Economía

La compañía petrolera reduce su deuda hasta los 9.988 millones

EVERYONE wants to spot the moment when markets change trend. By riding one of the great bull markets—the rally in equities from 1982 onwards, for example—or avoiding a crippling bear market like that of 2007-08, fortunes can be made, or saved. The key lies in spotting the turning-point.

Commentators see several potential turning-points in today’s markets. The first is in government bonds. The ten-year American Treasury bond yield bottomed at 1.37% on July 7th and has since risen to 1.80%. The ten-year German bond yield reached a low of -0.18% on around the same date and has since edged back into positive territory, at 0.13%. British bond yields of the same maturity have shown an even sharper shift, rising from 0.61% to 1.17% thanks to worries about the economic impact of Brexit.

These yields are still very low by historical standards. But there has been a revival of talk that the long downward march of bond yields (and upward march of bond prices) dating back to 1982 may at last have reached an end.

A second turning-point may already have occurred, earlier in the year. Risky assets seem to have recovered in unison,…Continue reading

DURING a recent ride with Uber, this passenger received a surprising word of thanks for talking softly. To complete the job, the driver needed to follow the route provided by Uber, read out turn-by-turn by his phone; noise from the back seat drowned out the critical instructions. The control Uber exercises over its drivers, whom it calls “independent contractors”, is increasingly a point of dispute. Two were recently judged to be entitled to some employment benefits—such as a minimum wage and holiday pay—by a tribunal in London sceptical of the degree of independence they actually enjoy. In fact, the drivers sit within a grey area in employment law; rules regarding firms’ obligations to their workers will need to adjust in response.

More than the profitability of Uber is at stake. According to a recent report by the McKinsey Global Institute, 162m people in America and Europe, or more than 20% of the working-age population, work outside normal employment. Nearly half rely on such work for their primary income. Sensible changes to work rules to take account of the rise in gig work could make life better for millions of workers; bad ones could mean…Continue reading

ON THE outskirts of this west Texan city, on top of one of America’s most prolific oilfields, sit 230 square miles (600 square km) of scrubland owned by one family for more than a century. David Fasken, a Canadian lawyer, paid about $1.50 an acre ($3.70 a hectare) back in 1913, hoping to make a fortune out of cattle. But the land lacked sufficient groundwater. Before he died some years later, he swore it was the worst deal he had ever done. 

Today the farm, still owned by a few Fasken heirs, is valued in the billions. Oil-rich land in the Permian Basin, a 250m-year-old sea of oil lying up to 12,000 feet (3.7km) underground, has changed hands this year for an average of more than $25,000 an acre. On October 31st Occidental Petroleum (Oxy), a large American oil company, said it had paid $2bn in cash for 59,000 acres in the Permian. Amid a flurry of such deals, Bernstein, a research firm, predicts prices will go as high as $100,000 an acre. The nicknames range from “Saudi America” to “Texarabia”.

But Tommy Taylor, head of oil at Fasken Oil and Ranch, smells a rat. He has worked on the Permian, where oil was first struck in the…Continue reading

Un de cal y otra de arena. El fin de la temporada de verano se ha dejado sentir en el mercado laboral. El paro subió en octubre en 44.685 personas. Por el contrario, el inicio del curso escolar impulsó el empleo. La afiliación a la Seguridad Social creció en 101.335 afiliados en el mejor mes de octubre desde 2001. Leer

El instituto público contó con 101.335 cotizantes con empleo más el mes pasado

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El PP se ha comprometido a sufragar un paquete de medidas sociales en empleo, sanidad, educación y dependencia, capitaneadas por un complemento salarial garantizado de 1.300 millones. Leer