benefit as credit-card issuers increasingly offer rewards to lure customers, the real winners are big banks like Chase and Citigroup, which are leaving behind stand-alone card companies in the fight for market share.

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Volkswagen's Road To Recovery Has Bigger Bumps Ahead

VW’s dieselgate isn’t the company’s biggest obstacle to recovery. Resurgent hopes make it a bad time to invest.

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The global slowdown

WORK smarter, not harder. It is one of the more irritating things that a boss can tell you. But at the macroeconomic level, it is important. Growth can come from having more labour (recruiting more workers, or making existing employees work for longer hours), more capital, or from using that labour and capital more effectively—something known as total factor productivity (TFP). It can be the kind of brilliant innovations devised by Thomas Edison (pictured) or the less-heralded but equally important improvements such as the adoption of the moving conveyor belt to speed up assembly work. Since there are limits to the amount of additional capital and labour, productivity is key to long-run growth.

Measuring productivity is far from easy; it tends to be the residual left over when all other factors have been accounted for. The OECD says it "can often be a measure of our ignorance". Still, the attached table is very striking. It comes from the American Chamber of Commerce (here's the link, with thanks to Gervais...Continue reading

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Turbulence Ahead

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These European Banks Offer Real Value as Earnings Trump Regulation

Capital is less of a concern than prospects for earnings growth

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Barack Obama bows out reflecting on the fragility of democracy

PRESIDENT Barack Obama did not disappoint. As one of the most gifted orators ever to have led America, expectations were high for his farewell speech on January 11th. His supporters are still pained and confused by the Democrats’ unexpected loss of the presidential election and they are turning to him for guidance about the way forward. Could they still be optimistic about the future when the man who will become president next week has vowed to undo most of Mr Obama’s proudest achievements, and who campaigned on a dystopian depiction of contemporary America?

Yes, you can, the president told around 18,000 supporters in a thoughtful speech of some 45 minutes at McCormick Place, an unwieldy convention centre on the South Side of Chicago. “We remain the wealthiest, most powerful, and most respected nation on earth,” he said. “Our youth, our drive, our diversity and openness, our boundless capacity for risk and reinvention means that the future should be ours.” He acknowledged that progress is sometimes slow and that two steps forward are followed by a step back. But he pointed out the progress made during his presidency, such as the reversal of a great recession, the...Continue reading

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Donald Trump and weed

THERE are still a few quirks at The Farm, a cannabis shop in Boulder, Colorado, that recall the back-alleys from which its industry sprang. It only accepts cash, because banks and other credit card providers are forbidden by federal law to accept drug money. Its cannabis products, including dope suppositories and intimate oils, as well as Sacred Dirty Chai truffles and a vast array of weed strains (named Karma Bitch, Ghost Trainwreck Haze and so forth) are sold from a backroom, which the shopper must provide a proof of identity to access. But the shop is not at all shady.

It is pleasant, trendy and staffed by well-mannered herb enthusiasts, known as “bud-tenders”. In one of America’s richest liberal havens, it is also thriving, to the benefit of all Boulder’s residents: the city levies a 22.35% sales tax on recreational dope, and hot demand for warehouse space from pot growers points to a boom. Having permitted the first legal dope shops to open in January 2014, Colorado is expected to have collected around $135m from dope taxes last year, around three times more than it will have made from taxing alcohol. Following its example—and pro-pot votes in California, Maine,...Continue reading

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M&A Boutiques in Risky Place Under Trump

For this Wall Street business, a Trump presidency may bring more risks than rewards.

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'Take Your Medicine' Is Big Pharma's Best Prescription

Adherence, or improving patient’s ability to stick with doctor’s orders, marks an area of opportunity for drug companies.

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Alibaba Is Better at Selling Than Buying

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba says it will pay up to $2.6 billion, a 42% premium, to raise its stake in department-store operator Intime Retail. It’s no bargain.

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U.S. Car Industry Has Unlikely Patriots

Tesla and the German luxury car makers can better afford U.S. manufacturing than the Detroit Three.

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A Dark Day for Chinese Inflation

Producer prices in China took their biggest jump in more than five years in December, but it was mostly about that black, oily stuff.

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Donald Trump taps his son-in-law for a job as senior adviser

DONALD TRUMP would not the first president to give a family member an important job. John F Kennedy appointed his brother, Bobby Kennedy, as attorney-general, a job for which he was almost universally considered to be too young and inexperienced. Bill Clinton put his wife, Hillary Clinton, in charge of reforming America’s health-care system. Had Mrs Clinton defeated Mr Trump in last year’s election, she might well have given her husband a job in her administration, too.

Even so, if Mr Trump wishes to avoid accusations of nepotism, he would be wise not to appoint his son-in-law, Jared Kushner (pictured), as his senior adviser. Yet that is preciselywhat he is about to do, according to statements from his transition team and Mr Kushner’s lawyer on January 9th. Kennedy and Mr Clinton were widely criticised—even sued—for appointing a relative to a government job. “It is simply not good enough to name a bright young political manager, no matter how bright or how young or how personally loyal, to a major post in government,” thundered an editorial in the New York Times in 1961. “A travesty of justice,” was Newsweek’s verdict.

Six years after Kennedy’s...Continue reading

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Time to Start Worrying Again About Chinese Property

Given the accumulated risks and the impact on the broader economy, China’s property market may just be the most important in the world for investors to watch in 2017

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Double Trouble for the U.K. Pound

The pound could have further to fall, driven both by fears about Brexit and hopes for the U.S. economy.

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Drug Deal Is Bet Price Pressures Have Eased

Takeda Pharmaceutical’s proposed acquisition of Ariad Pharmaceuticals for about $4.7 billion could boost valuations as buyers regain confidence in ability to raise prices.

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Surprise: It Might Be Time to Sell, Especially in Europe

The Citigroup Economic Surprise Index is a strong contrarian indicator that is worth watching right now.

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Texas unveils its “bathroom bill"

“THE PHANTOM MENACE”, the Star Wars film made in 1999, would be an apt title for a documentary exploring a 21st-century phenomenon in a galaxy far closer: the legislature of the State of Texas. In recent years, Texas passed a voter-ID law that would have disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of its residents. It also approved abortion-provider regulations that would have reduced the number of clinics in the state to the single digits. Texas’s purported justifications for these laws—averting voter fraud and protecting women’s health—were roundly shot down by, respectively, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court. In both cases, the menace Texas feared was found to be a figment of legislators’ creative imaginations. The real motives behind the laws were transparent: Texas wanted fewer Democratic-leaning blacks, students and poor people to vote, and it wanted to make abortion rights harder to exercise.

Texas has struck again. With the stated aim of protecting the “privacy” and “safety” of its citizens, Texas Republicans are pushing a new bill requiring bathrooms in schools and government buildings to be reserved for people whose...Continue reading

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The death of a former president tilts the balance of power in Iran

TEARS always came easily to the lachrymose ayatollah. But those at a gathering on December 13th seemed more heartfelt than most. He was reading from his own biography of Amir Kabir, the Shah’s chief minister in the mid-19th century, when the blubbing began. Kabir had tried to open the Persian Empire up to the West, he wept, only to be frustrated by the hand of a hardline assassin. “Something suggested he was thinking of his own failed attempts at reform,” says one of those present.

With death approaching, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who died on January 8th aged 82, may also have had an eye on posterity. Eulogists are already hailing a lifetime spent trying to open Iran and its Islamic revolution to the West. Israeli officials were among the first to label him a moderate. In the midst of the Iran-Iraq war, they sold him arms. In return, he obligingly diverted the proceeds with a nod from America’s Republican leaders to the Contras, Nicaragua’s anti-communist rebels. “If people believe we can live behind a closed door, they are mistaken. We are in need of friends and allies around the world,” he explained. He persuaded Ayatollah Khomeini to...Continue reading

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Self-Driving Cars Will Be More Disruptive Than Electric Ones

The auto industry is on the cusp of two great changes. Electric vehicles are a technological and financial challenge that will roil the industry’s established order. Self-driving cars may blow it up.

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McDonald's Shakes Up Its China Approach

The fast-food giant’s sale of its China business to a state-owned company could be more profitable in the long run.

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Chinese Bonds Coming to Ratings Company Near You

As Chinese bonds sold off sharply in December, Beijing quietly declared its intention to allow foreign credit-rating companies to rate local issues for the first time.

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Biotech Starts Year With a Look Ahead

In biotech, it is how you start the year that counts. Investors will get a good look at how 2017 is shaping up starting Monday when the 35th annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference kicks off in San Francisco.

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Apple's Fortunes Are Hard to Read

Apple’s highly focused business model means even conservative forecasts can miss the mark.

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Intelligence report says Putin ordered a campaign to help Trump

AMERICAN democracy has suffered a grave assault—yet political leaders from its two main parties cannot agree on how or even whether to investigate. In a move that is both astonishing and without precedent the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) on December 6th issued a declassified version of a secret assessment earlier given to Barack Obama and Donald Trump. It found that the intelligence services of a foreign country hacked into the email accounts and computers of senior officials involved in the 2016 presidential campaign, notably at the Democratic National Committee, and released much of that stolen data to the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy website. The same hostile power also gained access to computer systems of several state and local electoral boards (though not systems involved in vote tallying) and used an array of front organisations, television channels and social media “trolls” to feed disinformation and propaganda to American audiences, in a bid to influence the result of the election and “undermine the US-led liberal democratic order.”

In language as blunt as it is startling, the assessment, written by the...Continue reading

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Joe Arpaio is no longer “America’s toughest sheriff”

IT IS hard to imagine Maricopa County, Arizona, without Joe Arpaio. The flamboyant, tough-talking sheriff reigned over the county, which includes the sprawling Phoenix metropolitan area, for 24 years. Sheriff Joe, as he was often called, became known around the world for his unusual policies and aggressive self-promotion: dressing his inmates in pink underwear and housing them in tents in Arizona’s sweltering desert heat; using the power of his office to round up illegal immigrants.

But “America’s toughest sheriff”, as he called himself, is no longer in the job. On December 4th, Paul Penzone, a Democrat, was sworn in as the new sheriff. In elections in November, voters in the heavily Republican county opted overwhelmingly against giving 84-year-old Mr Arpaio a seventh term in office and chose Mr Penzone, a former Phoenix police officer. Mr Penzone has said he will get rid of what he described as Mr Arpaio's publicity stunts—including the pink underwear—but may retain other practices, such as the use of volunteers to free up police time.

For years, Mr Arpaio seemed invincible. To the chagrin of his many critics, he seemed to remain a hero in Maricopa...Continue reading

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What to Make of Markets Calm During Political Storm

Investors aren’t looking much further than the end of their noses, and it won’t be until their noses run up against real trouble that they are likely to react.

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Wage growth surges, just in time for the Trump presidency

Here's Why Some Retailers Didn't Have Awful Holidays

Retailers’ holiday results shed some light on the best way to interpret Heard on the Street’s pricing data.

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Regeneron Is Down, Not Out

Biotech stock Regeneron should recover from a surprise injunction over a new cholesterol drug.

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The Job Market Tries the Fed's Patience

The Federal Reserve might not be able to wait to see what President-elect Donald Trump’s policies look like before raising rates.

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Botswana feels the South African pinch

IN PHAKALANE, an affluent suburb of Botswana’s sleepy capital Gaborone, a modern assembly line spits out thousands of batteries destined for southern African cars. Whether in glitzy Bentleys beloved of the South African elite or the beaten-up Toyotas swerving to avoid Harare potholes, the devices made by employees of Chloride Exide keep the region moving.

Yet trouble is brewing just beyond the factory gates. Less than 25 miles (40km) away in South Africa, the company’s largest export market, an economic slowdown has crippled demand. In the past year some 30,000 fewer batteries than usual were shipped across the border. To make things worse sales to Zimbabwe, once a big buyer, have been hit by import restrictions.

Without thriving neighbours, Botswana finds itself in a tricky situation. It is blessed with natural resources—mainly diamonds but also copper, nickel and beef. Income per person was $6,510 in 2015, making Botswana an upper-middle-income nation. The World Bank rates it an easier place to do business than China. Yet as its diamond reserves dwindle, it is scrambling for a new economic model.

In September Botswana...Continue reading

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European Equities: The Importance of Seeing Earnings

European stocks ended 2016 on a brighter note. Hope for earnings growth springs eternal.

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Why Beijing's Grip on the Yuan Is Becoming Tenuous

Beijing is now finding that the influence of global financial markets within its own markets is bigger and harder to control than before.

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Mobileye's Road Gets More Crowded

Chip companies are driving hard at future of self-driving cars, raising competitive stakes for Mobileye.

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The spectre of slavery haunts George Washington’s house

IN 1982 Dorothy Gilliam was walking down an overgrown path close to Mount Vernon, George Washington’s lovely house on the Potomac River in Virginia, when she glimpsed a flash of white stone. Drawing nearer, Ms Gilliam, then a columnist for the Washington Post, made out an inscription on the moss-grown slab: “In memory of the many faithful coloured servants of the Washington family buried at Mount Vernon from 1760 to 1860. Their unidentified graves surround this spot”.

The memorial had been laid in 1929 by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association (MVLA), a heritage group that owns the estate, and since forgotten. An “eerie sense of isolation surrounds the place where an unknown number of Washington’s 317 slaves were buried”, Ms Gilliam wrote in a subsequent column, “and the long walk from the stately tomb of George Washington to this abandoned memorial seemed drenched with the tears of the slaves”. Her words jolted the MVLA into action. Within weeks it had constructed a decent footpath and signposts to guide visitors to the slab. The following year, a new memorial was unveiled: a grey, truncated column of granite, surrounded by a circular brick path, on the...Continue reading

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Retailers Will Keep Singing the Blues

Problems at Macy’s and Kohl’s are emblematic of an industry in transition toward a less-profitable business model.

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The Greenspan legacy

MORE than ten years have elapsed since Alan Greenspan stepped down from the Federal Reserve; a decade that has not been kind to his reputation. Having just read Sebastian Mallaby's comprehensive biography*, "The Man Who Knew", it struck me that his career was a classic example of cognitive dissonance.

The main post-crisis criticism of Mr Greenspan was that he was a naive believer in market efficiency, failing to pop bubbles in the late 1990s or mid-2000s and failing to regulate the financial sector properly. He was, for a while, a disciple of the libertarian novelist, Ayn Rand. But Mr Mallaby shows that things were rather more complex than that characterisation suggests.

In a paper written back in 1959, for example, Mr Greenspan clearly seemed to understand the detrimental effect that bubbles could have. He wrote that

The higher the stock market gets at its peak and hence the greater decline required to return to "normal", the deeper the decline in economic activity 

In 2002, after the Enron scandal, Greenspan also spoke in favour of greater regulation of corporate accounting standards. Smacking the table, he told a meeting...Continue reading

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Inequality or middle incomes: which matters more?

A PUZZLE exists where America’s economics meet its politics. Income inequality is higher than in other rich countries, and the recent election was interpreted by many as the revenge of the left-behind, who found their champion in Donald Trump. Yet the candidate who made income inequality a campaign theme, wanted higher taxes on the rich and promised more financial regulation lost. Since the election, Mr Trump has nominated a cabinet with a combined net worth of over $6bn, by one estimate. He has invited the bosses of big corporations to advise him on economic policy. And he has filled key White House posts with Goldman Sachs alumni. The riches of top earners do not seem to bother voters nearly as much as many on the left would like them to.

In fact, some argue that a focus on inequality actually harmed Democrats’ chances. Most of the rise in inequality happened over a decade ago (see chart 1). Polls usually suggest that...Continue reading

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Police departments struggle to recruit enough officers

No college required

STAR WARS can be used to sell almost anything, from Lego to a career in policing. Fort Worth’s police department released a recruitment video on its Facebook page in December featuring an officer at target practice with a stormtrooper. The white-clad soldiers are notoriously poor shots, and the video shows the galactic GI missing every attempt he makes until he creeps so far forward that his goggles are very nearly touching his target. When the exasperated officer asks “who referred you to us?” Darth Vader peeks out from the back of the room, shaking his helmeted head in disgust. The scrolling text at the end of the video, which has garnered 17m views thus far, urges: “Join our Force! If you have what it takes to be a Fort Worth Police Officer and are a better aim than a Stormtrooper.” The advert underscores a serious problem affecting police forces nationwide. Economic and social changes have made it harder for police departments to keep their forces fully staffed, and lead to increasingly desperate recruitment.

The Los Angeles Police Department was short of nearly 100 officers as of...Continue reading

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A study by the Journal of American Medicine suggests stand-your-ground laws result in more fatal shootings

With the stroke of his pen in 2005, Jeb Bush, then governor of Florida, ignited enthusiasm for “stand-your-ground” laws. Citizens who “reasonably believed” their lives to be threatened were given the right to “meet force with force, including deadly force”— even in public places and, critically, without the duty to try and retreat first. More than 20 states have passed similar laws since then. Critics warned that, rather than protecting self-defence rights as intended, the bill would result in unnecessary deaths. Research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association appears to vindicate those fears. Soon after the law took effect in Florida, there was a sudden and sustained 24% jump in the monthly homicide rate. The rate of homicides involving firearms increased by 32%. The authors found that in states without a stand-your-ground law over the same time period those rates remained flat, suggesting that a nationwide crime wave was not to blame for the abrupt increase.

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The war on ticket bots is unlikely to be won

“HAMILTON”, the hip-hop Broadway musical about one of America’s founding fathers, has broken all sorts of box-office records. Demand is high because it is exceptionally good. But this is not the only reason tickets are so scare. Every time the show’s producers release a new block to sell, they immediately get snapped up by “ticket bots”, high-speed ticket-buying software. The bots cut the virtual queue, manipulating and paralysing sites like Ticketmaster before real people can get a look-see. Jeffrey Seller, “Hamilton’s” producer, has called bots “computerised cheaters”.

Despite Mr Seller working with Ticketmaster—which runs software in an effort to stop bots—to get tickets into the hands of real fans, too many tickets end up on secondary market websites for substantially inflated prices. According to Ticketmaster, about 60% of the hottest tickets are bought by bots. A single broker, using a bot, purchased 1,012 to a 2014 U2 concert in under a minute, despite the venue limiting sales to four tickets per customer. By the end of the day, that same broker had purchased 15,000 tickets. Even tickets for free events, like Pope...Continue reading

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Charleston’s planned International African American Museum will fill in a gap in American history

Smalls by name, big in daring

JUST inside the gates of the Unitarian Church in Charleston sits a slab of salvaged bricks. Affixed to the front is a metal bird looking backwards—a West African symbol, a plaque explains, which means “learning from the past in order to move forward”. An inscription dedicates the monument to “the enslaved workers who made these bricks and helped build our church.” The church is off most tourists’ trails, so many miss the memorial. But an overdue museum aims to spread its frank message more widely.

Like much of the South, for a long time the city glossed or downplayed the abomination that made it rich and left it beautiful. Visitors to its grand townhouses, or to the sumptuous plantation mansions nearby, might be shown suspiciously well-appointed “servants’ quarters”. The conflict known as the “war between the states” was not, repeat not, fought over slavery. There is more honesty these days; the trade in human beings is documented in a small exhibition in an old slave mart. But such acknowledgments are not commensurate with the role the institution once played in...Continue reading

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Learning to love Trumpism

A TRUE politician is someone who, upon spying a torch-wielding mob marching on his legislature, declares: “Oh good, a parade—I must lead it.” A striking number of conservatives are taking that approach ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20th. The president-elect’s followers include many who distrust both main parties and, if handed a pitchfork, might skewer half the Republicans in Congress. Undaunted, party bigwigs and intellectuals have begun making the case that, for all its rough edges, “Trumpism” is a recognisably conservative way of viewing the world, with the potential to rescue swathes of America from feelings of abandonment and despair, securing majorities for Republicans for years to come.

Republican leaders who clashed with Mr Trump during the election campaign now urge colleagues to see his victory as a lesson in humility. After the new Congress was sworn in on January 3rd Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, told members that for too long leaders in Washington had treated complaints about closed factories with “condescension”. Now Americans had let out a “great roar”, Mr Ryan continued: they...Continue reading

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Republican congressmen retreat from an attempt to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics

AS THEIR first major initiative of the new year, Republican congressmen announced a scheme so crassly self-interested as to suggest they had learned nothing from the old one. Denizens of a reviled institution, and a party railroaded by Donald Trump’s populist insurgency, they planned to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), an independent investigative body designed to root out corruption. Less than 24 hours later, after a hail of condemnation, they turned tail; even so their bungling was damning.

The OCE was founded by the Democrats in 2008 after a run of scandals—including a big one concerning the Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff—highlighted the impunity with which some lawmakers were abusing their office in exchange for campaign contributions. The office is empowered and equipped to investigate allegations of impropriety. It may then report its findings to the House Ethics Committee and, even if that body decides to take no further action, publicise them. Anti-corruption campaigners consider it a bulwark against official corruption. Many congressmen consider it unjust and wasteful.

Several who have been subject to the...Continue reading

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