Something’s gotta give

Like a truck rolling downhill, the rally in risky assets is proving hard to stop. Good economic news causes share prices to rise because it indicates the recovery is robust; bad economic....

A yuan-sided argument

President Barack Obama, on his first visit to China this week, urged the government to allow its currency to rise. President Hu Jintao politely chose to ignore him.

Now, worry about the upturn

Just when you thought an upswing was around the corner it seems that smaller firms have yet to face the worst.

Ossie’s casino

“I’D LIKE to see us put more risk on the table and actually trade a bit harder.” In these times, such words from any banker might be enough to cause a little concern.

The original draft, launched without proper consultation, contained some sensible rules on registration but threw in a bunch of protectionist proposals that would exclude American funds from marketing in the EU.

Green with envy

Statements by Barack Obama on his travels through Asia have lowered expectations that December’s global summit on climate change in Copenhagen will lead to binding cuts in carbon emissions.

Dealing with America’s fiscal hole

For years America’s fiscal problems had a surreal quality. No one disputed that an ageing population and health-care inflation could bust the budget, but that prospect was decades away and procrastination seemed painless. No longer.

Secret sauce

Productivity growth is perhaps the single most important gauge of an economy’s health. Nothing matters more for long-term living standards than improvements in the efficiency with which an economy combines capital and labour.

The great escape

Barclays is the escapologist of British banking. Its quarterly results on November 10 widened the gap still more on its British rivals, RBS and Lloyds Banking Group.

The cult of the faceless boss

The European Union is not the only institution that prefers faceless technocrats to people with star power.

Land of the setting sun

The world’s second-largest economy had surpassed America in gross national product per person according to some measures, and looked on course to overtake it.

Paper promises, golden hordes

Two hundred metric tonnes of gold would occupy a cube of a little more than two metres on a side; it would fit into a small bedroom. But India’s purchase of that volume of gold from the IMF last month has had an outsize impact on the markets, helping push the price well above $1,100 a troy ounce.

Divided and overruled?

Accounting has become political. Fair-value rules, which require assets to be marked to market prices, are blamed by some for exaggerating banks’ losses. Although it will take years to establish whether banks’ accounts have painted too bleak a picture, the rows are already in full swing.

Dangerous froth

The post-crisis challenge for central bankers has long seemed easy to describe. They must steer between the shoals of short-term deflation and the longer-term risk of accelerating consumer prices.

Uniting in the sky

Like two drowning men Iberia and British Airways have long eyed each other as potential means of mutual buoyancy. The rate at which the airlines have been sinking at last forced.....

The bust that worked

CIT might just be that rarest of things: a financial-services firm that emerges from bankruptcy largely intact. The small-business lender filed for Chapter 11 protection on November 1st with the backing of most bondholders in a so-called “prepackaged” filing.

Down in the dumps

Even at the height of the ex-communist countries’ boom in 2006, almost half their citizens felt they lived worse than in 1989. Yet that glum verdict on 17 years of liberalisation, privatisation and stabilisation was tempered by another finding.

Exit, followed by a bear

When the fire is raging, it is no time to worry about water damage. Central banks and governments have flooded the system with monetary and fiscal stimulus, desperate to prevent a repeat of the depression.

Has Europe got the answer?

America has some of the most flexible labour markets in the developed world, while continental Europe, in the popular imagination, is a sclerotic place with powerful unions, rigid labour markets and high entrenched joblessness.

Leaders and laggards

Central banks in the rich world cut interest rates in lockstep in 2008 as the world economy spiralled. Their paths back to normal interest rates will be more disparate. Some are already en route.

The muscles from Brussels

Neelie Kroes has, according to one analyst in London, “cut through all the bullshit”. Europe’s competition commissioner has trod where national regulators dare not, by imposing harsh penalties on the banks that received the biggest bail-outs in Europe.

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