This U.S. earnings season is on track to be the worst since 2009 as profits from oil & gas and commodity-related companies plummet. So far, about three-quarters of the S&P 500 have reported results, with profits down 3.1 percent on...
When the Honduran police came to evict her in 2009 Mariana Catalina Izaguirre had lived in her lowly house for three decades. Unlike many of her neighbours in Tegucigalpa, the country’s capital, she even had an official title to the...
As expected, the European Central Bank (ECB) did not act to further ease its already extraordinarily loose monetary stance when its governing council met today in Valletta, the capital of Malta, the 19-strong currency club’s smallest member. But the ECB...
China’s moves to ease mortgage restrictions and cut interest rates are bearing fruit in the nation’s smaller cities, where home prices have staged a recovery. Now comes the bigger challenge: Clearing a supply glut to spur investment by developers. Lower...
Between June 2014 and February 2015 the price Americans paid for petrol fell by a third. Economists predicted this would boost growth by causing consumers, newly flush with cash, to spend more on other goods and services. Instead, the economy...
Bain Capital is liquidating its Absolute Return Capital hedge fund after more than three years of losses, citing a “challenging” environment for macro trading. The fund, run by Jonathan Goodman and Jeff Woolbert, had about $2.2 billion in assets as of...
Ben Bernanke's book is officially out and available. The Economist's full review will be published later this week (it's a big book). But debate about the book's arguments is already unfolding, and I can't resist joining in. Two weeks ago,...
Will the Federal Reserve raise interest rates by the end of the year? You get a very different answer depending on the source. Eighty-four percent of economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect an initial interest-rate increase in December, according to a...
And now… today’s Penning for your thoughts… Good day, and a marvelous Monday to you! Regarding the global economy, us old timers know better than the central planners of each country. There’s been a structural shift in the global economy, and the...
Mobile homes will not be easily moved out of California's hottest real-estate markets. The free market wouldn't plop down a trailer park just a few miles from downtown San Jose. At least not today, in a sharply spiking housing market that has made the metropolitan area...
School costs – uniforms, notebooks, gym clothes – are soaring in recession-hit Russia, and pupils and parents are griping over the unwelcome changes in their classrooms. The first day of school is always a really big deal in Russia. Parents...
Nary a week has gone by this year without news of China’s extraordinary injections of cash into its own economy. The central bank has pumped hundreds of billions of yuan into the financial system through an admixture of short-term, open-market...
The U.S. economy added 173,000 jobs in August, lower than expected, in a report that gave fuel to both sides of the rate-hike debate, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. In addition to the new jobs, the unemployment rate...
Stockmarket turmoil in China need not spell economic doom. But it does raise questions far beyond the country’s shores. The ability to make stockmarkets boomerang is usually reserved for central bankers. But on August 24th, hours into a global market...
Okay, so it’s not the best way to end the summer. August is usually a dull month on Wall Street, but this year it’s an all-hands event as stocks plunge and investors brace for more. So far, the S&P 500...
