Why Big, Bad Boeing Is Picking on Bombardier

Why is Boeing picking on the little guy? Because that is how you stay big and dominant.

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Saudi Arabia's Mega Bond Sale Sets Clock Ticking on Change

Saudi Arabia has been forced by the collapse of oil prices onto a road of change: the lifting of the kingdom’s ban on women driving is another clear signal of that. But the country’s jumbo $12.5 billion bond sale, after last year’s even bigger $17.5 billion debut issue, is as much about where Saudi Arabia has come from as where it hopes to go.

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Insurers Could Make Trouble as Fed Balance Sheet Shrinks

Everyone is wondering how markets will react when central banks unwind their huge bond-buying programs. One sector where regulators have definite concerns is insurers.

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Saudi Arabia will finally allow women to drive

THE roads in Riyadh are about to undergo a historic change. On September 26th Saudi Arabia announced the end of its decades-old ban on female drivers. It is the only country in the world to have such a stricture, which became a symbol of the ultraconservative kingdom’s repression of women.

For many Saudi women, the change is long overdue. Dozens of them got behind the wheel in Riyadh in 1990 to demand more rights. Some were prosecuted or lost their government jobs. The protests resumed in 2008 and peaked soon after the Arab uprisings in 2011. “We have lived to see this day after 27 years,” said Hessa al-Sheikh, one of the original activists.

They found a supporter in the youthful crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman (or MBS, as he is called), who has an expansive plan to change Saudi society. One piece is loosening the kingdom’s social restrictions. Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, has been ruled according to a strict interpretation of sharia,...Continue reading

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Big Tech's Biggest Risk

Governments are putting tech’s giants under increasing scrutiny, which could slow growth and squeeze margins.

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Micron's Memory Isn't Fading Just Yet

The memory-chip maker’s strong results and outlook cool fears of a peak.

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Why a Labour government might mean a fall in sterling

THE British Labour party is in buoyant mood at its annual conference, expecting to be in power very soon. And it has already started to think about the consequences, including a possible run on the pound if it takes office. But not everyone thinks this is likely; Simon Wren-Lewis, an economist, challenged people to think of "a serious economic reason why stering would fall on the election of a Labour government?" Well, this blogger can think of several. 

1. Labour plans to increase the rate of tax on corporate profits from (what will be) 17% to 26%. That means the profits available to overseas investors will be reduced accordingly. They will demand a lower price to compensate for this lower return - this will either come in the form of a fall in the stockmarket or in the pound, or probably a bit of both.

2. Labour plans to nationalise various utilities (railways, water, the Royal Mail and some energy) and to cancel some private finance initiatives, by...Continue reading

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Donald Trump turns to hurricane-hit Puerto Rico

IT IS nearly a week since Hurricane Maria thumped Puerto Rico, flattening buildings and ripping up roads, and the island is still without electricity. Tens of thousands of its inhabitants are homeless. Many more are short of food and drinking water. On September 26th Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, the capital, wept as she described the wreckage. “I know that leaders aren’t supposed to cry and especially not on TV, but we’re having a humanitarian crisis here,” she said. “The worst fear is that we cannot get to everyone in time."

This may turn out to be the biggest test of Donald Trump’s presidency so far. If so, he is failing it. Faced with the reality of 3.4m Americans devastated by the biggest hurricane their island had seen in nearly 90 years, the president was silent for days.

The storm hit Puerto Rico on September 20th. While workers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) were carrying out search and rescue operations and getting food and water to thirsty people, the president...Continue reading

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The president of Togo is under pressure to resign

They’re not flagging

ASSOUGEY, a technician from Lomé, the capital of Togo, was arrested on September 7th. His crime: participating in one of the anti-government protests that have rocked the country in recent weeks. A policeman beat him with the butt of his gun, he says. His left leg is covered in bruises. Like many of his fellow protesters, Assougey says he joined the demonstrations because the same corrupt people have been in power for too long.

Faure Gnassingbé, Togo’s president, has ruled the small west African country for 12 years. In 2002 his late predecessor and father, Gnassingbé Eyadéma, lowered the legal age limit for a president to make way for his son. Eyadéma had seized power in a military coup in 1967. Fifty years later, the family has been in power longer than any other African regime.

Despite Mr Gnassingbé’s best efforts to quash the protests, they continue. Initially centred around Lomé, they have spread to other parts...Continue reading

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Africa is a smugglers’ paradise for North Korean diplomats

THE face that stares from Kim Jong Su’s passport shows a rather woebegone man in suit and tie. In fact, Mr Kim is a taekwondo master and, allegedly, a North Korean spy. In 2015 he was detained in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, along with a counsellor in North Korea’s embassy in South Africa after their vehicle was stopped by police. Inside was almost $100,000 in cash and 4.5 kilos of rhino horn. They were released after the North Korean ambassador to South Africa intervened. In 2016, Mr Kim slipped out of South Africa.

This and other such stories are contained in a new report published by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, a Geneva-based lobby. The author, Julian Rademeyer, found that North Koreans were implicated in 18 of the 29 rhino-horn- and ivory-smuggling cases involving diplomats since 1986. How much of this shadowy commerce is for personal gain, and how much is to meet the North Korean regime’s thirst for hard currency, is impossible...Continue reading

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Muhammad bin Salman cracks down on his perceived opponents

Prince Muhammad spots a critic

THESE are jittery times in Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy that prefers to script its political changes many years in advance. Over the past two weeks, police have arrested dozens of public figures who seem to have little in common. The most prominent is Salman al-Ouda, a popular cleric who dispenses religious advice to his 14m followers on Twitter. But the list also reportedly includes writers, human-rights activists and even officials from the justice ministry. On September 11th Mr Ouda’s brother, Khalid, criticised his arrest on Twitter: “It has revealed the size of the demagoguery we enjoy.” The authorities soon rounded him up, too.

The kingdom’s motives, as ever, are opaque. The arrests came ahead of September 15th, when a loose coalition of activists had called for protests to demand more political freedom. The appointed date came and went quietly—in part because of a heavy police presence on city streets. Saudi...Continue reading

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Western officials are trying to avert the next war in Iraq

AS THE jihadists of the so-called Islamic State (IS) retreat, the Arab and Kurdish forces allied against it in Iraq are turning their arms towards each other. Rather than celebrate victory, Masoud Barzani, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, called a referendum on independence for September 25th, not just in his constitutionally recognised autonomous zone but in the vast tracts that his forces seized from IS. Protesting against this threat to Iraq’s integrity, Haider al-Abadi, the country’s president, gathered his commanders at Makhmour, opposite the Kurdish front lines. If the referendum went ahead, Kurdistan “might disappear”, he warned. Hoping to prevent their allies from sparring, Western mediators have stepped in. But as The Economist went to press, Mr Barzani remained committed to his referendum.

Kurdistan is far from ready for statehood. The government is steeped in debt; its coffers are empty. The Peshmerga, its vaunted fighting force, is split between...Continue reading

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Picking a fund manager? The odds aren’t great

WHO wants mediocrity? That is what a lot of people say when the subject of index-tracking, or passive fund management, comes up. They would rather choose a fund manager (an active manager in the jargon) who tries to beat the market by picking the best stocks. It does sound like a good idea.

The tricky bit is finding the right manager. The temptation is to look at past performance but fund managers rarely beat the market for long.

The average fund manager is always going to struggle to beat the market (this is a separate argument from whether markets are “efficient”). That is because the index reflects the performance of the average investor before costs. In a world dominated by professional fund managers, there aren't enough amateurs for the professionals to beat. Even the hedge funds, those supposed “masters of the universe”, haven't been able to do it; Warren Buffett looks...Continue reading

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Chicago accounted for 22% of a nationwide increase in murders last year

RAHM EMANUEL does not like the description of Chicago as a tale of two cities. Yet in the last few days the discrepancy between the prosperous, glossy neighbourhoods downtown and on the north side, which are thriving more than ever since Mr Emanuel took over as mayor in 2010, and the poor, violent south of the city was highlighted once more. First came the good news with predictions that the Windy City is on track this year to break its own record of 54m annual tourist visits—up from 39m in 2010. Then on September 25th followed grim reading: the publication of the FBI's annual crime statistics of the FBI showing Chicago’s murder rate is again one of the highest in the country.

The estimated number of violent crimes in the nation increased for the second consecutive year, rising by 4.1% in 2016 compared with 2015, driven by increases in Baltimore, Chicago and Las Vegas, said the FBI. The number of murders rose by 8.6% to an estimated 17,250 murders nationwide last year. Chicago, the nation’s third-biggest city, accounted for 22%...Continue reading

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A Tax Cut's Unintended Consequences

What a tax cut could give the economy the Federal Reserve could take away. Republican leaders on Wednesday are expected to release a tax plan that would lower tax rates on individuals and corporations and allow companies to repatriate earnings held overseas at a low rate.

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Why Biotech's Retreat Won't Be as Dramatic This Time

The failure of a high-profile clinical trial to treat Alzheimer’s disease means that the biotech market is about to get a big test. But Axovant’s stock meltdown is unlikely to spread.

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Nestlé's Tame Target Doesn't Justify Lofty Stock

Nestlé has published a margin target, but not the aggressive one demanded by activist investor Dan Loeb of Third Point. And it doesn’t make the company’s shares look much less expensive.

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Alibaba's Latest Deal Finally Takes Deliveries Into Account

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s decision to consolidate earnings from its logistics subsidiary Cainiao may improve delivery—but at a cost.

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Oil's Move Higher Now Rests Squarely on U.S. Shoulders

Oil is back in a bull market, but China is slowing down. Oftentimes, those two things aren’t compatible.

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Why Emerging Markets Aren't Too Hot to Handle

The Fed’s apparent desire to push on with tightening policy may give emerging markets a pause. But if global growth continues, then a pause is all it should be.

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The Supreme Court cancels a travel-ban hearing after Donald Trump issues a new order

THREE months after the Supreme Court gave the Trump administration a provisional green-light to implement its second try at a ban on travel from several majority-Muslim countries, the justices have scrapped a hearing scheduled for October 10th at which the order would have faced a final legal reckoning. The parties in Trump v International Refugee Assistance Project and Trump v Hawaii have until October 5th to send new briefs to the justices outlining where the litigation should go next, but in the meantime, the cases have been wiped off the argument calendar.

Donald Trump’s March 6th order banning all travel from six countries—Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen—was not received well by the judiciary. Appeals courts concluded in the spring that the restrictions, along with a ban on refugees, seemed to violate the First Amendment or exceed presidential power under federal immigration law. On June 26th, the Supreme Court issued an injunction staying those rulings, saying Mr Trump’s ban could go into...Continue reading

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Anthony Weiner is sentenced to 21 months in prison

“THE internet is the predator’s venue of choice,” said Anthony Weiner in 2007 when he was a New York congressman trying to pass a bill that updated sexual predator laws. A decade later, the one-time mayoral candidate was convicted and sentenced in a federal court to 21 months in prison for transferring obscene material using social media to a minor. 

Just six years ago, Mr Weiner’s prospects looked bright. He was a congressman who was admired for his criticism of Republicans who did not vote for a bill that provided aid for first-responders to 9/11.  His wife, Huma Abedin, was Hillary Clinton’s closest advisor. He was considered to stand a reasonable chance of becoming New York City’s mayor.

But in 2011 Mr Weiner sent a graphic photo of his genitals using Twitter that accidentally went public. At first, he claimed he had been hacked, but it soon emerged that he had been exchanging explicit messages with six women over three years. He stepped down as congressman. But New Yorkers, who had a soft spot...Continue reading

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Donald Trump sparks protests on football fields across America

LET’S start with context. Last year Colin Kaepernick, then a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers and an outspoken supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, sat and kneeled rather stood during the national anthem. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of colour,” he said. As the season progressed other players—all of them black, like most of the National Football League (NFL)—also began to “take a knee” during the anthem. Mr Kaepernick left the 49ers at the end of last season. No other team has signed him, despite his strong record; many suspect he has been blackballed. But the protests have continued.

On the evening of September 22nd, Donald Trump came to Huntsville, Alabama to stump for Luther Strange, who is running for Senate in the Republican primary runoff against Roy Moore. He spoke before a crowd of around 10,000 people at a sports arena, and they were there to see the president, not Mr Strange: in the crowd your blogger saw hundreds of...Continue reading

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Funeral Stock Is Not Dead Yet

The death care business has boomed lately and is in a demographic groove, but consider recent loser StoneMor instead of industry leader Service Corp.

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AIG's Delicate Dance With Regulators

While the debate goes on about how AIG should be treated by regulators, more significant changes are happening behind the scenes at the company

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Betsy DeVos scraps Obama-era guidelines on campus sexual assault

AS PROMISED, Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, has pitched herself further into the fraught politics of campus sexual assault. On September 22nd, she announced that she was rescinding Obama-era directives to universities on how they should investigate and adjudicate sexual assault claims. The move provoked fury. Patty Murray, a Democratic senator from Washington, said the education department was “continuing a pattern of undermining survivors’ rights”. Catherine Lhamon, an official who helped write the reversed regulations, said “this backward step invites colleges to once again sweep sexual violence under the rug”. Sofie Karasek, co-founder of End Rape on Campus, an advocacy organisation, said the intent of the rules was “to protect those who ‘grab’ by the genitals and brag about it”. 

Such claims seem to ignore the fact that the original guidance had a number of deep flaws. First, it was issued without a formal period of notice and comment, meaning that it lacked the force of law. Two documents, a letter...Continue reading

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Unilever's Most Expensive Deal in Years Is a Risk Worth Taking

Unilever’s purchase of Carver Korea is the company’s biggest acquisition in seven years and among its most expensive, but the Seoul-based skin-care company give the Anglo-Dutch giant the kind of exposure it needs.

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Still Time to Ride the Payments Deal Wave

Sometimes the public just doesn’t appreciate a good thing. That anyway is the view of Danish payments company, Nets, which is recommending a $5.3 billion private-equity buyout offer barely a year after it listed.

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Natural Gas Poised to Light Up in China

Gas usage by the world’s largest energy consumer has lagged the U.S. and other big economies for years. That is about to change.

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China's Banks Don't Share Investors' Enthusiasm for Steel

The stock market has fallen in love again with China’s beleaguered state-owned steel titans, which are up roughly 60% since the dark days of early 2016 due to higher steel prices. But China’s banks don’t share investors’ enthusiasm.

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Ignore the Fed's Yield Sign at Your Peril

The Federal Reserve is telling investors it will flatten the yield curve. They should listen.

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The Global Stock Market's Hidden Juice

Investors should be worried that stocks are being supported by record amounts of margin debt. These kinds of loans secured against stocks have often proved dangerous in a downturn because when share prices fall borrowers are forced to sell.

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Too late, China and America see North Korea the same way

FOR many years, a plausible case could be made that two forms of timidity, one Chinese and one American, were blocking the sort of strategy that might—just might—make North Korea suspend or abandon its sprint to a nuclear arsenal. Start with the Chinese.

In theory, the prospect of a nuclear-armed North Korea peninsula worried Communist leaders in Beijing every bit as much as it did the Americans. The problem was that in China’s hierarchy of horrors, a nuclear-armed Korean dictator ranked very high, but just below the prospect of regime collapse in North Korea. That surpassing Chinese horror of instability meant that, to simplify, China’s rulers were willing to agree to any level of sanctions on North Korea, except those horrible enough to stand a chance of success.

The Americans stand charged with their own form of timidity. Since George H.W. Bush, successive presidents have steeled themselves to negotiate with North Korea about its nuclear and missile programmes. America has offered massive bribes in return for...Continue reading

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Tesla's SolarCity Hangover

Car maker’s investors should be concerned after solar-panel unit’s Justice Department settlement over allegations of False Claims Act violations.

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Death of World's Richest Woman Sets Stock Scramble in Motion

L’Oréal billionaire Liliane Bettencourt’s passing opens the door to shareholder-friendly maneuvers at some of Europe’s most storied companies.

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What If Apple's Supercycle Isn't So Super

Early concerns about Apple’s iPhone 8 and cell-connected watch provide a rough start to what needs to be a big year

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Nintendo Switches on the Growth

Japanese videogame maker Nintendo is having another renaissance, but execution remains an obstacle to realizing investors’ lofty expectations.

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Bitcoin is fiat money, too

FINANCIERS with PhDs like to remind each other to “read your Kindleberger". The rare academic who could speak fluently to bureaucrats and normal people, Charles Kindleberger designed the Marshall Plan and wrote vast economic histories worthy of Tolstoy. “Read your Kindleberger” is just a coded way of saying “don’t forget this has all happened before”. So to anyone invested in, mining or building applications for distributed ledger money such as bitcoin or ethereum: read your Kindleberger.

Start with A Financial History of Western Europe, in which Kindleberger documents how many times merchants in different centuries figured out clever ways of doing the exact same thing. They made transactions easier, and in the process created new deposits and bills that increased the supply of money. In most cases, the Bürgermeister or the king left these innovations in place, but decided to control the supply of money and credit themselves. It is good for the king to be in charge of his own creditors. But also, it has...Continue reading

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A medieval poet bedevils India’s most powerful political party

He has had 110 years to think about it

CALLED to evening prayer, 8,500 schoolboys shuffle in very long lines along a grand arcade built in the shadow of a granite plateau. Barefoot, each wears a white lungi, a red shoulder-cloth and three horizontal streaks of ash across his forehead. Slogans painted on the boulders above remind them that “Work is worship” and “One god has different names.” These are quotes from Basava, a poet, philosopher and administrator who lived in the area in the 12th century.

The holy men who teach at the Siddaganga mutt (monastery), 70km from the IT hub of Bangalore, revere both the god Shiva and Basava, who was a monotheist. That makes them Lingayats. But does it make them Hindus too?

The creed has plenty of the trappings of Hinduism, but an unusual fixation on social justice. Its most esteemed adherent, Shivakumara Swami (pictured), the head of the mutt, is 110 years...Continue reading

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Australia’s controversial gay marriage vote gets under way

A party prompted by a feud within a party

THE question reads, “Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?” Ballots asking it have been posted to Australia’s 16m registered voters. They have until early November to return them; the result will be announced on November 15th. Rallies for and against are being held around the country. Earlier this month 30,000 supporters of gay marriage gathered outside Sydney’s town hall, waving placards with slogans like, “It’s a love story baby, just say yes.”

One of those saying yes is Malcolm Turnbull, the prime minister. But many Australians criticise him for calling the vote at all. Opinion polls consistently show that most Australians support gay marriage. Proponents say a simple vote in parliament, which also has a majority in favour, would have saved money and avoided a divisive campaign.

But if there is relatively little debate among Australians, there is a great deal within...Continue reading

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Tajikistan’s crackdown on observant Muslims intensifies

THE young Tajik man does not want to leave home, despite his mother’s assurance that he looks fine. The day before he had sported a curly black beard, just like his friends from the mosque. But the police had frogmarched him and other bearded young men to the barber shop, where their beards were shaved off. A few of the onlookers laughed, but, once out of the police’s sight, many more grumbled.

Such scenes have become increasingly common in Tajikistan, a landlocked country of 9m bordering Afghanistan and China. In 2015 an official in one of the country’s four regions reported forcibly removing the beards of 13,000 men. Con men have started selling certificates, complete with photographs and official-looking stamps, permitting holders to grow a beard. Initially, the Tajik government blamed the crusade against beards on local police, but it now admits that it instigated the practice to curb religious extremism.

Shaving beards is just one tool the government uses to...Continue reading

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Pakistan’s foremost political family fights for survival

AT A pre-election rally, a procession of cars and pick-up trucks squeezed through the narrow streets of Lahore. The crowd sweated, cheered, trod on each other’s feet and rained rose petals on the parade. All that was missing was the candidate. Kulsoom Nawaz Sharif, the former first lady of Pakistan, was in London undergoing cancer treatment. She did not campaign at all, leaving that job to her more charismatic daughter, Maryam Nawaz.

She won anyway, but in a manner that augurs yet more political turmoil for her country. Her husband, Nawaz Sharif, was Pakistan’s prime minister until July, when the Supreme Court sacked him—hence the by-election for his parliamentary seat on September 17th. Mr Sharif’s supporters dismiss the ruling as politically motivated. (He was banned from office for failing to declare a salary to which he was entitled as a director of a family firm.)

Mr Sharif hoped that voters would elect his wife to his old seat by a huge margin, thus repudiating...Continue reading

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Anti-gay hysteria is on the rise in Indonesia

UNTIL a year ago, Mama Yuli could count on a steady stream of reporters and television crews to make their way to her small orange house in Jakarta’s suburbs for a peek at what is thought to be Indonesia’s only shelter for transgender women. Yulianus Rettoblaut—Mama Yuli’s full name—had made a splash as the first openly transgender woman to obtain a master’s degree in Indonesia. She had also tried twice to become a member of the Human Rights Commission.

But the coverage came to an abrupt halt last year. That is unfortunate, as Mama Yuli needs the donations that came with it. The shelter is home to six transgender women, though many more come and go. On a recent day there were nine. It is far from luxurious: a leaky roof had forced several of them to sleep on the floor, and a broken toilet added to their indignities. “We often invite television to come and now they say ‘No’,” Mama Yuli laments.

In early 2016 the Indonesia Broadcasting Commission...Continue reading

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Will New Zealand remain a green and pleasant land?

OVER the rubbery chicken at your next tourism symposium, challenge fellow delegates to name the world’s longest-running national tourism slogan. The answer—it was on the tip of your tongue—is “100% pure New Zealand”, Tourism New Zealand’s catchphrase since 1999. Why mess with a good thing? The notion of a country blessed with pristine land, water and air appeals not only to visitors. It goes to the core of what the country means to New Zealanders themselves. So the slogan has the “authenticity” such gatherings always call for.

New Zealand, wonderfully far from anywhere, really does seem to have it all: glaciers and jagged peaks, charismatic fauna, vineyards, lusty rivers for fly-fishing or rafting, dive sites and thousands of miles of glorious coastline—not to mention the cosmopolitan, foodie cities of Auckland and Wellington. Its genius, and that of its marketing campaign, is to appeal to everyone, from scruffy backpackers to silver-haired oenophiles and even the...Continue reading

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Marital choices are exacerbating household income inequality

It’s all a matter of degree

“HERE’S what nobody is telling you: Find a husband on campus before you graduate,” wrote Susan Patton, a human-resources consultant, in 2013. In an infamous letter to the editor of Princeton’s student newspaper, Ms Patton warned female students at the university that they will “never again be surrounded by this concentration of men who are worthy of [them]”. Critics responded harshly. Ms Patton recalls that she was branded “a traitor to feminism, a traitor to co-education and an elitist”.

Economists might offer yet another critique of Ms Patton’s letter: it was largely unnecessary. It is clear to academics that people tend to marry spouses with similar levels of education. They also know that “assortative mating”, as the practice is called in the jargon, is exacerbating income inequality. In America, Britain, Denmark, Germany and Norway, they have found that household income would be more evenly spread if...Continue reading

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Huge volumes of data make real-time insurance a possibility

Mind your heads

EVEN at weddings or whale watches, the buzz of a drone is no longer a surprise. Drone photography is booming. Gartner, a consultancy, says some 174,000 drones will be sold for commercial use around the world this year, and 2.8m to consumers. It is easy to imagine a few might fall out of the sky, causing damage the pilot cannot hope to pay for: crushed wedding cakes, injured spectators and so on. Amid scores of near-misses, several incidents have already occurred. In 2014, for example, a drone filming a triathlon in Australia crashed on a competitor’s head.

Clearly, drone-users need insurance. Typically, risks are insured through the payment of an annual premium. Insure4drones, a British specialist, charges £738.86 ($1,000) to cover a DJI Phantom, a bestselling drone, for a year. From October Flock, a London startup, will offer insurance on a flight-by-flight basis, at the push of a button in an app, to any commercial drone-operator in Britain....Continue reading

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Ethical investment is booming. But what is it?

MAYBE weary of its role as a punchbag for moralists, and certainly in search of products with widespread appeal, Wall Street has taken to selling products linked to virtue. That is not easy: how does an industry focused on financial returns go about gauging goodness?

The approach started years ago with funds that called themselves “socially responsible”. More recently the terminology has evolved, with many claiming to pursue “ESG” investing, standing for “environmental”, “social” and “governance”.

Morningstar, a data-tracking firm, places any fund that uses terms such as sustainable investing, ESG and so on in its prospectus into a category that now has 204 members with $77bn in collective assets. The oldest fund in the Morningstar group dates back to 1971. But nearly half have been launched in the past three years. More quietly, the wealth-management offices of many American investment firms constantly roll out investments touting these sorts of...Continue reading

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Ukraine’s return to the debt markets worries economic reformers

MUCH has changed since Ukraine last tapped global debt markets in 2013. The next year the “Maidan revolution” drove out the corrupt regime of Viktor Yanukovych; and Russia annexed Crimea and stoked a war in Ukraine’s east. The economy languished, with GDP contracting by 16% in 2014-15; only an IMF rescue staved off collapse. Unable to pay its debts, Ukraine in 2015 submitted its creditors to a 20% “haircut”, or debt reduction (an offer rejected by just one creditor, Russia, which is pursuing Ukraine in British courts). This week the government returned to the international markets, issuing $3bn in dollar-denominated bonds.

This testifies to the progress Ukraine has made. As Oleksandr Danylyuk, the finance minister, puts it: “We’re back; we transformed the country.” The government has largely stabilised the economy, bringing inflation down from a peak of 61% in April 2015 to a more manageable 13.5%. It has also undertaken structural reforms: overhauling energy...Continue reading

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Norway’s sovereign-wealth fund passes the $1trn mark

A year earlier than expected, Norway’s sovereign-wealth fund, the world’s largest, surpassed $1trn in assets on September 19th. It had gained over $100bn in the past year, thanks in large measure to the global stockmarket boom in 2017: around two-thirds of its assets are held as equities (over 1% of shares globally). It helps that Norwegians continue to earn fat revenues from pumping North Sea oil and gas, which go to the fund to be invested abroad. The fund is so big it is becoming a tool for 5m-odd Norwegians to shape values abroad. It is an increasingly activist shareholder, speaking out on executive pay, ethical behaviour, companies’ use of water, child labour and more. Both its size and influence are likely to keep on growing.

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The teaching of economics gets an overdue overhaul

ECONOMISTS can be a haughty bunch. But a decade of trauma has had a chastening effect. They are rethinking old ideas, asking new questions and occasionally welcoming heretics back into the fold. Change, however, has been slow to reach the university economics curriculum. Many institutions still pump students through introductory courses untainted by recent economic history or the market shortcomings it illuminates. A few plucky reformers are working to correct that: a grand and overdue idea. Overhauling the way economics is taught ought to produce students more able to understand the modern world. Even better, it should improve economics itself.

The dismal science it may be, but economics is popular on campus. It accounts for more than 10% of degrees awarded at elite universities each year, by one estimate, and many more students take an introductory class as part of their general-education requirements. Teachers of such courses aim to grab the attention of their glassy-eyed audience, to...Continue reading

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