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Saturday December 21, 2024
News Desk.

  • May 20, 2024

    How long can the good times keep rolling in markets?

    Now that US interest rates seem to have stabilised, there are supposedly way too many deals being cooked up for bankers to take a summer break. As...

  • May 20, 2024

    The race for an AI-powered personal assistant

    At Google’s Mountain View headquarters this week, a man clad in a rainbow-hued dressing gown emerged from a giant coffee cup to give a vibrant if...

  • May 13, 2024

    Retirement crisis

    After three decades selling homemade buns on the streets of the Chinese city of Xian, 67-year-old Hu Dexi would have liked to slow down.

  • May 06, 2024

    Upheaval at Tesla

    Even by Elon Musk’s mercurial standards, this has been quite a week. On Sunday, it seemed as though the maverick billionaire boss of Tesla, SpaceX...

  • April 29, 2024

    China’s EV shock

    US and European politicians have raised alarms that their domestic auto industries could be destroyed by a wave of cheap Chinese electric vehicles....

  • April 22, 2024

    The ‘brain waste’ of skilled migrants in Europe

    Livia Umbelino, 32, trained as a social worker in her native Rio de Janeiro, learning the methods, skills and responsibilities of supporting and...

  • April 22, 2024

    The tepid Twenties

    After a spell of soaring prices and steep interest rates, Christine Lagarde this week allowed herself a moment of optimism.

  • April 15, 2024

    The pound is no longer so vulnerable

    Whisper it — sterling may be in for a period of decent appreciation. This may sound like a disputable statement following many years in the...

  • April 15, 2024

    What overcapacity?

    The last day of US Secretary Janet Yellen’s trip to China coincided with the strongest retort yet from Beijing officials over her claims that...

  • April 08, 2024

    Carbon market

    As the world grapples to combat climate change, scientists agree that protecting what remains of the Earth’s vast rainforests is a key priority....

  • March 25, 2024

    Life with interest rates

    In the coming years, Satoaki Kanoh needs to replace almost a dozen ageing machines at his Tokyo-based maker of acrylic panels, a major undertaking...

  • March 25, 2024

    Apple’s antitrust

    The US government’s antitrust lawsuit against Apple draws on the watershed 1998 case that broke Microsoft’s stranglehold on desktop software,...

  • February 26, 2024

    Deeply changed

    In late 1989, no person better symbolised Japan’s postwar rise to economic superpower than Akio Morita, Sony’s co-founder, who stunned the world...

  • February 19, 2024

    Billion dollar graffiti

    When plans for the Oceanwide Plaza development were unveiled in 2015, it was billed as a gleaming symbol of downtown Los Angeles’ renaissance.

  • February 12, 2024

    Is China now an ‘alternative’ investment?

    An engine of world growth for 20 years, the largest consumer of commodities and world's number two economy has somehow slipped into "alternative...

  • February 12, 2024

    How production pressures plunged Boeing into yet another crisis

    In October, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun was asked how fast Boeing could raise output of its best-selling 737 MAX after a spate of quality snags. He was...

  • February 05, 2024

    Uninvestable equities

    Chinese authorities’ promise of “forceful” measures last week was their most vocal attempt yet to halt a stock market sell-off that has wiped...

  • January 22, 2024

    Economic downturn

    The night before China’s civil service exam, Melody Zhang anxiously paced up and down the corridor of her dormitory, rehearsing her answers. Only...

  • January 08, 2024

    AI revolution

    Once every decade or so the computing world finds itself on the cusp of a revolution.

  • January 08, 2024

    Sterling’s dilemma

    Sterling just had its best year against the dollar since 2017, yet a weakening economy and election uncertainty make a repeat performance unlikely.

  • January 01, 2024

    Magnificent Seven

    As a strong year in U.S. stocks comes to a close, fund managers face a potentially consequential choice in 2024: stick with the few massive growth...

  • December 18, 2023

    How energy traders left a country in the cold

    P­akistan, one of the world’s poorest nations, thought it had secured natural gas to fuel its economy. Commodities firms had other ideas.

  • December 11, 2023

    Central banks bluff?

    Like many parents, I used to try disciplining badly-behaved children in the run-up to Christmas by telling them they would receive no presents if...

  • December 11, 2023

    The best way to invest in gold

    There was lots of humming and huffing in the Kirk household this week after gold prices hit a record high last Friday. Not that I can afford even...

  • December 04, 2023

    Economic paradox

    Something weird is happening in America. GDP growth for Q3 was just revised up from an already scorching 4.9 per cent to 5.2 per cent, more...

  • December 04, 2023

    Profit-sharing plan

    What if the government made companies hand a slice of their profits to workers? In Britain and America, the question is about as live as the pigeon...

  • November 27, 2023

    OpenAI and the rift at the heart of Silicon Valley

    In the past year, Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, has become the embodiment of a contradiction at the heart of artificial intelligence....

  • November 27, 2023

    Green finance

    What makes a project “green”? In cases such as wind farms, the answer is obvious. Other definitions can be woolly. A bank might extend climate...

  • November 20, 2023

    Shallow recession

    The euro zone appears to be in the middle of another recession but worries about whether definitive growth figures due early next year will have a...

  • November 13, 2023

    A rollercoaster ride

    There are 358 days until the 2024 US presidential election. And if the political strategist James Carville was right that “it’s the economy,...

  • November 06, 2023

    Cautionary tale

    A milestone move by the European Central Bank toward launching a digital euro within a few years means the time has come for the newest incarnation...

  • October 30, 2023

    Credit crunch

    The great government bond slump of 2023 is reaching the point where bankers and investors are shuffling in their seats and eyeing each other...

  • October 30, 2023

    Graduates’ pay gap

    It doesn’t require a close examination of economic statistics to be aware that US incomes have far outstripped those in Britain in recent years. A...

  • October 23, 2023

    A call for action

    Pakistan has long grappled with the challenge of implementing effective tobacco control measures. Recently, numerous prominent civil society groups...

  • October 02, 2023

    Shadow banks

    Global financial regulators are preparing a clampdown on so-called shadow banking as they confront the unintended consequences of previous waves...

  • September 25, 2023

    Green energy’s tailwinds blow the other way

    The green energy boom is facing new headwinds. Falling costs, cheap capital and supportive politicians helped propel a headlong rush into renewable...

  • September 18, 2023

    A tough call

    Argentina and the International Monetary Fund share a rocky history spanning seven decades - and it looks as if things could get worse.

  • September 11, 2023

    Fragile recovery

    Policymakers in Tokyo believe China’s deepening economic woes could hit Japan’s fragile recovery, especially if Beijing fails to shore up demand...

  • September 11, 2023

    Trade finance and beyond

    The Asian Development Bank's Trade and Supply Chain Finance Program plays a crucial role in Pakistan by addressing economic challenges, such as...

  • September 04, 2023

    The boom is over

    When Venezuela's economy was showing tentative signs of recovery in 2020, Enrique Perrella thought it was time to open a cafe in eastern Caracas...

  • August 28, 2023

    No pain-free solutions

    Erin Yao would like to take street dance classes and travel, activities she could not do during three years of COVID-19 restrictions in China.

  • August 28, 2023

    ‘Higher for longer’

    Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell last week did little to dissuade markets from the “higher for longer” mantra for rates that has driven up...

  • August 21, 2023

    Fed done hiking

    The U.S. Federal Reserve is likely done raising interest rates, according to a strong majority of economists polled by Reuters, and a slight...

  • August 14, 2023

    No decoupling, but West and China drift apart

    China's unexpectedly poor export performance as revealed last week is still largely down to wider economic headwinds. But underlying trade and...

  • August 14, 2023

    Wake-up call for sanguine investors

    The slide in US bank stocks this week appeared to catch traders in the options market by surprise, data shows, raising questions over whether bank...

  • August 07, 2023

    Unknown price tag

    A helping hand from China saw Argentina avert a default with the International Monetary Fund for the second time in 30 days, as the cash-strapped...

  • August 07, 2023

    Food security

    Drought is expected to send global wheat stockpiles for major exporters to the lowest levels in more than a decade, a Reuters analysis shows, a...

  • July 24, 2023

    Inflation-linked debt

    UK water companies are confronting a financial crisis so dire that the government briefly considered a partial nationalization. One cause of the...

  • July 17, 2023

    Ground down

    The cost of serving up a sandwich with a cup of coffee has hit the roof across Australia’s vaunted cafes, squeezing profits and forcing a wave of...

  • July 10, 2023

    ‘Twitter killer’

    The launch of social media app Threads as a competitor to Twitter is a game-changer. Meta, which also owns Facebook and Instagram, launched the new...