Tag: Business and finance

SCRATCHING around for money to pay for free secondary schools, a government minister in Ghana last month floated an idea: raid the Heritage Fund. At least 9% of the country’s annual oil revenues are stashed there for future generations. The minister was rebuffed. But the row highlighted a trade-off: saving for tomorrow’s children makes it harder to help today’s.

Such dilemmas are acute in sub-Saharan Africa. The region has about a dozen sovereign-wealth funds, most of them established in the past decade. They have few models to emulate. A Norwegian approach—build a fund, invest abroad, and spend only the annual returns—works in places that are small, ageing and rich. Most African countries, unfortunately, are none of those things.

The oldest and largest African fund, Botswana’s $5.3bn Pula Fund, was created in 1994 from diamond revenues. Angola and Nigeria, the biggest oil exporters, have both established funds in the past few years; governments from Kenya to Zambia are talking of doing the same. Even Rwanda, with no great commodity riches, is soliciting patriotic donations to build its own (civil servants coughed up $2.5m last…Continue reading

Hope springs eternal

IT WAS one of the worst-hit casualties of the financial crisis 0f 2007-08, but Iceland this week took steps that symbolised its recovery. The last remaining controls on capital outflows were lifted, allowing pension and investment funds to invest their money abroad. And the central bank struck another deal with offshore holders of frozen krona-denominated assets—buying more of them back at a discount.

The country’s crisis experience was a cautionary tale of an over-exuberant financial sector. Three of its banks, with assets worth 14 times GDP, keeled over within a week; the krona fell by 70% on a trade-weighted basis in a year; Iceland was the first rich country since Britain in 1976 to need an IMF rescue.

To stem capital outflows and further falls in the krona, the government in 2008 slapped restrictions on money leaving the country. The measures also froze offshore holdings of krona-denominated assets, which at the time amounted to 40% of GDP. Even the IMF, usually in favour of more orthodox free-market policies, supported the move. The country nonetheless experienced a severe recession,…Continue reading

IT SOUNDS like a scene from “The Big Short”, a film about financial speculation. Light aircraft fly photographers close to America’s oil-storage facilities, using infra-red imaging and photographs to gauge the rise and fall of levels of crude in 2,100 storage tanks, in an attempt to work out whether oil futures are overvalued or not.

In fact, it is less mischievous than that. The intelligence-gatherers work for a company, Genscape, that sells the information to traders everywhere, giving them a few days’ jump before storage surveys are published by the government.

These data are particularly useful at a time when near-record levels of oil inventories in America are weighing on oil prices and frustrating attempts by OPEC, the producers’ cartel, to prop up the market. The high level of inventories is vital to an understanding of why crude prices suddenly plummeted this month, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), a forecaster. West Texas Intermediate is back below $50 a barrel, its level before OPEC in November agreed to cut output (see chart).

Three reasons explain why the tanks are so full….Continue reading

Correction. We made a mistake in last week’s article on green-shipping finance. The oxides of sulphur and nitrogen emitted by shipping are very harmful; but they are not, as we asserted, much worse for global warming than carbon dioxide. Sorry.

“WE CAN’T restore our civilisation with somebody else’s babies.” Steve King, a Republican congressman from Iowa, could hardly have been clearer in his meaning in a tweet this week supporting Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician with anti-immigrant views. Across the rich world, those of a similar mind have been emboldened by a nativist turn in politics. Some do push back: plenty of Americans rallied against Donald Trump’s plans to block refugees and migrants. Yet few rich-world politicians are willing to make the case for immigration that it deserves: it is a good thing and there should be much more of it.

Defenders of immigration often fight on nativist turf, citing data to respond to claims about migrants’ damaging effects on wages or public services. Those data are indeed on migrants’ side. Though some research suggests that native workers with skill levels similar to those of arriving migrants take a hit to their wages because of increased migration, most analyses find that they are not harmed, and that many eventually earn more as competition nudges them to specialise in more demanding occupations. But as a slogan, “The data…Continue reading

HAVE western governments, faced with angry voters, lost the ability to raise taxes? The question is raised by a farcical U-turn by the British government over a budget measure announced a week previously. The government retreated in the face of backbench opposition and the right-wing press. It seems eerily reminiscent of America, where Republicans have an absolute abhorrence of tax-raising measures.

The planned British increase (aligning the tax rates of the employed and self-employed) was perfectly sensible. Unless closed, this gap will erode the tax base over the long run. Most economists agree that differential tax treatments tend to distort behaviour for no long-term gains. But the government had promised at the 2015 election not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT—three taxes that raise around two-thirds of revenues—and this (foolish) promise was used against it.

As the graph shows, British tax revenues have…Continue reading

THIRD time lucky. In each of the past two years, the Federal Reserve has predicted multiple interest-rate rises, only to be thrown off-course by events. On March 15th the central bank raised its benchmark Federal Funds rate for the third time since the financial crisis, to a range of 0.75-1%. This was, if anything, ahead of its forecast, which it reaffirmed, that rates would rise three times in 2017. “Lift-off” is at last an apt metaphor for monetary policy. But as Janet Yellen, the Fed’s chairwoman, picks up speed in terms of policy, she must navigate a cloudy political outlook. The next year will define her legacy.

Ms Yellen took office in February 2014 after dithering by the Obama administration over a choice between her and Larry Summers, a former treasury secretary. Left-wingers preferred Ms Yellen, in part because she seemed more likely to give jobs priority over stable prices. Indeed, Republicans in Congress worried that she would be too soft on inflation. The Economist called her the “first acknowledged dove” to lead the central bank.

Today Ms Yellen looks more hawkish—certainly than Mr Summers, who regularly urges the Fed to…Continue reading

THE licensed-taxi system can be a racket. Many cities suppress the number of permits they hand out, guaranteeing that the system favours drivers, not their poor passengers. For proof that demand can be deliberately kept well short of supply, consider New York City. In 2014, the badges that are required to operate a yellow taxi there were selling for over $1m each. Anyone trying in vain to find a taxi on a rainy morning in Manhattan could easily tell you the market was loaded against the customer.

In much of the world, that model has been disrupted. New firms such as Uber are successful because they are determinedly on the side of the customer. Hailing a car on a ride-sharing app is cheap, convenient and reliable. Which is why taxi drivers hate it.

Big cities across the world, from London to Hong Kong, have witnessed protests by cabbies, often backed by their powerful unions, trying to protect their cosy cartel. Luckily for passengers they have mostly failed. Since Uber has made inroads in cities like New York, the premium on taxi badges has plummeted (as has…Continue reading

THESE are high times for America’s marijuana-industrial complex. More than half the country’s states have legalised medical cannabis, often rather loosely defined. Eight have voted to legalise the drug for recreational purposes. The industry was worth about $6bn last year, a figure that is likely to rise sharply in 2018 when recreational sales begin in California.

Yet in Washington, DC, the mellow mood has been harshed. Donald Trump may have said in 1990 that “You have to legalise drugs to win that war.” But after entering politics he became more conservative. While campaigning for the presidency he called Colorado’s legal cannabis market a “real problem”. Last month his press secretary, Sean Spicer, said he expected to see “greater enforcement” of the laws that still ban cannabis at the federal level.

That worries pot peddlers. The fact that they are in breach of federal law means that in theory their profits are criminal proceeds, subject to forfeiture. In 2013 the deputy attorney-general of the day, James Cole, published a memo reassuring states that had legalised cannabis that federal agents would not interfere…Continue reading

THESE are high times for America’s marijuana industrial complex. More than half the country’s states have legalised medical cannabis, often rather loosely defined. Eight have voted to legalise the drug for recreational purposes. The industry was worth about $6bn last year, a figure that is likely to rise sharply in 2018 when recreational sales begin in California.

Yet in Washington, DC, the mellow mood has soured. Donald Trump said in 1990 that “You have to legalise drugs to win that war”, but in politics he became more conservative. Campaigning for the presidency he called Colorado’s legal cannabis market a “real problem”. His press secretary, Sean Spicer, recently said he expected to see “greater enforcement” of the laws that still ban cannabis at the federal level.

That worries pot-pedlars. The fact that they are in breach of federal law means that in theory their profits are criminal proceeds, subject to forfeiture. In 2013 the deputy attorney-general of the day, James Cole, published a memo reassuring states that had legalised cannabis that federal agents would not interfere unless the states allowed the industry…Continue reading