Americans Are Richer; Why Are They Still Cautious?

U.S. household net worth reached a record $96.2 trillion in the second quarter, the Fed reported, but, if households are feeling flush, they aren’t acting like it.

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California sues Donald Trump over his border wall plan

OF THE many unrealistic promises Donald Trump made during his campaign—restoring lost manufacturing jobs, immediately deportating  2m to 3m undocumented immigrants—building a wall that entirely divides America from Mexico was always among the least plausible. First there is the question of cost, which the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a university, estimates could be anywhere between $27bn and $40bn depending on the structure’s height, length and depth under the ground. There is the issue of geography. The ever-shifting sands of the Algodones Dunes in south-eastern California, for example, make a fixed wall nearly impossible. And there are legal questions, which Xavier Becerra (pictured), the attorney-general of California, evidently has a lot of. 

On September 20th Mr Becerra, who has sued the Trump administration eight times in recent months, announced that his state would again challenge the administration in court, this time to halt construction of Mr Trump’s proposed border wall and prototypes of...Continue reading

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Anti-vagrancy laws are not the best way to reduce homelessness

ON A sunny morning, downtown Reno is mostly empty, save for a handful of tourists. Two women speaking Spanish ogle diamonds in one of many pawn shops; a Chinese couple snaps photos under the city’s archway with its inscription, “The biggest little city in the world”. Residents avoid the area for fear that it is unsafe, says Boyd Cox, an affable veteran who owns a large antique shop downtown. Mr Cox sometimes finds homeless people sleeping under the overhang at the entrance. “When I recently asked one friend—a retired fireman—to stop by the store for a visit, he shook his head and said: ‘No, no, I don’t go downtown.’”

Although homelessness is hard to measure, available statistics suggest that Reno’s homeless population is on the rise even as America’s homeless population as a whole is declining. In 2011, 879 people lived on Reno’s streets, in shelters and in transitional housing. By January 2017 that number had increased to 1,106, meaning about 32 of...Continue reading

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How the use of antibiotics in poultry farming changed the way America eats

Clucking hell

WILL HARRIS is one of the heroes of “Big Chicken”, a new book by Maryn McKenna that looks at the widespread use of antibiotics in poultry farming. After finishing his studies at the University of Georgia’s School of Agriculture in 1976, Mr Harris deployed all the instruments in his new toolkit to increase his farm’s profits: chemical fertilisers, pesticides, land tillage, antibiotics, hormones. They did wonders for cost-savings, he says, but made him increasingly uncomfortable. White Oak Pastures, his farm in western Georgia, has come full circle over 150 years. Transformed into an industrialised, commoditised and centralised agricultural operation, the farm has now reverted to ways that his grandfather might recognise. With its verdant 3,000 acres grazed by rabbits, sheep, pigs, goats, turkeys, ducks, geese, guinea hens, bees and chickens, it is now a textbook example of multi-species, pasture-based organic farming.

Few farmers in America...Continue reading

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The president threatened to destroy another country at the UN

Eisenhower’s heir

IT IS not known whether President Donald Trump has seen “Wolf Warriors 2”, the nationalist action film breaking Chinese box-office records with its depiction of a former People’s Liberation Army (PLA) commando battling warlords and evil American mercenaries in Africa. But in his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly, on September 19th, Mr Trump took a decidedly “Wolf Warrior” line on the UN’s proper role.

To the usual action-flick staples—car chases, fist-fights, exploding tanks—that Chinese movie adds a fortifying dose of international law, as lantern-jawed PLA officers wait for the UN Security Council to approve their use of force, after asserting a legal right to self-defence. The final scenes show the hero delivering compatriots to Chinese peacekeepers in UN blue helmets (earlier, a Chinese-American doctor has tried summoning Marines from an American consulate but hears an answering-machine, for the Yanks...Continue reading

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Newark’s rebound

WHEN Ras Baraka was elected Newark’s mayor in 2014, the business world was worried. He had brokered peace between the Crips and the Bloods, two fierce rival gangs, and is Newark royalty—his father, Amir Baraka, was a famous activist poet. But he was no fan of corporate America. Mr Baraka once compared the business community’s relationship to Newarkers to that of a master and slave. In office he has proved more pragmatic than expected, and his rhetoric might nowadays be mistaken for a management consultant’s. “We can’t get to where we want to be unless everyone takes accountability and is at the table,” says the former school principal.

Large swathes of the 26-square-mile city were wrecked during the 1967 unrest sparked by the police beating of a black cab driver. For years, Newark was one of the country’s most dangerous cities and one of its poorest. The former industrial powerhouse has endured decades of disinvestment, but this is...Continue reading

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Republicans seek to turn health reform over to the states

AFTER Republicans failed to agree on a replacement for the Affordable Care Act earlier this year, the cause of Obamacare repeal looked dead. Yet a revival was always possible before September 30th, when a budget measure allowing a health bill to pass the Senate with only 51 votes, rather than 60, expires. The ticking clock has spurred four Republican senators, led by Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, to have one last stab at getting a bill passed.

Messrs Cassidy and Graham are not brimming with new policy ideas. Instead of reforming Obamacare themselves, they want to pass the baton to state governments. Like past Republican bills, their proposal would limit the federal government’s role in Medicaid (health insurance for the poor) to providing a fixed grant to the states for each person enrolled. The new bill extends that approach to the individual market, in which 17m people who do not get health insurance from some other source buy it for themselves. From 2020, the federal funds that currently subsidise poorer buyers would instead be divvied up among states in proportion to the distribution of Americans earning between 50% and 138% of the federal poverty line. States could spend this cash on health care mostly as they saw fit. They could also opt out of many of Obamacare’s regulations, such as those preventing insurers from charging...Continue reading

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Roy Moore: kickboxer, sacked judge, US Senator?

THE first time Roy Moore lost an election, for a seat on the Alabama circuit bench, he quit the law to become a professional kickboxer. Now stumping for the Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions, the attorney-general, the former chief justice of Alabama is limbering up for a more ambitious fight. “Put on the whole armour of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil!” he tells a crowd in Huntsville, northern Alabama, in the words of the apostle Paul. “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood but…against the rulers of the darkness of this world!”

This takes Republican dissatisfaction with Mitch McConnell to a new level. The party’s leader in the Senate is hated by Mr Moore for having put his wiles—and millions of dollars from conservative donors—behind his rival for the Republican Senate ticket, Luther Strange. It is easy to see why. Mr Strange, who is keeping the Senate seat warm at the behest of Alabama’s former governor, Robert Bentley, is a...Continue reading

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The Democrats are ditching centrism for economic populism

NEARLY four years ago Bernie Sanders, the crotchety, democratic-socialist senator from Vermont who came surprisingly close to winning the Democratic presidential nomination last year, introduced a bill to provide universal government-run health care. It attracted no co-sponsors. On September 13th he introduced a similar bill. Sixteen Democratic senators—one-third of the party’s Senate caucus—signed on as co-sponsors, including Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris, all potential presidential candidates.

In the intervening four years Mr Sanders’s proposal has grown no more feasible. In an interview with Vox, an online news outlet, Hillary Clinton, who defeated Mr Sanders for the nomination, raised the same objections she had last year: his plan is too vague, expensive and politically naive. But Democrats today are in no mood for caution; enraged and energised in opposition, they have taken a maximalist turn. Some single-payer...Continue reading

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Small consolations from Mexico’s terrible earthquake

THE timing seemed supernatural. At 1.14pm on September 19th, just a couple of hours after Mexicans had completed an evacuation drill marking the 32nd anniversary of an earthquake that devastated the capital, the ground shook once again. The second big quake to hit the country in a fortnight killed at least 230 people, injured several hundred and left many more without homes.

In Mexico City, the site of around half the deaths, it caused terror and heartbreak. It was “the strongest that I can remember”, said Susana Bustamante, an employee of a telecoms firm. “Some people really panicked.” Around 40 buildings collapsed in the capital. They included the Enrique Rebsamen primary school, where 21 children and four adults were killed. At least one trapped child was alive on the following day, but other people were still missing. According to Eduardo Corona of the government’s civil protection agency, the building had collapsed on top of the children and was “very compact…like a...Continue reading

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The parting shots of Brazil’s chief prosecutor

Janot, the fastest gun in the tropics

LIKE a sheriff in one last gunfight, Rodrigo Janot hoped to end his career in a blaze of glory. On September 14th, three days before the end of his term as Brazil’s chief prosecutor, he accused the country’s president, Michel Temer, of obstructing justice and of racketeering. In a 245-page document, Mr Janot alleges that Mr Temer was the ringleader of a “mega-gang” made up of politicians from his Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB), the left-wing Workers’ Party (PT) and others. It extracted bribes worth at least 587m reais ($188m) from companies in return for public contracts and favours. Mr Temer also allegedly paid to silence potential witnesses.

This is the second volley Mr Janot has fired at the president. In June he accused Mr Temer of negotiating bribes and obstructing justice. The charge was based on testimony from Joesley and Wesley Batista and on tapes recorded by Joesley Batista. Their...Continue reading

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Venezuela’s war on cuteness

On second thought, hold the onion sauce

VENEZUELA has a hunger crisis, with 12% of children suffering from acute malnutrition. But the country’s socialist president, Nicolás Maduro, has a cunning plan. Under Plan Conejo (Plan Rabbit), poor settlements are to receive cages containing baby rabbits which, when fattened up, will provide the protein and calories many people lack. Freddy Bernal, the urban agriculture minister, recently delivered the first consignment of bunnies to 15 communities.

It makes more sense than some of Mr Maduro’s other ideas. They “will breed like rabbits”, he predicted. While shops run out of bread, butter and other staples because of price controls and scarce foreign exchange, the rabbits will reproduce, oblivious of market forces. The “imperialist” United States, which is waging “economic war” on Venezuela, will only be able to watch and fume.

But the hutch-based solution that Mr Maduro has hatched has run...Continue reading

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Peru loses its prime minister. What next?

PEDRO PABLO KUCZYNSKI has been Peru’s president for little more than a year, but already he has lost or reassigned 15 ministers. The biggest cull came on September 15th, when his government lost a vote of confidence in congress. That led to the resignation of the prime minister, Fernando Zavala, who was also finance minister, along with the rest of the 19-member cabinet. Mr Kuczynski reappointed most of them two days later. But Mr Zavala is gone, as are Marilú Martens, the education minister, whom the opposition accuses of mishandling a teachers’ strike, and three others. To many Peruvians the president, who has four years to go in office, already looks like a lame duck.

The source of his problems is his incomplete victory in last year’s presidential election. He narrowly won the popular vote in the second round against Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of a former president, Alberto Fujimori, who is in jail for human-rights crimes. But her party, Fuerza Popular (Popular...Continue reading

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Fed Paves the Way for the ECB to Follow

The Federal Reserve’s persistence in signaling rising interest rates may help the European Central Bank by tempering the euro’s strength.

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A placid election campaign belies Germany’s tensions

IN A muggy sports hall in Schwerin, in the north-eastern German state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, Angela Merkel is holding the 53rd of her 59 election rallies. It is a now-familiar routine. There is the thumping music as she arrives, the black-red-yellow “Kanzlerin” (“chancelloress”) placards and the folksy chitchat with dignitaries on the dais. She starts with bread-and-butter concerns like jobs and social spending, then the usual joke about children not looking up from their phones at dinner, then a sweep through law and order (there “can, must and will” be no repeat of the immigrant influx of 2015) and some reflections on global instability. The election is not yet decided, she concludes, before bustling out to a standing ovation.

If the chancellor is going through the motions, that is because the election on September 24th will almost certainly return her to power. Polls give Mrs Merkel’s CDU, together with the Christian Social Union (CSU), its Bavarian sister, a double-digit lead over Martin Schulz’s unhappily indistinct Social Democrats (SPD), with whom they have governed in a “grand coalition” since 2013. International turbulence has only heightened Germans’ temperamental preference for stability and predictability. Jobs, exports and confidence are up. So much for Mrs Merkel’s prediction, when she announced her run for a fourth term as...Continue reading

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As Russia threatens, Sweden ponders joining NATO

SWEDEN’S Aurora-17 drill, which continues until the end of September, is the biggest war game that the supposedly neutral country has carried out for 23 years. Not only does it involve 19,000 of Sweden’s armed forces (about half of them), including its Home Guard, but also more than 1,500 troops from Finland, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, France, Norway and America. All except Finland are members of NATO, the big western alliance.

The size of the exercise and its main focus, the defence of Gotland, an island in the Baltic Sea some 350km (220 miles) from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, is a reflection of how insecure Sweden feels. Vladimir Putin, having gobbled up Crimea and attacked Ukraine, is flexing his muscles near the Baltics and Scandinavia. Russia’s massive Zapad-17 military exercise, which finished this week, involved sending 100,000 troops to Belarus and the Baltic to practise repelling the “Western Coalition”. Foreign observers were banned, as they never are from NATO exercises. (Perhaps luckily: a Russian helicopter reportedly fired missiles at spectators by mistake, though the government denies this.)

There have been plenty of other causes for disquiet. In March 2013 Russia sent two Tupolev Tu-22M3 bombers, escorted by four Sukhoi Su-27 jet fighters, across the Gulf of Finland to within 40km of Gotland. The planes only...Continue reading

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The tangled affairs of the probable next Czech prime minister

Babis and his billionaire baggage

ANDREJ BABIS says the political establishment is conspiring to keep him from power. A billionaire agro-industrialist and media mogul, Mr Babis is the frontrunner to become the Czech Republic’s prime minister after next month’s general election. However, on September 6th parliament voted to strip him of immunity from prosecution as an MP, amid fraud allegations from the police. “You won’t frighten me. You won’t stop me. You won’t get rid of me,” the self-styled outsider bellowed from the dais before losing his immunity by 123 votes to just four.

Meanwhile, audio recordings of him speaking coarsely about how, for instance, he might use his newspapers to attack rivals, have been posted anonymously online. There is even a phone app to help shoppers avoid foods produced by Agrofert, Mr Babis’s conglomerate, which has 250 companies and 33,000 employees.

Rivals have taken more formal steps to curb the...Continue reading

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A monument to Kalashnikov

THE streets of Moscow feature many monuments to great figures from Russia’s past: Tolstoy, Pushkin and Tchaikovsky, to name but a few. This week, a new national hero joined their ranks: Mikhail Kalashnikov, eponymous inventor of the rifle. His nine-metre-tall likeness, clad in a bomber jacket and cradling an AK-47, towers over the Garden Ring Road, one of the capital’s main throughways. “He’s so kind, he’s holding it carefully, like a baby,” remarked Natalia Khrustaleva-Popova, a retired factory worker who came to see the sculpture. At the opening ceremony, a lone protester was promptly detained, while a priest sprinkled the bronze behemoth with holy water.

The AK-47—“AK” for Avtomat Kalashnikova, or Kalashnikov’s automatic, and “47” for the year the prototypes were completed—has become one of the world’s most popular and lethal weapons, believed to account for one-fifth of all firearms. Kalashnikov, the son of Siberian peasants, began sketching...Continue reading

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Charlemagne: the row over “posted workers”

AS SUMMERS go, Marek Miesikowski’s wasn’t bad: a fortnight in Aix-en-Provence, a hop across to Corsica, then winding down in Marseille for a few weeks. Mr Miesikowski, a student from Poland, was hauling ventilation pipes across construction sites rather than sunning himself on the Riviera, but he is not complaining. Two months working in France earned him enough to support an entire year of his physiotherapy studies in Poznan.

Like almost half a million of his compatriots, Mr Miesikowski was taking advantage of the European Union’s rules on “posted workers”, designed to govern pay and benefits when a citizen from one European country takes temporary work in another. The Polish agency that employed him arranged his work with French clients, covered his transport and housing costs and organised a three-week language course before he left. Posted workers pay social security at home rather than in their country of work. Their employers are obliged to pay them only the...Continue reading

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Catalonia prepares to vote on secession

EACH year Sergi Rubió has joined the huge demonstrations that Catalans have held since 2010 on September 11th, their national day, to demand independence from Spain. This year several hundred thousand people thronged the streets of Barcelona in warm sunshine. It was a festive, family affair with giant puppets and human castles. But there was a change, said Mr Rubió, a manager in his mid-30s from Vilafranca del Penedès, in cava country: “Now we have politicians who are standing up and fighting for their ideals.”

Days before, the Generalitat, as the Catalan government is known, had rammed through the Catalan parliament a law mandating a “binding” referendum on independence and another requiring a unilateral declaration of independence within 48 hours in the event of a “Yes” vote. “We have a single objective: to be able to decide on our future…and that prevails over everything else,” said Carles Puigdemont, the Catalan president.

With that, he set...Continue reading

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What China's Downgrade Signals to Investors

A global rating agency has once again downgraded China, and there is little new information for investors to digest. It may however be worth reading between the lines.

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Why It's So Hard for Europe's Big Banks to Do Big Deals

Everyone wants bank deals in Europe—the problem is finding one acceptable to investors, executives, regulators and politicians. Commerzbank is a case in point.

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Why the Auto Industry Is Betting Big on an Uncertain Future

Johnson Matthey is investing heavily in battery parts despite an extremely wide range of predictions for the future of electric cars.

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China sets its sights on dominating sunrise industries

IN RECENT days China set the record for the world’s fastest long-distance bullet train, which hurtled between Beijing and Shanghai at 350kph (217mph). This was a triumph of industrial policy as much as of engineering. China’s first high-speed trains started rolling only a decade ago; today the country has 20,000km of high-speed track, more than the rest of the world combined. China could not have built this without a strong government. The state provided funds for research, land for tracks, aid for loss-making railways, subsidies for equipment-makers and, most controversially, incentives for foreign companies to share commercial secrets.

High-speed rail is a prime example of the Chinese government’s prowess at identifying priority industries and deploying money and policy tools to nurture them. It inspires awe of what it can accomplish and fear that other countries stand little chance against such a formidable competitor. Yet there have also been big industrial-policy misses, notably...Continue reading

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America holds the World Trade Organisation hostage

What Google Wants With HTC's Smartphone Business

Google’s $1.1 billion deal with HTC carries risks, but the internet giant needs more scale if it is to maintain its influence in the smartphone business.

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The case against shrinking the Fed’s balance sheet

AS EXPECTED, the Federal Reserve announced on September 20th that it will soon begin reversing the asset purchases it made during and after the financial crisis. From October, America’s central bank will stop reinvesting all of the money it receives when its assets start to mature. As a result, its $4.5trn balance-sheet will gradually shrink. However, the Fed did not give any clues as to what the endpoint for the balance sheet should be. This is an important question. There are strong arguments for keeping the balance-sheet large. In fact, it might be better were the Fed not shedding any assets at all. 

Most commentators view a large balance-sheet, which is the result of quantitative easing (QE), as an extraordinary economic stimulus. Janet Yellen, the Fed’s chair, seems to agree: at a press conference after the Fed announcement, she said the balance-sheet should shrink because the stimulus it provides to the economy is no longer needed. But the claim that the balance-sheet is stimulating the economy is far from an...Continue reading

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How the Fed's Unwind Will Ripple Through Banks

The gradual wind down of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet will have far-reaching effects throughout the banking system. For the most part, major banks stand to benefit.

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A Surprise Bump in Bad Card Loans

Credit card lenders are seeing some of the highest delinquency rates in years.

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Adobe's Cloud Hits First Headwind

Larger deals have been taking longer to close, but software maker’s cloud transition still packs a lot of growth ahead.

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Murky World of Drug Rebates Gets Airing in Lawsuit

The closely guarded world of drug pricing is getting a public airing in a feud between two of the industry’s biggest companies. The attention drawn to rebates could hurt the profits of some very successful drugs.

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Call It 'Fintech' and Watch the Valuation Soar

China’s ZhongAn insurance company wants to be seen as tech play, rather than a boring old insurer.

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Can companies block employees’ class-action lawsuits?

ANTONIN SCALIA was no fan of class-action lawsuits. When plaintiffs band together to sue a company, he wrote in a 2011 Supreme Court decision, the result is often “trial by formula”—a mashing together of countless disparate claims that are impossible to adjudicate fairly. The Supreme Court followed up on Walmart v Dukes (when it rebuffed 1.5m female employees’ claim that Walmart discriminated against them) by whittling away at class-action litigation for a second time in 2011, as well as in 2012 and 2013. With Justice Neil Gorsuch now in the late Mr Scalia’s old seat, the justices are about to consider an employment-law dispute that could put new stumbling blocks before aggrieved workers seeking to combine forces in response to workplace slights.

On October 2nd, the first day of what promises to be a contentious term, the Supreme Court will hear one hour of argument for three consolidated cases: Epic Systems v Lewis, Ernst & Young v Morris and National Labour Relations Board v Murphy Oil....Continue reading

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Kenya’s supreme court explains why it annulled last month’s presidential poll

WHAT makes for an acceptable election? That is the question Kenyans must consider during the next month or so. On September 20th, almost three weeks after the country’s supreme court annulled the presidential election held on August 8th, the judges issued acomplete judgment to explain their ruling. As an indictment of the electoral commission and a statement of the supremacy of law, it was searing and inspiring. The constitutional mandate placed on the commission, said David Maraga, the chief justice, “is a heavy yet noble one” that it had failed to fulfil. But on the question of whether the poll was actually rigged, as the opposition alleges, or as a guide to how to hold another one, it was less definitive.

Compared with the summary ruling issued initially, the full judgment revealed relatively little new. According to the deputy chief justice, Philomena Mwilu, the court was left with no option but to annul the poll because of the “contumacious” approach of the...Continue reading

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Thyssenkrupp: A Success Story for European Activism

Thyssenkrupp’s move to join its European steel operations with those of Tata Steel paves the way for a more investor-friendly structure but investors shouldn’t bank on speedy results.

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German Election: For Markets, Wages Are What Matter Most

Angela Merkel appears on course to win a fourth term as Germany’s leader. For markets, the political stability allows a focus on more fundamental changes going on in Europe’s most important economy.

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Another earthquake strikes Mexico

This article was updated on September 20th at 8.00am BST, to reflect a new death toll provided by the Mexican government

FOR the second time in a fortnight a powerful earthquake has inflicted death and destruction on Mexico. The quake that struck in the early afternoon of September 19th was not as strong as the one that hit southern Mexico 12 days before and killed nearly 100 people: its magnitude was 7.1, compared with 8.2 for the earlier quake. But the more recent one was much closer to the country’s megalopolis, Mexico City, part of which is built on the soft soil of a lake bed and is thus prone to seismic shaking. The epicentre was in the state of Puebla, some 125km south-east of the capital.

At least 248 people have died. The country’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, said that 27 buildings in Mexico City have collapsed. One of them was a private school in the southern part of the capital....Continue reading

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An America First president addresses the United Nations

THIS has been a good summer, cinematically, for the United Nations. That world body is the unlikely co-star of “Wolf Warriors 2”, a hyper-patriotic action film that has broken all box-office records in China, earning nearly $900m to date with its depiction of a former People’s Liberation Army (PLA) commando battling African rebels and evil American mercenaries to rescue Chinese citizens from a war-torn African country. To the usual action-flick staples—car chases, fist-fights, crashing helicopters—the Chinese-made movie adds a fortifying dose of international law. Lantern-jawed Chinese military officers wait for the UN Security Council to approve their use of force, after asserting a legal right to self-defence. The final scenes show the hero delivering his compatriots to a base guarded by PLA peacekeepers in UN blue helmets (earlier, a Chinese-American doctor has tried summoning marines from an American consulate but hears only an answering-machine, for the yanks have run away). A Chinese passport fills the screen as the closing...Continue reading

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The Hidden Obamacare Detail That Could Cost Hospitals Billions

A seemingly arcane detail of Obamacare could put significant cost pressure on hospital companies and eventually drug and medical device makers.

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Pirelli IPO: Are Expensive Tires Worth It?

Car tires can be surprisingly glamorous. But investors may be better off waiting before buying into Italian tire-maker Pirelli.

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How to Make Money on the Chinese Internet

Activist investor Aristeia Capital shows the way for New York-listed Sina to unlock long-trapped value in subsidiary Weibo.

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Unfinished Business: Why Oil Output May Surprise

There are signs that the surge in drilling by shale-oil producers has ended, reducing estimates of U.S. oil output and pushing up prices.

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Why America’s overseas aid agency needs reform

ON SEPTEMBER 14th, Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state, presented the outline of a reform plan for the State Department and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to the Office of Management and Budget. Alongside a plan to cut up to $10bn from the State Department’s budget over five years, the proposals included a closer alignment of the department and USAID—potentially involving a full takeover of the semi-independent aid agency. That would require Congressional support, which may not be forthcoming: the Senate has already pushed back against the administration’s proposed cuts to the USAID budget, suggesting the agency enjoys some bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. But reform of America’s overseas assistance programmes is long overdue, and should involve a lot more than revamped organisation charts.

Every presidential administration since the 1970s has initiated efforts to reorganize foreign aid. But calls for more significant reform are growing, with good reason. While America’s aid programme is the...Continue reading

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Dear Apple: Thanks for the Memory

Little noticed amid the hype around the newest iPhones is the boon that the new wave of fancy phones means for the makers of memory chips inside.

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A $15 Billion Merger at Risk From Shareholders Who Don't Vote

The merger of chemical giants Huntsman and Clariant could trip up on weak turnout in a Swiss shareholder vote.

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Maybe Markets Shouldn't Be So Scared of ECB Tapering After All

For markets fretting about a world with less central-bank stimulus, Portugal has given a hint that it might not be that bad after all.

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China's Backdoor Real-Estate Bailout

China’s housing market is clearly in retreat. But that doesn’t mean a collapse is near: The government is propping up the market in a new way.

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A Kurdish referendum on independence risks backfiring

THE vast oil reserves and disputed status of Kirkuk have given it a reputation as a powder-keg. The multi-ethnic province in northern Iraq lies beyond the Kurdish Autonomous Region but is ruled by the Kurds and claimed by the Arabs in Baghdad. To locals, the ambiguity has had its advantages. Kurdish Peshmerga fighters provided security; Iraq’s government footed the bill (which it refused to the undisputed Kurdish enclave further north). For years Kirkuk’s heterogeneous population has largely left Iraq’s identity wars at the city gates and continued their polyglot ways. Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs happily jumbled their different languages in the cafes. Flush with funds and oil wealth, malls and fancy restaurants sprouted along its roads. The province has a Kurdish governor. Peshmerga fighters, who swept in with the Americans in 2003, have the upper hand, but most of the province’s officials are still Arabs.

The tinderbox never really caught fire. But a unilateral...Continue reading

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Donald Trump’s new tweets bolster the case against his travel ban

LESS than a month before the Supreme Court considers the legality of his executive order barring travel from six overwhelmingly Muslim countries, Donald Trump has handed a gift to those challenging the ban. Reacting to a bombing on the London underground on September 15th, Mr Trump first condemned the “loser terrorist” who perpetrated the attack, calling the bomber “sick and demented” and noting that potential miscreants “must be dealt with in a much tougher manner”. Then he brought the issue home: “The travel ban into the United States should be far larger, tougher and more specific—but stupidly, that would not be politically correct!” In dealing with the likes of the Islamic State, he concluded, America “must be proactive & nasty!”

The logic of Mr Trump’s tweets is puzzling: he suggests that political correctness is to blame for the inadequate size, toughness and specificity of his March order, but he, after all, is the president who signed that order, and one of Mr Trump’s campaign pledges was never to...Continue reading

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Hurricane Harvey and the Red Cross

THIS is a busy time for the American Red Cross. In the days after Hurricane Harvey hit Texas and Louisiana one of America’s most popular charities put up tens of thousands of people in shelters and served millions of meals; its disaster workers have also been busy in Florida, helping the victims of Hurricane Irma.

Its prominent role in disaster relief has made the American Red Cross, which was established in 1881 by Clara Barton, an intrepid nurse from Massachusetts, one of the country’s best known charities. It is backed by President Donald Trump, who is reportedly donating $300,000 to the charity’s Harvey work, and by his predecessor, Barack Obama, who suggested on Twitter that Americans make a $10 donation to the organisation. Gail McGovern, who has been the charity’s chief executive for the past nine years, has described it as “a brand to die for”. 

But since it bungled its response to the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010, the Red Cross has been a regular target of criticism from...Continue reading

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