Swamp Inc. is not only surviving Donald Trump, it is thriving

OF THE three resounding slogans of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign—the pledges to “build a wall”, “lock her up” and “drain the swamp”—none has come to fruition. To be fair, none could be enacted by executive fiat alone. A border wall would require appropriations from Congress. Hillary Clinton could be jailed only by a stubbornly independent justice system. On the business of swamp-draining, however, there is much that the executive branch could do on its own. Yet Washington remains as boggy as ever.

Lobbyists are a hardy species, capable of surviving both the lean years of gridlock and the feeding frenzies of unified government. They thrive when policy is in flux, preserving old perks and pushing for new ones. “The honest answer is that the influence industry grew almost as much in Trump’s first year as it did in Obama’s,” says one long-time lobbyist. Not all lobbying activity in 2017 has yet been reported—but it may well be the most profitable to date,...Continue reading

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All the president’s Tweets

THE president’s dearest supporters and bitterest opponents are united in their wish that less attention be paid to his social-media habit. Stephen Miller, a policy adviser, and Sarah Sanders, the press secretary, have tried valiant defences, but many Republicans prefer to feign ignorance. Some of Mr Trump’s critics detect a more insidious motive, “a weapon to control the news cycle”, as George Lakoff, a professor emeritus at Berkeley, puts it. In this reading, the president is a puppet-master whose tweets distract from scandal and divert attention from substantive issues. These critics have it backwards: Mr Trump is actually taking cues from the media, specifically Fox News, an entertainment channel, rather than attempting to lead them.

Matthew Gertz of Media Matters, a progressive watchdog, has documented nearly 60 cases in the past three months where Mr Trump appears to be tweeting in response to Fox News segments. The alarming North Korea tweet came 12 minutes after a report on the channel...Continue reading

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There is no guaranteed defence against ballistic missiles—yet

THANKS largely to Kim Jong Un (aka “Little Rocket Man”), missile defence of the American homeland is a hot topic. Next month the Trump administration is expected to publish a review of the nation’s defences against ballistic-missile attack. Funding for the Missile Defence Agency (MDA) is likely to exceed $11bn for 2018, over $3bn more than the president’s original request (assuming Congress can come up with a deal on the overall budget). An emergency request of nearly $5bn for additional “missile defence and defeat” funding was made in November.

The intelligence agencies had assured Mr Trump when he took office that not until 2020, possibly even 2022, would Mr Kim have a reliable intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). That relatively comforting assessment was blown apart in July when North Korea successfully tested two missiles with the range to hit cities in the continental United States, and, in September, when it conducted an underground explosion of what appears to have been a...Continue reading

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Donald Trump’s judicial appointments may prove his most enduring legacy

AMERICA’S judges are supposed to be above party politics and yet are often appointed by politicians and then asked to rule on disputes that can sway elections. On January 9th federal judges in North Carolina gave the state two weeks to redraw its congressional map. In a caustic ruling written by James Wynn, an appellate judge nominated by Barack Obama, the court found that the state’s current map—which let Republicans win ten of the state’s 13 districts with just 53% of the total overall vote—was “motivated by invidious partisan intent”, and violated the first and 14th Amendments. North Carolina vowed to appeal, which could see the case added to two other gerrymandering suits at the Supreme Court. The head of North Carolina’s Republican Party accused Mr Wynn of “waging a personal, partisan war on North Carolina Republicans.”

If Republicans get their way, Democrat-appointed judges like Mr Wynn will soon comprise a smaller share of the federal judiciary. No president has confirmed...Continue reading

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Donald Trump’s economic policy has not been as bad as expected

AS IT became clear that Donald Trump would win the presidential election, in the early hours of 9th November 2016, Asian financial markets tanked. But within hours of his victory investors changed course. A Trump presidency, they reasoned, would mean tax cuts, deregulation and infrastructure spending—in other words, more growth. A year after Mr Trump took office, it looks like the rethink was justified. Little of what was feared about Mr Trump’s economic policy has come to pass. To some, rising economic growth, which exceeded 3% in the second and third quarters of 2017, combined with accelerating blue-collar wages, suggest that Mr Trump has delivered on his promise to invigorate the economy.

In truth, Mr Trump has benefited from a global economic surge that has lifted confidence—and stockmarkets—across the rich world. His timing with regard to the labour market was particularly fortunate. He came to office with unemployment at 4.8% and falling (it is now 4.1%). Pockets of strong wage growth,...Continue reading

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Banished Bannon

A FAN of military history, Stephen Bannon may know of Nikephoros, a Byzantine emperor who was vanquished and decapitated by a Bulgar khan who, for extra humiliation, then fashioned his skull into a drinking cup. President Donald Trump’s erstwhile muse might even feel he has experienced something similar, at the end of a week in which he has been denounced and excommunicated by the president, jettisoned by his conservative benefactor, Rebekah Mercer, and, on January 9th, shunted from his position at the helm of Breitbart News, a hard-right website which gained huge exposure from his former success. The same day, in a jaw-dropping televised meeting with congressional leaders, Mr Trump airily suggested he might support a package of liberal immigration reforms. This was the modern-day equivalent of supping from Mr Bannon’s gilded skull.

The spur to his demise was Mr Bannon’s lead role in briefing Michael Wolff, author of the caustic takedown of the Trump administration, “Fire and Fury”, that...Continue reading

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Investment banks’ cull of company analysts brings dangers

THEY are not extinct, nor even on the endangered-species list. But company analysts, once among the most prestigious professionals in the stockmarket, are being culled. New European rules, with the catchy name of MiFID2, have just dealt analysts another blow. A study by Greenwich Associates estimates that the budget for the research they perform may drop by 20% this year.

In their heyday in the late 1980s and early 1990s, analysts could make or break corporate reputations. A “buy” or “sell” recommendation from the leading two or three analysts in an industry could move a share price substantially. Fund managers, and many financial journalists, relied on analysts to spot those companies that were on a rising trajectory, and those where the accounts revealed signs of imminent trouble. And the best analysts were very well paid.

But that golden age was built on some rusty foundations. Analysts were well paid because they worked for the big investment banks. But those big...Continue reading

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Emmanuel Macron is tightening immigration rules

The world en marche

SHORTLY before dawn, a queue has already formed along the pavement outside the immigration office. Applicants, mostly men, wait in silence, their jackets zipped against the winter chill. Discarded sleeping bags and torn strips of cardboard boxes lie on the ground. Huddled beside the nearby canal is an encampment of coloured tents. A tall burly man from Nigeria, clutching a thick file, says he is appealing against his first asylum refusal, giving his name as Michael Emmanuel. “Like Macron!” he exclaims. “I came before he was elected, but he’s like Angela Merkel: he opens up borders.”

In 2017 a record 100,000 people asked for asylum in France. Although this was only half the number that applied in Germany, it marked a jump of 17% on the previous year. Many migrants used to shun France, preferring Germany or Sweden; they often passed through France only to reach Britain. At one point in 2015, when Germany opened its doors to an...Continue reading

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What’s on the president’s mind

ANY political system that puts great power in the hands of a single person must also reckon with the problem that creates. It is sensible to make provision to remove the king or president from office if he becomes incapacitated. Yet the existence of such a provision also risks inviting a coup. The framers of the constitution were acutely aware of this, and decided to fudge it. Meanwhile, in Britain, George III’s bouts of mania invited questions about who is really in charge when the monarch is on the throne but out of his mind. Speculation about President Donald Trump’s mental state, ever-present since before his election, increased when he tweeted that his nuclear button was “much bigger” than Kim Jong-Un’s. Being Mr Trump, he followed up with his own self-analysis, declaring that he is a “very stable genius”.

Most psychiatrists are wary about pronouncing on the mental state of people they have not examined, but that has not stopped a few from having a go at Mr Trump. Bandy Lee, a...Continue reading

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Bond Markets Have Picked Up the Wrong Signal From Japan

Investors should revisit the theory behind the Bank of Japan’s yield-curve-control policy before assuming it has changed track.

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Chinese Dragon Still Needs U.S. Treasurys for Its Hoard

Conflicting media reports over the past 24 hours imply China may be considering buying fewer U.S. Treasurys. That matters less than the bond market seems to think.

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Xerox Should Look to Copy Fujifilm's Success

The venerable U.S. company could find a tie-up with Fujifilm helps it reinvent itself.

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A Bright Christmas Reignites Nordstrom Buyout Hopes

The Nordstrom family tried to do a $10 billion buyout in the fall but pessimism on retailers killed the deal. Now they would have to pay more to take the namesake department store chain private.

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The Supreme Court considers the scope of automobile privacy

ON JANUARY 9th a pair of cases probing the meaning of the Fourth Amendment’s bar on “unreasonable searches and seizures”—both involving vehicle privacy—were debated at the Supreme Court. Collins v Virginia concerns a hot-rod motorcycle that whizzed by police at 140 mph; in Byrd v United States, officers found 49 bricks of heroin and body armour in the boot of a car. There is little doubt the men steering these vehicles were violating the law. But in collecting evidence of the crimes, police may have violated long-standing Fourth Amendment principles.  

When a police officer chased the speedy motorcycle driven by Ryan Collins, he couldn’t keep up but managed to snap some photographs and jot down its licence plate number. About six weeks later, after spotting images of the parked bike on Mr Collins’s Facebook page, the officer tracked the vehicle to the home of the suspect’s girlfriend. There, after spotting the Suzuki nosing out from under a white cover, the officer walked up the driveway and uncovered...Continue reading

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Joe Arpaio’s Senate bid

THROUGHOUT his 24-year tenure as the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Joe Arpaio repeatedly suggested that he would run for higher office, usually the governorship. But “America’s toughest sheriff,” as he called himself, never did. So when Mr Arpaio began touting himself as a possible contender for the US Senate seat that Jeff Flake is vacating, many Arizonans assumed he was seeking nothing more than publicity.

On January 9, Mr Arpaio announced that he would run, “for the good of our country”. The former sheriff, famous for using his department to enforce immigration laws, housing prisoners in tents and dressing them in pink underwear, said his intention was to support Donald Trump’s agenda in the Senate. 

Many had assumed the 85-year-old’s career was over. The tough-on-crime policies that for years endeared Mr Arpaio to voters in Maricopa County, home to more than 4m people—about 60% of Arizona’s population—resulted in millions of dollars in legal settlements. In 2013 a federal judge found that his...Continue reading

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Is the Great Bond Blowout Finally Happening?

The bond market has had an early alarm call in 2018. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield has risen to its highest since March; bond guru Bill Gross says the move confirms a bear market. Bonds still have support, but that could erode quickly.

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Earnings May Temper the Bank Rally

Bank shares have been riding high, seen by investors as among the biggest beneficiaries of tax reform and a strengthening economy. But this enthusiasm could soon collide with just mediocre fundamentals.

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Why the U.S. Smartphone Market Is Hard to Crack

It may be of little comfort to Huawei now, but history shows that cracking the U.S. smartphone market takes more than money and friends.

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Gambia’s once-ruthless intelligence agency is opening up

DEEP inside the headquarters of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) of Gambia there is a dark and airless dungeon barely big enough for one person. Infested by mosquitoes and reeking of urine, the notorious bambadinka (crocodile hole) was dreaded by opponents of Yahya Jammeh, Gambia’s president from 1996 to 2017. Mr Jameh used the agency as his own secret police. The country’s spooks developed a reputation for kidnapping and torturing dissidents, often in the bambadinka.

After losing an election in December 2016, Mr Jammeh tried to hold onto power, but was pushed out a month later. (He now lives in exile in Equatorial Guinea.) Freed from his malign influence, the intelligence agency is trying to repair its image. For a start, it has renamed itself the State Intelligence Service. Some of its most notorious thugs have been arrested, some spooks have been fired and the rest are getting human-rights training.

Entering the old NIA building is still an...Continue reading

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Predicting doom for the bond market

INVESTORS are dragging their attention away from the stockmarket for a moment to figure out what is going on in the other main part of their portfolios: government bonds. Yields have been rising so far this year and Bill Gross, one of the sector's gurus, has said the long bull market (which dates back to the early 1980s) is finally over.

This certainly seems to be the month for big calls; the noted equity bear Jeremy Grantham has already pointed to the potential for a "melt-up" in the stockmarket. Mr Gross, who runs money for Janus but made his name at Pimco, said that the 25-year trend lines had been broken  for both the five- and ten-year bonds. 

The end of the bond bull market has been called many times, dating back at least to September 2011. There...Continue reading

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Real News on Fake Data in China

Another big Chinese province has admitted to falsifying economic data. That doesn’t mean all Chinese economic data is useless. It does mean investors need to educate themselves on where to look, or risk missing big the boat on key shifts in global markets as China’s heft grows.

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Retail Apocalypse Delayed

Retailers’ cheery holiday reports don’t eliminate their serious challenges.

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Trump Gets a Reality Check on Deregulation

The impetus behind the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s move to quash a move that would have kept some struggling coal and nuclear plants running may have been the opposition from the coalition of natural gas, oil and alternative-energy producers

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Alibaba's Return Home Would Carry a Sting

The city now appears ready to compromise on investor protection to make sure it doesn’t lose in the global race to attract tech listings.

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The Business Cycle Is Different This Time---Thank China

The business cycle hasn’t evaporated—it’s just at different points in the world’s two largest economies. That explains the mixed signals on global growth which are befuddling investors.

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Altice Gives Investors Clever Deals but No Control

The latest shake-up at cable giant Altice lays bare the problem with investing alongside founding shareholder Patrick Drahi: Minority investors have no real voice.

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A small town in Japan doubles its fertility rate

A PATCHWORK of nondescript houses nestled at the foot of a mountain, Nagicho looks like an ordinary Japanese town. On closer inspection, something extraordinary marks it out: babies. Yuki Fukuda is one of many local mothers with three children. The bump under her winter coat indicates that another is on the way, part of a baby bonanza that has seen the town’s fertility rate double since 2005.

Not surprisingly, reporters have flocked to this remote corner of the country to see if there is something that promotes fecundity in the water flowing down from Mount Nagi. The cause appears to be more prosaic: economics. Alarmed by the dearth of children, the local government increased incentives to have babies. The fertility rate rose from 1.4 (meaning that the average woman will have 1.4 children in her lifetime, roughly the national rate) to 2.8 in 2014.

Mrs Fukuda will receive a “celebratory” gift of ¥300,000 ($3,530) when she gives birth. A subsidised baby-sitting service...Continue reading

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Republicans hold onto Virginia’s House

IN NOVEMBER a stunning, anti-Trump tsunami nearly erased Republicans' majority in Virginia. This week, they just held onto the House of Delegates. On January 4th David Yancey won a mini-lottery to decide the winner of  a seat in Newport News, a gritty, heavily Democratic shipbuilding centre about 60 miles east of Richmond, the state capital. His name, on a slip of paper encased in a black film canister, was pulled from a blue ceramic bowl borrowed from a state-owned art museum.

The draw, by a three-member state elections board, in which Mr Yancey, the Republican incumbent, was selected, was required by law because of a tie between him and his Democratic opponent, Shelly Simonds. After a disputed recount, Mr Yancey and Ms Simonds, a member of the Newport News school board, came out of the November election with 11,608 votes each.

Mr Yancey’s victory means that Republicans will have 51 seats in Virginia’s House of Delegates, to 49 for Democrats. The Republican Party’s two-seat edge stands in contrast to its former 32-seat...Continue reading

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Multinationals move in to Colombia’s emerald mountains

Better than a pay cheque

AT THE bottom of a muddy basin surrounded by verdant mountains, Dora Alicia Hernández combs through black sludge and rock in the faint hope of finding an emerald valuable enough to lift her out of poverty. “All we need is one shiny stone,” she says, as rainclouds smother the mountains overhead. “Then we can get out of here.”

Alicia is seeking fortune near Muzo, a mountain town north of Bogotá that has attracted guaqueros (prospectors) from across Colombia since pre-colonial times. The region is renowned for both the quality and size of its emeralds. Of the 20 that have sold at auction for more than $100,000 a carat, 19 were from Muzo or nearby. Guaqueros speak reverently of Fura, an 11,000-carat rock named after a mythical philandering wife who wept emeralds. Victor Carranza, who had started out as a guaquero and became Colombia’s emerald tsar, found it in 1999. As...Continue reading

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Peru’s presidential hostage

IT WAS a strange video announcing a rash decision. In a taped message President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, in a dimly lit room and with the harrowed look of a kidnap victim, told Peruvians that the pardon he had issued to Alberto Fujimori, a jailed former president, was “perhaps the most difficult decision of my life”. He had taken it because Mr Fujimori should not be allowed to “die in prison—justice is not revenge”. He called on Peruvians to move on from “negative emotions inherited from the past”. His unspoken hope was that, having barely survived an attempt by congress to impeach him, the pardon would steady his shaky presidency. But to many, it looks as if his presidency has been taken hostage.

The pardon on December 24th was the culmination of a turbulent fortnight that began when a congressional committee received documents from Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction company at the heart of a vast corruption scandal across Latin America, showing that it had awarded consultancy...Continue reading

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On Canadian maps, indigenous names are replacing European ones

JEFFERY AMHERST, who commanded British troops in North America during the Seven Years War in the mid-18th century, described indigenous people who fought for France as an “execrable race”. He called for their “total extirpation” and suggested using dogs to hunt them down.

Yet Amherst (pictured) was commemorated in Canada (and in the United States) mainly for establishing British supremacy in North America. Schools, towns and streets bear his name. That has started to change in both countries. Amherst College in Massachusetts no longer celebrates Lord Jeff as its mascot (but is keeping its name). Canadians are scrubbing the names of Amherst and of other colonial-era heroes off street signs, school buildings and maps, often replacing them with names drawn from indigenous history. Montreal, the largest city in French-speaking Quebec, plans to erase a “stain on our history” by renaming Amherst Street, a 1.5km (0.9 mile) thoroughfare, which was given its name by British conquerors 200 years...Continue reading

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The army is gaining the upper hand in Yemen’s civil war

TAHER ALI AL-AUQAILI, the chief of staff of Yemen’s army, has a spring in his step. After a year of stalemate, his five fronts are moving again. As he darts between battlefields hundreds of kilometres apart, he speaks of victories in Beihan, which have reconnected the road from his headquarters in Marib to southern Yemen, and in the Jawf region (see map). Troops have also advanced 60km north along the coast from Mokha towards Hodeida, the main port of the rebels, called the Houthis. From bases in the desert and coastal lowlands, the alliance of forces arrayed against the rebels is edging its way into the mountains that shelter Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, which is still in Houthi hands.

A string of events has led to the advance. In December the Houthis killed their erstwhile ally, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had been Yemen’s president from 1978 to 2012, so the Houthis now fight alone. Arrests, killings and houses demolished by tank shells in the capital have stoked resentment against the rebels. Thousands...Continue reading

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A clutch of challengers could shake up Egypt’s presidential race

Shafiq, a killer candidate

THE most interesting man in Egyptian politics is trapped in a hotel. On November 29th Ahmed Shafiq announced that he would run for president. The former prime minister is best known for losing the presidential race in 2012 to Muhammad Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, who was himself toppled in a coup the following year. Hours after his announcement Mr Shafiq claimed that he was barred from leaving Abu Dhabi, where he lived in self-imposed exile. But his hosts said he was free to go—and then kicked him out.

After arriving in Cairo Mr Shafiq disappeared for a night. He resurfaced the next evening for a bizarre televised interview. “I’m not kidnapped or anything,” he said. His home just needed renovations and the authorities arranged alternative accommodation, he explained. “I was taken to one of the most distinguished hotels in the area.” It must be comfortable there, for Mr Shafiq has not been seen in public since....Continue reading

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Iran is in turmoil but the clerics and their allies remain entrenched

“NO TO high prices!”, “Down with embezzlers!”, “People are paupers while the mullahs live like gods!” Are these the chants of foreign-sponsored insurrectionists trying to create anarchy, insecurity and intrigue in Iran? That is what the clerical regime would have you believe, as it ignores the economic grievances voiced by the thousands of Iranians who have taken to the streets in more than 70 towns and cities in the past week.

Incredibly, the unrest seems to have been started by religious hardliners, hoping to undermine the reformist presidency of Hassan Rouhani. Stoking their anger over the rising price of eggs, clerics in Mashhad, Iran’s second city, urged hundreds of their followers to protest on December 28th. Many demanded the president’s resignation and called for fresh elections—though Mr Rouhani was re-elected just last year.

They could not have known what they started. The protests quickly spread to other cities, and the tone also changed. It was not just Mr...Continue reading

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The drug that is starving Yemen

Less jaw-jaw and war-war please

YEMEN is on the brink of famine, say aid agencies, which often blame the civil war, Saudi Arabia’s blockade of northern seaports and its bombing of vital infrastructure. The government’s refusal to pay salaries to employees in rebel-held areas and the depreciation of Yemen’s riyal mean many cannot afford the food that is available. But one of the biggest causes of hunger often goes unmentioned: a leafy plant called qat.

The weed is Yemen’s most popular drug: 90% of men and over a third of women habitually chew its leaves, storing the masticated greenery in their cheek until the narcotic seeps into their bloodstream. In the past Yemenis might indulge once a week and the practice was largely confined to the north-west mountains, where qat grows. But following unification in 1990 it spread south. Now qat markets bustle all over the country.

Men spend...Continue reading

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The victims of Yahya Jammeh want him to face trial

YAHYA JAMMEH, who ruled Gambia from 1994 to 2017, claimed he could cure people of HIV with his bare hands. The probability of such faith-healing working is zero. Today the law is trying to lay hands on Mr Jammeh. At first glance, the chance of it succeeding is only slightly higher.

In January 2017, two months after losing an election, he agreed to step down, having been warned by fellow west African leaders that he would be removed by force if he clung to power any longer. In return for going without a fight, he was given asylum in Equatorial Guinea, an even worse African dictatorship. Teodoro Obiang, its president for the past 38 years, has never signed up to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which means that Mr Jammeh (pictured) cannot be extradited for trial. He passes his time farming on one of Mr Obiang’s grace-and-favour estates.

For those who were beaten with metal pipes or had plastic bags put over their heads by Mr Jammeh’s goons, the only hope for justice is either...Continue reading

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Champion footballer George Weah wins Liberia’s presidential election

Capping this

FOOTBALLING superstar George Weah has scored again. As the only African footballer to have been awarded both FIFA’s World Player of the Year and France’s Ballon d’Or, Mr Weah, a Liberian, is used to winning. However, one prize had evaded him—until this year.

On December 26th the former Chelsea, AC Milan and Paris Saint-Germain player triumphed in the second round of Liberia’s presidential election. Mr Weah defeated the current vice-president, Joseph Boakai, with 62% of the vote. He won all but one of Liberia’s 15 counties.

Mr Weah’s victory is a big milestone for the nascent democracy. Liberia suffered two brutal civil wars between 1989 and 2003. An estimated 250,000 people died and perhaps 90% of the economy was wiped out. In 1997, during a period of peace, Charles Taylor, a warlord, became president, having made it clear that he would go back to war if not elected. Supporters chanted, “He killed my ma, he...Continue reading

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Joseph Kabila has ruled DRC for another unconstitutional year

More of the same

ON THE streets of Kinshasa, the raucous, ramshackle capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), it is now difficult for foreigners to walk through markets without being accosted by secret policemen, nor to do so without also hearing from shoppers and market traders how much they hate Joseph Kabila, the country’s president. As 2018 starts, Africa’s youngest head of state (Mr Kabila is only 46, despite having ruled for 17 years) is also one of the continent’s most embattled.

On New Year’s Eve at least seven people were killed in protests against the government. Before the demonstrations the Congolese government shut down much of the mobile-phone network to hamper their organisers. These were the first major protests in Kinshasa in a year and were but the latest in a string of problems for a president who did not bother to organise elections and has continued to rule unconstitutionally since his term of office ran out in December...Continue reading

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Many Japanese resent paying for their boring public broadcaster

Look: another mid-ranking official!

TRY saying you don’t live there, suggests one website. Pretend you don’t have a television, says another. Such is the advice swapped online on how to avoid paying the “reception fee” that every home that owns a television must pay to NHK, Japan’s public-service broadcaster. The excuses may have to get more inventive: on December 6th Japan’s highest court ruled that the fee is constitutional, and found against a man who had refused to pay for the past 11 years.

Almost 80% of households paid last year, stumping up ¥13,990 ($125) for an ordinary television or ¥24,770 for one with a satellite dish. That is a rise of nine percentage points compared with a decade ago, thanks in no small part to NHK’s army of private collectors, who are schooled in the art of strong-arm tactics to go door-to-door. Many people refuse to pay because they don’t watch NHK, often out of distaste for its pandering to the...Continue reading

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Evangelicalism is spreading among the Chinese of South-East Asia

WHEN Pastor Jimmy Parade took over at the Indonesian Reformed Evangelical Church in Bandung, on the island of Java, five years ago, around 180 people came to services each week. Now the church—in a nondescript building in an outdoor shopping complex—is packed with around 450 each Sunday. “People keep coming,” Mr Parade shrugs.

Some 1,000 miles away, up several sets of escalators at a shopping mall in Singapore, thousands of people take part in a two-hour service on a Saturday evening at the City Harvest Church, which has a weekly attendance of just under 16,000. The service involves a rock group leading the congregation in devotional songs, several instances of speaking in tongues, and testimony from Emily, a young Singaporean who converted her father to Christianity. “My Dad has become a much happier man,” she declares, to huge applause.

Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity is growing more quickly in Asia than most parts of the world, with over 200m adherents in 2015,...Continue reading

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Pakistan still suffers from feudalism

If you can’t beat them, pay them

PANICKED from its nest, a quail scuds low across a cotton-field. The hunters spin round and blast away. As the bird drops from the sky, a gang of poor boys in plastic flip-flops races through the mud, fighting to pick up the kill. This vignette of feudal life has hardly changed in a century, except for one thing, says Ehtehsham Laleka, a puckish 30-year-old, whose family owns 7,000 acres of land in this southern region of Punjab province. “In my grandfather’s day we would have had hundreds of beaters like them.”

Feudalism, a curse that has lingered since independence in 1947, is often seen as the biggest blight on Pakistan’s development. In the old days the zamindars (landowners), empowered by British rule, lorded over great tracts of land, housing serfs and often abusing them in return for sharecropping and other forms of menial labour. Whereas independent India rid itself of much of that feudal class,...Continue reading

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The Philippines is a global hub for child pornography

The ones that got away

“AT FIRST he was very kind, just like an angel,” says a 19-year-old of the man who recruited her into the Philippines’ cybersex industry, “but at the end he was evil.” The end took five years to come. One of a dozen siblings, she left her poor family on the island of Mindanao with a pimp who had promised her an education. Instead, she was made to cavort in front of web cameras. “I didn’t know that I would be a cybersex model,” she says. Six other children were part of the den, two of them just toddlers. Sent to schools where they improved their English, the children received money for beauty products and treatments, so as to present themselves more alluringly to “customers”.

Similar stories abound in the Centre of Hope, a clean, bright shelter for children just outside Manila. It is adorned with lanterns and trees for Christmas; teachers, social workers and psychologists are among those who attend its festive parties. Residents,...Continue reading

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2018 will not be any quieter than 2017 on the Korean peninsula

“IT’S not a mere threat,” Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s dictator, announced to the world in his new-year address, “but a reality that I have a nuclear button on the desk in my office. All of the mainland United States is within the range of our nuclear strike.” That is a terrifying thought to most Americans—and one made no less terrifying by Donald Trump’s tweet in response: “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”

The Punch-and-Judy posturing would be comical if it did not itself heighten the risk of conflict. In a febrile atmosphere, two thin-skinned leaders might easily misconstrue the other’s intentions, even if neither intended war. Or either might feel face is at stake (Mr Trump, after all, vowed that the North would not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons that could hit America).

Mr Trump might also believe that a military strike would have limited consequences. Some of his advisers appear...Continue reading

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GoPro: Too Focused

Struggling camera maker’s failed efforts at diversification leave investors with little to hang on.

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Why Everything Is Still Awesome in Global Markets

The calendar has rolled over but global markets are still thriving on the 2017 playbook. That means that big questions over why growth and inflation are so out of whack with each other remain unanswered.

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The Price Gap That's Squeezing the Auto Market

The widening difference in prices between new and used cars augers pain for auto-makers profits in the U.S.

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The High Stakes in the Looming Fannie and Freddie Overhaul

A decade after the collapsing housing market led to a dramatic bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Congress is gearing up to tackle the politically thorny issue of housing finance reform in 2018.

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China's Electric Car Market Has Grown Up

Beijing has offered the electric car market plenty of support, but there now appears to be solid demand from consumers to go green. That should give confidence to investors in the sector.

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Finally, a Brighter Outlook for Wages

Rising wages have been one important missing element of the economic expansion. Now there is evidence worker pay will start to pick up.

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Cooling Ardor for Flashy Smartphones Spells Trouble for Suppliers

Consumers seem less willing to shell out for pricey phones. That means bad weather ahead for Asian companies who make their components.

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