Finanzas

SEGREGATION on airlines has a long history. Sometimes it is understandable. Carriers’ business models depend on them drawing a curtain between those of us stuffed into economy-class seats and our betters who have paid for lie-flat beds. Other times it has been immoral. While racial segregation on American planes was never legal, in some airports during the first half of the 20th century it was the norm to insist that blacks did not mix with whites in the terminals. 

That particular outrage has been consigned to the past. But new forms of segregation are replacing it. This time, though, they are less to do with enshrining differences and more for the benefit of those being segregated. Or so the argument goes.

On 11th January, Ashwani Lohani, the boss of Air India, told The Hindu newspaper that the carrier plans to reserve six seats in the front rows of its aeroplanes for women passengers who are travelling alone. As the paper explains:

The move assumes significance, as it comes soon after an on-board…Continue reading

IF THERE is a consensus right now in American politics, it must be that infrastructure spending is a good thing. It employs workers, improves economic efficiency and, at the moment, can be financed at rock-bottom bond yields. So why don’t governments get on with it?

The problem is multi-faceted. Although people tend to be enthusiastic about infrastructure in general, they are more critical of specific projects. If they are in the country, then they ruin the currency; if they are in the town, then they ruin neighbourhoods or impinge on private-property rights. When it comes to public infrastructure projects, the benefits are long term but the costs are short term. The politician that authorises the project is rarely the same one that opens it. So an elected leader gets all the flak from those who oppose this white elephant/blot on the landscape but none of the praise for the reduced traffic jams or cheaper power that ensue. Occasionally a leader might be tempted into authorising a big scheme (like Britain’s high-speed rail) but, as the Continue reading

El desfase pivota en un error de cálculo del Ejecutivo al tomar como punto de partida los presupuestos del 2015 y en su optimismo al calcular la lucha contra el fraude fiscal

El Ejecutivo luso tiene que decidir si privatiza a pérdidas la entidad heredera del Espírito Santo

El Banco de España quiere saber su efecto antes de la presentación de resultados

Aplicaciones, páginas web y unos consejos para estar siempre al tanto de los chollos online

FOR each of the past three years, Fiat Chrysler Automobile’s (FCA) 3 litre V6 turbodiesel has made it to a list of the industry’s top ten engines compiled by Ward’s, a distinguished American car-industry trade publication. Its place on the shortlist for 2017 must now be in doubt. On January 12th America’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) accused FCA (whose chairman, John Elkann, sits on the board of The Economist’s parent company) of using illegal software in conjunction with the engines. This, it says, allowed 104,000 vehicles—mostly Dodge pickups and some Jeeps, fitted with the 3 litre V6 turbodiesel—to exceed legal limits of toxic emissions.

The news sent the firm’s shares plummeting by 17%, before recovering somewhat. Nervous investors feared a repeat of the huge penalty imposed on Germany’s Volkswagen (VW) for cheating American emissions laws. A day earlier VW had agreed to pay a criminal fine of $4.3bn for selling around 500,000 cars fitted with so-called “defeat devices” that are designed to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide (NOx) under test conditions. With the latest sum included, its final bill…Continue reading

El presidente de Banco Sabadell ve oportunismo en las asociaciones que piden devolver el dinero

ON JANUARY 6th, a gunman ran amok at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, killing five people. Earlier this week, Esteban Ruiz Santiago, a 26-year-old Iraq war veteran, appeared in court charged in relation to the horrific crime. If convicted, the judge told him, he could face the death penalty.

Mr Santiago allegedly pulled a gun out of his luggage in the baggage reclaim area. Although he appears to have a history of questionable mental behaviour, including entering an FBI building with a magazine of ammunition, he had probably checked his weapon into the hold of his flight legally. According to Transport Security Administration (TSA) rules, “You may transport unloaded firearms in a locked hard-sided container as checked baggage only. Declare the firearm and/or ammunition to the airline when checking your bag at the ticket counter. The container must completely secure the firearm from being accessed.”

Yet despite such an easy-going attitude to allowing passengers legitimately to fly with guns, an increasing number try to do so illegally, by sneaking firearms…Continue reading

JPMorgan Chase y Bank of America confían en una aceleración de los tipos de interés para elevar los ingresos