Tag: Approved
The outlook for US government debt
THE bond market used to be the prime exhibit for those predicting low long-term economic growth. In the summer of 2016 the ten-year Treasury yield briefly dipped below 1.5%, as expectations for growth and inflation sagged. Things have changed. Earlier this year the ten-year yield briefly went higher than 2.9%. Even after recent share-price gyrations, it remains around 2.8%, well up since the start of 2018. The rebounding interest rate partly reflects higher confidence in global growth. Inevitably, a new set of pessimists now voice a fresh worry: that bond yields might go on rising for less welcome reasons.
They point to three threats. The first is monetary policy. The Federal Reserve has raised short-term interest rates by 1.5 percentage points since December 2015. At their March meeting, rate-setters slightly upgraded forecasts of how far rates should eventually rise. Last October the Fed began shrinking its $4.5trn portfolio of assets, mostly government debt, amassed since the start of…Continue reading
The proxy-voting season kicks off on Wall Street
JING ZHAO’S main occupation is translating Latin classics into Chinese. He runs a small think-tank, the US-Japan-China Comparative Policy Research Institute. He lives off rents from property bought cheaply after the financial crisis. But this quiet, intellectual California resident has a surprising sideline: submitting proposals to be voted on by the shareholders of companies in which he owns small stakes. That makes him part of a movement that is forcing management at some of the world’s biggest firms to consider not just profitability but broad shifts in social attitudes.
The annual meetings of America’s listed companies, usually held between February and June, have come to constitute “proxy season”—so-called because shareholders need not cast their votes in person. This year proposals from Mr Zhao will be on the ballot at four giant firms. He wants Apple to create a human-rights committee, citing its decision last year to bow to Chinese censorship by removing hundreds of…Continue reading
Economists understand little about the causes of growth
OVER the past decade economists have been intensely scrutinised for their intellectual failings in the run-up to the 2007-08 financial crisis. Yet had the recession that followed been more severe—wiping a quarter off the GDP of every advanced economy, say—those countries would still have ended up four times as rich per person, in purchasing-power terms, as developing countries are now, and more than ten times as rich as sub-Saharan ones. Robert Lucas, a Nobel prizewinning economist, once wrote that after you have started to think about the gap between poor and rich countries it is hard to think about anything else. Economists understand even less about economic growth than about business cycles. But the profession has done too little to address this failure or to understand its implications.
Economists have precious few hard facts about growth. They know that sustained growth in GDP per person only started in the 18th century. They know that countries can become rich only by growing steadily over…Continue reading
A trade war between America and China takes shape
TALK of tariffs is in danger of developing into cries of trade war. On April 3rd America published a list of some 1,300 Chinese products it proposes to hit with tariffs of 25%. Just a day later China produced its own list, covering 106 categories. “As the Chinese saying goes, it is only polite to reciprocate,” said the Chinese embassy in Washington, DC.
According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a think-tank, America’s list covers Chinese products worth $46bn in 2017 (9% of that year’s total goods exports to America; see graphic). China’s covers American goods worth around $50bn in 2017 (38% of exports). The sums were enough to move markets on April 4th, though the S&P 500 index soon made up lost ground.
Insurance and the gig economy
THE rise of the gig economy means not only workers, but those who insure them, are having to adapt. Take third-party liability insurance—the sort that would pay out if, for instance, a courier hit and injured a pedestrian. An employee driving a company van would be covered by a standard commercial-insurance policy. But “gig” couriers, working when they wish and using their own cars, must often insure themselves. Even if they have personal cover, it will not usually pay out for accidents that happen while they are driving for work.
Among the firms seeking to fill this gap is Zego, which sprang up to serve scooter couriers such as those working for Deliveroo, a food-delivery service. Deliveroo and its rivals require proof of insurance from couriers, but had no easy way to check it was valid. Couriers, meanwhile, were often loth to pay stiff premiums. Harry Franks, formerly of Deliveroo and co-founder in 2016 of Zego, spotted an opportunity and convinced insurers that a different model could be…Continue reading
TSMC is about to become the world’s most advanced chipmaker
MORRIS CHANG is preparing for retirement. After 30 years in the role, the founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the island’s largest firm, will step down as chairman in June. He will hand the reins over to the current co-CEOs, C.C. Wei and Mark Liu, the former becoming sole CEO and the latter chairman. Later that month the company will ship new semiconductors manufactured with its latest technology. For the first time the world’s most powerful chips will be made by TSMC, not by Intel, its American rival.
Intel and TSMC are different sorts of company. Intel is an integrated device manufacturer (IDM). It both designs and manufactures chips. TSMC is a “foundry”, making chips for designers without factories, or “fabs”, which cost a fortune. TSMC’s latest fab will cost $20bn. The Taiwanese company pioneered this model and is its dominant exponent. In 2017 it had 56% of the foundry market, according to Trendforce.
Intel led the pack in squeezing…Continue reading
The choice of a boss for the New York Fed ends in a familiar way
THE president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is perhaps the second most important person in America’s financial hierarchy, behind only the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Unlike the presidents of the other regional Reserve Banks, he sits permanently on the committee in Washington, DC that sets interest rates. The New York Fed supervises Wall Street and, during financial crises, often gathers bankers to hash out a fix or to impose one on them. On April 3rd it was announced that John Williams would be next in line to take charge of the institution, replacing William Dudley.
Mr Williams has led the San Francisco Fed since 2011, when his predecessor in that job, Janet Yellen, moved to Washington. He is best known for his academic contributions to monetary policy. In particular, his estimates of the “neutral rate” of interest, at which money is neither tight nor loose, are regularly cited. In recent years he has appeared moderately…Continue reading
Chinese carriers are the new disrupters in air travel
ANYONE who doubts the ambitions of China’s airlines need only look over the plans for Daxing International Airport, which will serve Beijing after it opens in late 2019. It will be the world’s biggest airport by far, with eight runways and room for 100m passengers a year. The new facilities are needed to serve a fast-growing appetite for air travel. The three Chinese carriers that will dominate the passenger traffic passing through Daxing’s cavernous halls are all in rapid ascent. And that has rivals everywhere complaining about the sorts of subsidies that have fuelled airlines since the dawn of commercial aviation.
China’s airlines are adding passengers at a rate not seen since Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways started to attract customers to their Gulf hubs, handily placed between Europe and Asia, with a winning combination of cheap fares and superior service. Between 2010 and 2017 passenger numbers on China’s three biggest…Continue reading
Germany’s biggest lender is in the doldrums
JOHN CRYAN has spent almost three years on the thankless task of revitalising Germany’s biggest bank. Deutsche Bank’s shares fetch around €11 ($13.50) each. That is less than half their price when he became joint chief executive in July 2015 (he became sole boss 11 months later) and an eighth of the peak in Deutsche’s pre-crisis pomp (see chart). Paul Achleitner, the chairman of Deutsche’s supervisory board—perhaps sharing investors’ impatience, perhaps to shore up his own position—has reportedly sounded out possible replacements for Mr Cryan.
The two men are also said to…Continue reading
Online retailers go offline in China
THE season for the best xiaolongxia (“little dragon shrimp”) is just beginning, and so on a recent evening four young friends tucked into a pile of steaming-hot crayfish. But rather than sitting in a restaurant they were at a table surrounded by supermarket aisles stocked with nappies, baby formula and cooking oil. Above them, groceries and made-to-order meals, gathered by store attendants from shelves and nearby cooking stations, were wafted on aerial conveyor belts into a storeroom. There they were packaged and whisked to Shanghai homes within a 3km radius, at any hour and in under 30 minutes.
“Eat-as-you-shop” is one innovation of Hema Xiansheng, a chain of fancy supermarkets. And these shops are themselves the showiest elements of a bid by Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce emporium that handles more transactions than Amazon and eBay combined, to master “online-to-offline”, or O2O, retailing, in which customers use digital channels to buy from physical businesses….Continue reading