Mr Netanyahu, Mr Trump and the settlers

ISRAEL’S prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is in a bind. He prefers the status quo whereby Israel occupies the West Bank, allowing the 2.9m Palestinians there limited autonomy though not a full state. But the settlers’ lobby, which wants to annex “Judea and Samaria” to Israel proper, is crucial to his coalition.

He tried to placate them this week by approving plans for more than 3,000 new homes, mainly in Jewish neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem and the big “settlement blocs” which are expected to be part of Israel in any future solution. But he was only partially successful: one important settlers’ organisation immediately complained that he should have authorised many more buildings.

Like other governments, Israel is also trying to work out what Donald Trump’s foreign-policy priorities are, and how that might affect their domestic calculations. One indication of change came on January 24th, when the White House refused to comment on the new settlement plans. In the past, similar moves were met with automatic condemnation as obstacles to peace. The testy relationship with the former president, Barack Obama, had its uses...Continue reading

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Germany’s Social Democrats pick Martin Schulz as leader

FOR months, Sigmar Gabriel, the boss of Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD), has wrestled with the decision of whether to run against Angela Merkel, the chancellor, in the federal election on September 24th. His personal popularity lags far behind hers. In polls, the SPD has the support of only 21% of Germans; Mrs Merkel’s centre-right bloc has 37%. His support in his own party, especially among its left wing, is weak. And, as Mrs Merkel’s coalition partner, vice-chancellor and cabinet minister, he sounded unconvincing when attacking her policies. Knowing that he was bound to fail, on January 24th he chose instead to surprise his party by stepping down and handing over to another Social Democrat with a better chance.

The new party leader and candidate for chancellor will be a friend of his, Martin Schulz. Mr Schulz, as the former president of the European Parliament, has several advantages over Mr Gabriel (who is planning to become foreign minister instead). Mr Schulz is known as a straight talker and an unequivocal champion of European integration. Standing next to Mr Gabriel for his announcement, he promised to “fight all...Continue reading

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Under Trump, U.S. Banks Could Get a British Makeover

Recent comments by Steven Mnuchin suggest the U.K. could be a model for banking regulation under President Donald Trump.

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Santander: A Bank That Knows How to Get Past Bad Loan Problems

Spanish lender Santander is showing what a bank is meant to do.

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Gucci Looks Like Fashionable Pick for Luxury Rebound

Brands can no longer count on store rollouts and timeless appeal to drive growth.

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Verizon Can't Find the Next Big Thing

Verizon doesn’t need to follow AT&T, but its earnings show it needs to chart a growth path away from wireless.

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Trump Profit Boom? Executives Stay Mum

Investors and analysts are predicting strong profit growth under the new presidential administration but company executives are more cautious.

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Bad Sign for Pharma in Blockbuster Category's Struggles

Blockbuster drug sales might be slowing down across the industry.

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At a summit in Germany, nationalism goes international

TWO ghosts haunted a “counter-summit” of Europe’s nationalist leaders in the German city of Koblenz on January 21st: Angela Merkel and Donald Trump. To the 1,000-odd visitors in attendance, most of them supporters of the anti-establishment Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Mrs Merkel epitomised everything that is rotten in Europe: out of touch, elitist and besotted with immigrants. (Chants of “Merkel must go!” punctuated the day’s speeches.) The energy of Mr Trump’s inauguration the previous day, by contrast, crackled through the proceedings. “Last year the wind began to turn,” said Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Freedom Party. “It brought us the victory of Trump!” The crowd cheered and whooped—for if America, why not Europe?

Koblenz brought together the leaders of populist, nationalist parties from Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and elsewhere under the banner of the “Europe of Nations and Freedom,” their collective grouping in the European Parliament. That in itself was unusual: feuds and personality clashes have long marred attempts by these groups to find common cause. But although parties like...Continue reading

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In their presidential primary, France’s Socialists tack to the left

AS FRANCE prepares for its presidential election this spring, the unexpected is becoming routine. Few predicted that the socially conservative François Fillon would emerge as the Republican party’s candidate, until he came from behind to win the primary in November. In December François Hollande decided not to seek re-election—the first incumbent president not to do so since the birth of the fifth republic. Now comes January’s surprise. Polls suggested that Manuel Valls, a centrist who served as prime minister until last month, was the front-runner in the first round of the Socialist presidential primary on January 22nd. Instead he finished second; first place went to Benoît Hamon, a figure from the party’s left wing.

The two men will face each other in a run-off on January 29th. Mr Hamon is likely to win. He will pick up votes from the third-place candidate, Arnaud Montebourg, and others on the left of the party. His success in the first round matters because it signifies that his party, which already looked weak, is abandoning the centre of French politics. The Socialists are pleased that nearly 2m voters took part in the primary—not bad,...Continue reading

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An Expert’s Guide to Trumponomics

A leading economist has issued stark warnings about the Trump era and its impact on the American and global economy. We ask if the new President’s monetary policy is likely to succeed or fail. And with Trump being an economic populist, what will be his attitude to The Fed?

EBay's Single Life Has Its Ups and Downs

EBay shares have gotten much more volatile after its earnings reports, ever since it split from PayPal.

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Alibaba Needs Strength Beyond Its Core

The Chinese e-commerce giant reports another blowout quarter, yet it has failed to prove it can earn significant profits beyond its core business.

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Watchdog sues Donald Trump over foreign payments to his companies

UNLIKE his predecessor, Donald Trump did not teach constitutional law before becoming president. Yet owing to some of his positions on individual rights, Mr Trump’s ascension to the presidency promises new opportunities for Americans to become more familiar with their founding document. A lawsuit filed on January 23rd in a federal district court in New York may add a rather obscure constitutional provision to the layman’s legal vocabulary: the foreign emoluments clause.

Ethics lawyers who once worked for George W. Bush and Barack Obama and a trio of prominent legal scholars, together with the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a non-profit group, claim that Mr Trump’s “vast, complicated and secret” business interests create “countless conflicts of interest” and “unprecedented influence by foreign governments” in violation of Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the constitution. That clause says that no federal official may “accept any present, emolument, office or title” from a foreign entity “without the consent of Congress”. With foreign officials renting rooms in Mr Trump’s hotels, leasing property at Trump Tower in...Continue reading

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Why Investors Shouldn't Go Bottom Fishing for Turkey

The Central Bank of Turkey tightened policy, but not by enough to change the mind of bearish investors.

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BT's Italian Scam Is Just One of Many Problems

British telecom giant BT Group’s Italian accounting scandal is less important than the other bombshell it dropped on investors.

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The markets have second thoughts on Donald Trump

MARKETS are always full of surprises. In the run-up to the Presidential election, many investors were highly nervous about the possibility of a Trump victory. But on the night of the results, there was a dramatic turnaround. Within a few weeks, the market capitalisation of global equities had risen by $3 trillion and that of government bonds had fallen by the same amount. Markets were betting on "Trump lite"—that his tax cuts and infrastructure spending would be pushed through boosting growth and possibly inflation. By contrast, they downplayed the other "Donnie Darko" element of his policies—his threats to tear up trade agreements and heighten geopolitical risk in the middle east and Asia.

So far, however, we have seen more of Donnie Darko than Trump lite. First there was his "I have a nightmare" inauguration speech with its references to "American carnage" and protection. Then there were his early actions which focused on trade (abandoning the Pacific deal known as TPP and promising to...Continue reading

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Apple Takes a Bite Out of Qualcomm

The timing of la lawsuit throws completion of the NXP Semiconductors deal into question, along with future royalties.

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Halliburton's Rebound Isn't Good Enough

Halliburton’s results benefited from a sharp recovery in shale oil production, but it may have been too little for investors.

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Predicting Donald Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court

PREDICTION, wrote Karl Popper, a philosopher, is “one of the oldest dreams of mankind—the dream of prophecy, the idea that we can know what the future has in store for us, and that we can profit from such knowledge by adjusting our policy to it.” It is a dream from which Donald Trump provided a shock awakening.

Over the summer of 2015, as Mr Trump surged in primary polls, analysts and journalists laid out, often in precise and gory detail, the steep trajectory of his inevitable fall. “Why the Republican Party shouldn’t worry about the Donald” and “Donald Trump’s Six Stages Of Doom” are representative headlines from those months. A year later, in an arena in Cleveland, Mr Trump accepted his party’s nomination.

But he didn’t stand a chance in the general, according to the people for whom predicting these sorts of things is their business. On the morning of November 8th, the Huffington Post gave Hillary Clinton a 98% chance of being elected president. The Princeton Election Consortium gave her a 93% chance. The New York Times arrived at 85%, and FiveThirtyEight, a data journalism website, at a more tempered 71%. But at 3am the...Continue reading

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Big Telecoms Keep Investors on Hold

Telecom giants Verizon and AT&T have been losing ground to their smaller rivals.

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Davos in the spotlight

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Euro and Dollar Won't Be Equals Just Yet

he euro, far from heading toward parity with the dollar, is at a six-week high. Risk aversion is a supporting factor for the single currency.

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What the tragic death of Teori Zavascki means for Brazil

 

IT IS not the first time an air crash has caused turmoil in Brazil. In 1992 a helicopter went down off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state, killing Ulysses Guimarães, a towering political figure. His party was a driving force behind the impeachment of Fernando Collor, the president of the day. Eduardo Campos, a candidate in the presidential election in 2014, died in an aeroplane crash in August that year. Now an air tragedy has killed a justice of the supreme court, Teori Zavascki. He was one of five people who died when a private aeroplane fell into the sea not far from where Guimarães perished. His death may be the most consequential of the three.

That is because Mr Zavascki oversaw investigations into the Petrobras scandal, which has dominated Brazilian politics for more than two years. The scandal involves construction firms conspiring with Petrobras, the state-controlled oil company, to funnel billions of dollars to parties and politicians. It led indirectly to the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff as president last August (she was not directly involved, but her Workers’ Party was). Politicians, construction bosses and former...Continue reading

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More Babies in China Worth Celebrating---but Mind the Data

Official data shows Chinese women had the most children since 2000 in 2016, but questions remain over whether the data is reliable.

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One Stat That Shows a Trump Bull Market Is Unlikely

The stock market’s gains under President Obama reflected not just rising valuations, but widening profit margins. President Trump is unlikely to see a repeat.

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The Case for a Less Chipper Intel

The chip maker’s stock has languished as data-center growth slows. A more realistic goal should help.

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Alibaba Needs Great Results, Not Just Good Ones

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has a high bar to clear when it releases its quarterly report on Tuesday.

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America’s best-known circus leaves town permanently

RINGLING BROS and Barnum & Bailey, America’s largest circus, knew how to make an entrance. For decades, its elephants promenaded through the Midtown Tunnel into Manhattan, then walked trunk-to-tail along 34th Street to Madison Square Garden. New Yorkers of all ages lined the streets, often in the early hours, to see the annual elephant march. In 2015, bowing to pressure from animal-rights groups, Feld Entertainment, the circus’s parent company, did away with its elephant acts, and once the big beasts were taken off the show ticket sales plummeted. So on January 14th, after 146 years of touring, Feld decided to close the circus nicknamed “The Greatest Show on Earth”.

PT Barnum, one of the show’s founders, is said to have remarked that “clowns and elephants are the pegs upon which a circus is hung”. Sending in the clowns was not enough to keep Ringling Bros going. More than 400 performers and roustabouts will lose their jobs, and scores of animals, including tigers, horses, dogs and kangaroos will need new homes. The retired elephants are in a sanctuary.

Ringling Bros is only the latest circus to call it a day. Cole Bros Circus...Continue reading

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Vast crowds gather to protest Donald Trump

THE first full day of Donald Trump's presidency was marked by some vast protest marches in America and some pretty big ones elsewhere in the world. Demonstrating after an election is a strange thing to do: generally the most effective time to protest is when casting a ballot. The Americans who voted for Mr Trump will have seen the thronged streets and concluded that there are a lot of sore losers. But the “Women’s March on Washington”, organised by activists, did not feel like a protest against the result. It was more like an amble for civility.

On the National Mall, where the day before people in red baseball caps had thronged to celebrate the inauguration of the 45th president, there was happy chaos. Nobody knew where they were going or minded too much whether they heard the various speakers arranged by the organisers.  There was a fierce contest for the wittiest sign ("We shall overcomb", carried by Kate from Massachusetts was your blogger's favourite). There were plenty of jokes about small hands, a few Russia gags ("Just Say Nyet") and some earnest attempts at making points about policy ("Uphold The Paris Climate Agreement"), along with many Black Lives Matter...Continue reading

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Gambia’s dictator hangs on even as Senegal’s army crosses the border

DEPENDING on whom one speaks to, it was either an act of war or a map-reading error. When troops from neighbouring Senegal massed on the Gambian border this week—poised to force out Gambia’s dictator, Yahya Jammeh—reports emerged on Thursday night that they had already crossed the frontier. In fact, according to diplomats, they had merely misprogrammed their GPS navigator, and had strayed over the undulating, unmarked border by mistake.

The world’s first “invasion by Sat Nav error”? Or just a deliberate “mistake” to put the wind up Mr Jammeh? Nobody really knows. Although West Africa’s regional power bloc, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), may not be as slick as the Pentagon when it comes to military manoeuvres, its calm stewardship of this week’s crisis in Gambia has won it many admirers.

When Mr Jammeh reneged on his pledge to step down after losing elections in December to Adama Barrow, it seemed the tiny west African nation was about to go back to a time when leaders ignored election results with little fear of consequences. These days, though, the region prides itself as being one of the...Continue reading

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Moscow’s power players toast President Trump

AS DONALD TRUMP took the oath of office in Washington, applause rang out in a loft in central Moscow where pro-government activists, Kremlin-friendly consultants and nationalist politicians gathered to usher in the new American president. A “triptych” painting featuring Mr Trump, Vladimir Putin and the French far-right leader Marine Le Pen (pictured) stood in the middle of the room. Visitors sipped semi-sweet champagne and nibbled on meat pirozhki. Some party-goers donned the Guy Fawkes masks beloved of the online collective Anonymous, an impish nod to the Russian hackers whom American officials believe interfered in the elections.

While much of the world has greeted Mr Trump’s rise with trepidation, Russia has been ecstatic. Mr Trump’s pledges to improve relations have been welcomed. Charges that the Kremlin played a role in bringing him to power have been dismissed by Mr Putin as “fabrications”. (American intelligence agencies are still investigating potential links between Mr Trump’s campaign and Russian officials.) But Russian enthusiasm does not spring from a belief that Mr Trump will “make America great again”: many...Continue reading

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Donald Trump becomes America’s 45th president

“CARNAGE”. That word—one not usually associated with inaugural addresses or any appeal to national unity—formed the smouldering, incendiary core of President Donald Trump’s first speech after taking his oath of office on January 20th. The term is how Mr Trump summed up the past few decades of social and economic change witnessed in America. Other presidents have called for reconciliation in their inaugural addresses, celebrated progress or appealed to the “better angels of our nature”—soft, hand-wringing naïfs that they were. Not Mr Trump. Speaking to Americans who live far from the West Front of the Capitol, the 45th president addressed himself to those citizens that he called “righteous people” and “forgotten men and women”. He told them that they were part of an unprecedented historical movement that had taken back power from the corrupt and selfish elites that control both political parties in Washington, an establishment that had enriched and protected itself while leaving the real America wracked by poverty, crime and insecurity. No longer, the new president promised. “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”

Mr Trump’s...Continue reading

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American Express Feeling the Heat From Competition

The writing is on the wall for American Express, but investors can’t see it. Like a lifelong Platinum-card holder oblivious to the better options now available, the company’s investors are oddly unconcerned about worsening competition.

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Washington Uncertainty May Give GE an Unhealthy Glow

Add General Electric to the list of businesses concerned about the risks from health policy uncertainty. Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt noted on the fourth-quarter earnings conference call that the U.S health-care business faces some risks as a result.

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Chinese Internet Giant Strikes Deal With a Secretive Investor and…a U.K. Insurer

Aviva creates new company with Tencent and Chinese investor, Hillhouse.

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You can’t be both a populist and a free-market conservative

IT WOULD be hard to find two more different characters than Theresa May and Donald Trump; the former a suburban vicar's daughter, the latter a brash reality TV star. But they face similar problems—how to keep both the markets and their supporters satisfied.

For Mrs May, the problem is her dissonant rhetoric. On the one hand, she has used what was once known as “one nation” Tory rhetoric, arguing against the worst excesses of capitalism and the need to help those who are “just about managing”. So here she is in her Davos speech saying of her new approach that 

It means businesses paying their fair share of tax, recognising their obligations and duties to their employees and supply chains, and trading in the right way;

Companies genuinely investing in—and becoming part of—the communities and nations in which they operate, and abiding by the responsibilities that implies;

And all of us taking steps towards addressing executive pay and accountability to shareholders.

In practice, however, she has already retreated from a proposal to put workers on boards, plans to push ahead with...Continue reading

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Where Trump's Protectionism Could Hit the Hardest

For all the talk of U.S. trade frictions with China under Donald Trump, one of the biggest losers if U.S. imports drop would be the rest of Asia.

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Apparel Industry Enters No-Man's Land Under Trump

Apparel retailers could be among the hardest hit by tax proposals being weighed by the Trump administration.

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Banks Face Brexit Squeeze as Consumers Max Out on Debt

Confident consumers are borrowing to spend, but pressures are building.

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Trump at the Wheel Is One More U.S. Worry for Japan's Car Makers

As U.S. car sales roar to record highs for the second consecutive year, the Japanese makers are riding the wave—but the market looks headed for weakness.

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China's Economy in 2016 Was a Stimulating Story, But 2017 Looks Stormy

China’s leaders envision a pivot away from stimulus, but that could unravel if tensions with Trump escalate.

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Mnuchin Hearing Does Little to Clear Trump Fog of Uncertainty

Steven Mnuchin backed away from some of the more extreme policies suggested by president-elect Donald Trump, but the nominee for Treasury secretary also was vague on major areas of economic policy.

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PTC's Revenue Puzzle Still Unsolved

Software maker PTC says its transition to a subscription model will generate more value, but its balance sheet has yet to show evidence of that.

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CSX's New Engineer Could Work Wonders; Sell the Shares Anyway

Canadian Pacific boss Hunter Harrison has an amazing record and could add serious value to CSX, but shareholders would be wise to lock in recent gains.

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Before Donald Trump, there was Jesse Ventura

UNTIL November, the rise of a former professional wrestler and talk-radio host, Jesse Ventura, to the governorship of Minnesota was perhaps the most unlikely tale in recent American political history. Even Mr Ventura’s campaign strategist, Bill Hillsman, predicted a narrow loss for “The Body” at the three-way race in November 1998. He had booked a flight to Buenos Aires for the day after the election, which he hastily cancelled once it became clear that Mr Ventura had won with 37% of the vote against Norm Coleman, a Republican, and Skip Humphrey of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, the local Democrats.

Mr Ventura, who ran for the Reform Party founded by Ross Perot, a billionaire businessman, pitched himself as an outsider who took on the established political order. He spoke bluntly, sparred with reporters, sported a yellow feather boa at his inaugural ball and prided himself on his independence from special interests. Journalists and pollsters underestimated the appeal of Mr Ventura’s he-man message to “shake up the old order”, especially for male voters.

Once the election had been won, “nobody [in Jesse’s team] knew...Continue reading

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GE's Stock Rally Needs More Power

Fourth-quarter earnings will put the industrial giant’s stock rally to the test.

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Nigeria’s armed forces continue to stumble in the fight against Boko Haram

THE fighting between the jihadists of Boko Haram and the Nigerian government has uprooted almost 2m people in north-eastern Nigeria; more than 5m are in need of food aid. The misery in the region was compounded on January 17th, when a Nigerian military jet mistakenly bombed an informal refugee camp sheltering thousands of people displaced by the violence.

At least 76 people were killed and more than 100 were injured when the bombs hit Rann camp, home to 43,000 people. Among the dead were six Red Cross volunteers and three Médecins Sans Frontières contractors.

The air strike—a “regrettable operational mistake”, according to Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari—reinforces long-standing doubts over the level of training and skills of Nigeria’s security forces, and the efficacy of its counter-terrorism operation in the region. Although soldiers are no longer sent off to fight without boots or bullets by generals sitting safely in the capital, as regularly happened two years ago, deficiencies in training and equipment are still evident.

The botched strike appears to have been caused by a combination of faulty intelligence...Continue reading

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Free expression v offensive speech at the Supreme Court

AMERICA protects the freedom of expression about as robustly as anybody. The courts that police this First-Amendment guarantee, though, often face dilemmas. On January 18th, in Lee v Tam, the justices considered a case involving “the first and only all-Asian American dance rock band in the world” and its quest dating back to 2011 to trademark its name, "The Slants", an appropriation of an anti-Asian epithet. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) told the band that a half-century-old law called the Lanham Act prohibited “scandalous, immoral or disparaging” trademarks. Then, citing a definition of “slants” from Urbandictionary.com, a list of ethnic slurs from Wikipedia and a slew of other evidence, the PTO denied The Slants’ application.

The Portland-based quartet fought the decision and won a judgment in 2015 from the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a Washington, DC based court with jurisdiction over patent disputes. The ruling struck down the provision of the Lanham Act in question as a clear violation of the First Amendment: “The government cannot refuse to register disparaging marks because it disapproves of...Continue reading

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ECB: Going Nowhere Despite German Inflation Anxiety

The ECB struck a dovish tone, and the euro fell. The bigger picture is steady ECB policy even in the face of German worries about inflation.

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