Cleaning up after natural disasters has become a lucrative business, but raises questions for victims and governments alike.
Source: BLOOMBERG NEWS
Founded by Michael Bloomberg in 1990, Bloomberg News is an international news agency based in New York. Coverage is focused but not limited to business and economic news.
The origins of this particularly powerful Caribbean storm can be traced back to an El Nino no-show.
From zoning laws and insurance polices to the realities of climate change, there are ways to prevent such widespread suffering. But it requires political will.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Donald Trump’s presidency has produced a proliferation of Eeyores. It’s not their (our) fault. However dismal one’s view of current American politics, Trump is sure to expose it, with a tweet or the lack of one, as a naive and rosy fantasy. Each day, we adjust our sights down. Each day, the president forces our gaze lower. Some conservatives might take comfort in the prospect — wish, really — of a President Mike Pence assuming office before the current occupant’s term is up. The Indiana Republican is as dull and serviceable a politician as Trump is bizarre […]
DETROIT — Outside Detroit, plans have been in the works for two years to transform the outdated Lakeside Mall into an open-air center with green space and a waterway. With the property in foreclosure and its ownership in limbo, the blueprints will have to be flexible. The mall’s troubles have spiraled since landlord GGP Inc. stopped paying the mortgage last year and then failed to find a buyer for the property amid turmoil in the retail industry. The center’s value, already less than the $135 million loan, was slashed another $25 million in February. Officials for the city of Sterling […]
NEW YORK — For six months now, almost all the news about Uber has been bad. Even before then, the ride-hailing company’s combative executive team displayed a remarkable facility for generating negative headlines, but since former Uber engineer Susan Fowler went public in February about seemingly systemic sexual-harassment problems at the company, it’s just been one disaster after the other. Ugly lawsuit over allegedly stealing autonomous-car secrets from Google parent Alphabet? Check! Revelations of a concerted effort to evade regulators around the world? Check! Embarrassing video of co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick rudely berating a diver? Check! Board […]
Admitting newcomers based on their skills is smart; cutting their numbers in half is a mistake.
PALO ALTO — While his high-school classmates were blowing their money on Chipotle burritos and concert tickets, Truman Hale was saving up for a Tesla. In March of last year, after years of penny pinching, he plunked down a $1,000 deposit on a Model 3. Now a 21-year-old student at Arizona State University, he’s eager for more information about what will be his first car, which he hopes will be delivered before graduating in December 2018. “I want to only own electric cars,” he said. “I’m riding a bike because I’m saving for this car.” “The lack of information received […]
The declaration that he’d work with the Russian president on a joint cyber security unit shows that the man in the White House has a basic problem of understanding policy. And the consequences are real.
The latest big news out of the Middle East is that Saudi Arabian King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has ousted the crown prince and installed his 31-year-old son, Mohammed bin Salman, in that position. While the world waits to see more of the reaction from Saudis and others in the region, a few quick thoughts come to my mind. First, the news feels stunning because of its significance; if MbS (as the new crown prince is known) becomes king, he will be the first monarch who is not a son of King Abdulaziz al Saud, the founder of Saudi […]
You don’t need a brain like Jeff Bezos to figure out why he began selling books online and not cars. Books are a cheap and easily-shipped commodity product. By contrast, people rarely buy a car without driving it first, while vehicles are bulky and customization options abound. There’s more: new cars are typically bought on credit. Manufacturers and dealers tend to have tight-knit relationships, and in the U.S. there are pesky laws protecting dealers (as Tesla has discovered). U.K. CAR MARKET 90 billion pounds Still, besides a few exceptions — bullets and cigarettes — Amazon.com Inc is getting closer to […]
Forget the Strait of Hormuz. The real place to watch the simmering diplomatic battle between Saudi Arabia and Qatar is 5,500 kilometers to the southeast, in the Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia. That’s because the petroleum market’s center of gravity, along with that of the global economy, is in Asia these days. As recently as the 2003 Iraq War, the U.S. and Europe accounted for more than half of the world’s oil imports. The share has now fallen to barely more than one-third, as imports by the north Atlantic countries have stood still while those by China, India, […]
WASHINGTON — In 1965, not long after his assertion that adopting Medicare would mark the death of freedom, Ronald Reagan, that great sunny-side optimist of the American right, explained the apocalyptic, anti-democratic impulse that animated the far right of his day, and which now permeates the Republican Party. “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority … always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the treasury with the result that democracy […]
-Analysis- BERLIN — When they want Donald Trump to grasp a topic, his advisers have learned to keep things simple. Visual aids help. Unfortunately, global economic imbalances — the massive trade deficits of the U.S. and U.K. and surpluses of Germany and China — are complicated and intractable. No matter, Trump has found a simplistic way to frame the problem: Americans buy lots of German cars, whereas mean Germans don’t buy many from the U.S. Ergo, the overall U.S. trade deficit with Germany was about $65 billion last year. And deficits are bad. Germany’s auto industry makes an odd target […]
SEATTLE — Strolling through the bustling construction zone of Amazon’s urban campus in Seattle, you instantly recognize the charm offensive the company has aimed at its hometown. “Banistas’ at two outdoor stands offer bananas to employees and passers-by — a visual cue to Amazon’s smiley logo. Most American cities would do back flips to have a jobs juggernaut like Amazon.com Inc. in their midst. After all, the company will soon fill more than 10 million square feet of office space in a place where it now employs more than 30,000 people. But Seattle is not like other places. Locals resent […]
President Trump’s hard line on immigration is spurring a surge of high-tech investment, as farmers scramble for new ways of coping with labor shortages and slumping profits.
-OpEd- LONDON — Who can blame UK Prime Minister Theresa May for calling an election now, as her own Conservative party mandarins have been urging? Her party enjoys a 21-percentage-point lead in the polls. The opposition Labour Party is weak and divided, and the economy has yet to register the expected wobbles in the wake of last year’s vote to leave the European Union. What better time to crush the opposition and beef up the Conservatives’ 17-seat majority? Yet her decision is as strategically flawed as it is tactically clever. First, she risks losing credibility. Having promised not to get […]
NEW YORK — If you’re a middle-class American baby boomer or Gen Xer, you might have spent much of the past decade wondering what went wrong. If you’re a boomer, there’s a good chance you’re still working well after you thought you’d retire. And if you’re part of Generation X, you’re probably less wealthy than your parents were at the same age. Meanwhile, all across the U.S., pension funds are underfunded and will almost certainly have to default on some of their obligations to retirees. It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, middle-class […]
As British Prime Minister Theresa May starts the clock on Britain’s departure from the European Union, there’s no real question that the divorce is going to hurt both parties — and Britain, to be sure, much more than the EU. But this isn’t to say there’s no upside. The right kind of deal will recognize these opportunities and try to make the most of them. This whole misadventure began with historic errors of judgment — former Prime Minister David Cameron’s decision to call a referendum on U.K. membership, and Europe’s decision to deny him significant concessions in the talks that […]
Apple CEO Tim Cook is betting on AR, which he sees as potentially as groundbreaking as the smartphone.
Talent is distributed around the globe, opportunity is not. Visit to a finance-sponsored ‘datathon’ to find the next generation of quantative wizards.
President Donald Trump’s address to Congress marked a change in tone, but his ambitious agenda will bring conflict with lawmakers down the road.
Beyond his media attacks and over-the-top reality TV performances, Donald Trump’s lack of command of the issues is what should worry us.
-Analysis- NEW YORK — Investors are ignoring Donald Trump’s trade rhetoric at their own peril. That’s the warning coming from a rising cohort of erstwhile Trump bulls who’ve gone weak in the knees as the president turns his sights on allies from Mexico to Japan and Australia. It isn’t enough, they say, that the post-election rally that added more than $3.5 trillion to global equities and sent high-yield debt to the best start to a year since 2012 has stalled. According to them, the administration’s pledges to protect U.S. industry and redefine currency relationships could ignite a trade war with […]
If Washington cracks down on Chinese imports, Beijing is sure to respond in kind. Companies that would suffer include makers of everything from sneakers to semi-conductors.
The death of Cuba’s Fidel Castro offers an early glimpse at how U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will need to balance his pro-growth economic plans and allegiance to business with the hard-line campaign pledges that helped him win the election. Trump has promised to reverse the improved U.S. relations with Cuba forged by President Barack Obama over the past two years unless the Caribbean nation met his demands for more political and religious freedoms. Reince Priebus, Trump’s incoming chief of staff, reiterated that message on Sunday in an interview on Fox News. Priebus said the U.S. needed “a better deal” from […]
Neither Thanksgiving nor the Friday after is a day off for British workers-shoppers. But there are even more reasons that the imported retail ritual is pointless.
HONG KONG — Just when China’s economy seemed to be stabilizing, Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president poses significant new risks. Not just for Chinese growth, but the entire Asia region. That’s because the president-elect campaigned on a policy platform with protectionism at its center. Trump wants to slap punitive tariffs on Chinese goods and label the world’s No. 2 economy a currency manipulator. Such a move would hurt Chinese exports. But it could also trigger a trade war if Beijing retaliates, catching other Asian economies in the crossfire. Other worries: A planned major regional trade pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, […]
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump will face wide-ranging questions about his ethics and integrity from the moment he enters the White House in January. The president-elect says he’ll turn over his vast financial holdings to his kids. But many doubt a blind trust will insulate him completely, potentially exposing him to conflicts of interest or the appearance of such conflicts on a range of domestic and foreign issues as no president before. During the campaign, Trump branded his opponents with nicknames such as “Lyin Ted” and “Crooked Hillary.” Yet more than Ted Cruz or Hillary Clinton, he lied and shrewdly assumed […]
WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are arming up for a possible post-Election Day battle. Clinton is assembling a voter protection program that has drawn thousands of lawyers agreeing to lend their time and expertise in battleground states, though the campaign isn’t saying exactly how many or where. It is readying election observers in Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada and Arizona to assess any concerns — including the potential for voter intimidation — and to verify normal procedures. The Republican National Lawyers Association, which trains attorneys in battleground states and in local jurisdictions where races […]
LONDON — In most of the developed world, central banks are free to set monetary policy without the interference of those who depend on voters for their employment. That independence, though, is “not set in stone,” as former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan noted in his September 2007 memoirs. And there are worrying signs that, against the current backdrop of record-low interest rates, politicians are tempted to start meddling. The latest attack on independence comes from a very unlikely source. In an article for the Telegraph newspaper published on Tuesday, former U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague wrote that “central bankers […]
Donald Trump has few supporters in liberal Silicon Valley: Even Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder and Facebook board member, who spoke for Trump at the Republican National Convention, hasn’t given a cent to the campaign. Yet the tech world doesn’t unanimously favor Democrats. Consider, for example, the financial support that Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has given to a pro-Trump trolling campaign. Luckey, 24, sold his virtual reality startup to Facebook for $2 billion after Oculus became a crowdfunding star. He has confirmed to the Daily Beast that he’s donated money to a group called Nimble America to produce memes and […]
Now that two of the world’s five biggest economies – Germany and Britain – are headed by women, and the biggest one of all, the U.S., has a woman front-runner in its presidential election, the glass ceiling in politics can probably be declared broken, and it’s time to consider what kind of change this brings to the world. The overall statistics of female leadership do not look particularly encouraging. There are fewer women heads of government today than there were last year. Not even 5% of government leaders are women. Yet they are winning where it matters: If there were […]
— You hate them on your phone and dread them on your computer — now, those pesky software updates are coming to your car. Carmakers led by Tesla are pushing over-the-air Wi-Fi and 3G or 4G wireless downloads to add functions such as self-parking and to upgrade performances of their vehicles. It’s prompting suppliers like NXP Semiconductors, Ericsson and Gemalto to celebrate as car builders fight to keep hackers out. “As soon as you connect anything to the Internet, there’s a hacking risk,” said Jonathan Olsson, a security expert at Ericsson, which sells wireless networks to clients from mobile carriers […]
PASADENA — The drone intruder was roaming around the Rose Bowl Stadium as 94,000 fans cheered, oblivious to the threat. But scientists testing a new security device at the game knew: they detected its radio signals and seized control of the gatecrasher. This was only a simulation, but if the unmanned drone had been a security risk they could have forced it down — even though the airwaves were choked by thousands of smartphones and Wi-Fi hotspots. “It’s like being at a rock concert and trying to listen to someone at the other end of the stadium,” said Randy Villahermosa, […]
NEW YORK — James Knight recently made an unorthodox career move for a 27-year-old coder: quitting a well-paid job writing software for Google to go freelance. No more catered lunches, gold-plated benefits or million-dollar views from the search giant’s Manhattan office. Knight is willing to sacrifice those perks because, he says, as an independent he’s pulling down about twice as much as he did at Google — and with more freedom. In March, Knight and his wife plan to hopscotch across Europe while writing code for a dating app and a self-portrait app, among others. “I’d rather control my own […]
Which is the greater number: $105 or $100 plus 3%? You might think this a trivial question, but about 60% of adults can’t answer it correctly — and many of them still use financial services. It’s an alarming situation. After all, smokers understand they’re taking a risk, if only because they’ve seen the health warning on cigarette packs; but bank clients, especially in poorer countries, are often clueless about money matters. Standard & Poor’s Global Financial Literacy Survey goes further than any of the previous research in examining the phenomenon throughout the world. It’s based on 150,000 interviews in more […]
NEW YORK — On a recent Sunday afternoon, David Bromwich paces his friend’s kitchen in Brooklyn barefoot, waiting for some tea to steep. As the alarm on his phone goes off, he’s already pouring. “It has a slight asparagus taste,” he says, slurping the hot green tea from a spoon. “There are so many chemicals in tea,” he explains, sticking a thermometer in another cup of water. “It’s the processing that unlocks all the different compounds.” Bromwich, a 36-year-old product manager at Thomson Reuters, has always loved tea, tasting every one he could as a kid and later mail-ordering the […]
NEW YORK — French President Francois Hollande pledged a “pitiless” war on ISIS after Friday’s Paris massacre. Russian President Vladimir Putin says his nation is focused on “finding and punishing the perpetrators” who downed a Russian passenger jet over Egypt. U.S. President Barack Obama says the goal is to “degrade and ultimately destroy this barbaric terrorist organization.” How? That’s the question none of these men seems willing to answer. Here’s one idea that, while not optimal militarily, might hedge the political risk: Form a broad alliance, akin to the one that pushed Saddam Hussein’s forces out of Kuwait in 1991, […]
VANCOUVER — James Hankle, a software engineer in his 50s sporting bluejeans and a Green Party T-shirt, is explaining his fix for Vancouver’s runaway property prices when he’s interrupted by an eavesdropping passer-by: “Stop allowing people from China to buy our houses and leave them vacant,” she says and walks away. Despite British Columbia’s aversion to pipelines and affection for pot, housing affordability has pushed both aside as the No. 1 issue raised by area residents in the run-up to Canada’s election this month. It’s not completely surprising given that Vancouver has become North America’s most expensive city. Surging purchase […]