Worldcrunch
A week of record highs flipped to panic with new China tariff talk, exposing fragile nerves as experts warn that a fast growing $2.2 trillion private credit market with light oversight, risky PIK structures, and bank and insurer exposure could turn the next shock into a chain reaction.
Created in 1984 by Spanish toymaker Feber, Chabel fashion dolls were an icon of her era and a favorite among Spanish girls before production stopped in 1992. Now, Chabel is back.
From dedicated spas and luxury perfumes to prebiotics and behavioral therapies, how man’s best friend became the target of high-end marketing.
With a pro-crypto agenda and substantial backing from industry investors, Donald Trump’s presidency is poised to reshape the landscape of digital currencies, promising a future where Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies thrive under favorable regulations and government support.
A milk-free vegan version of the famous Nutella spread hits the shelves this week in three European countries. With this move, the Italian company Ferrero that makes it intends to triple sales of its chocolate plant-based category within a year, across all brands.
The Israeli blockade of food, water, fuel, and essential medicines and supplies is inflicting immense suffering on Palestinians. Women in the Gaza strip are forced to sell their jewelry to feed their children amid lack of humanitarian aid and soaring prices, reports independent Arab media Daraj.
The new “Sneakers” exhibition in Dusseldorf features pairs that sell for six figures and explores how the simple sports shoe became a global obsession.
Discreet about its strategy, the Chinese company Temu is proving a fierce competitor to incumbent e-commerce brands, notably Amazon, by operating at a major loss. Some are worried whether its aim is to collect something more valuable: data on the habits of Westerners.
The 157-year-old cosmetics firm is banking on the “personal touch” and enterprise of its familiar women sales representatives to see it through the multiple threats of online retailing, changing tastes and global economic tumult.
The manufacture of a chip requires 500 operations on three continents. Both the U.S. and China want to master this incredible logistics chain. And with Taiwan crucial to the supply chain, there is both a cause and effect to try to calculate.
The Chinese pet market is booming, driven by young city dwellers who are increasingly reluctant to have babies. Care, food, yoga classes, strollers, specialized detectives and pet-cloning are all part of a 35 billion-euro industry.
In a country where money is taboo and culture is sacred, French artist Aurélie Galois navigates the uneasy relationship between following your muse and paying your rent.
French firms TotalEnergies and Renault announced they were, over time, suspending their activities and halting production in Russia after being widely criticized for their inaction since the invasion of Ukraine. But leaving Russia doesn’t have the same cost or the same consequences for all companies. And we should calculate in who will profit later.
It may sound like science-fiction, but firms are already developing prototypes for this cheaper alternative to the helicopter. And for Latin America in particular, the sky’s the limit for what Flying cars can bring.
The desperation to leave Islamic Iran has spread from writers, dissidents and minority groups to hundreds of thousands of Iranians willing to live and work “anywhere that isn’t Iran.”
The Danish government has banned further growth in sea-based fish farming, claiming the country had reached the limit without endangering the environment. A marine biologist says it is a misguided policy for both economic and ecological reasons.
Wealthy Latin Americans have been among the most active home buyers in Miami, which now may be creating a “tough” sellers’ market perceived by some as simply a haven for assets threatened by instability in home countries.
New companies have been launched around the world that employ women to pump breast milk on contract. Yet it could lead to women pumping for profit, and even sacrificing the nutrition of their own child.
When it comes to food, the fears linked to globalization must be put into perspective. They must also be weighed against the negative effects that Belgian protectionism could have on our economy.
One month after the insurrection on Capitol Hill, here are the rebels of Wall Street, a place of power no less symbolic.
Europe is moving forward in a united front to force Big Tech that could lead to a historic showdown on the future of how the digital economy functions.
It’s no secret that Brazil’s ultra-conservative leader and the incoming president of Argentina have deeply divergent political leanings.
Belém“s Ver-o-Peso market, in the background of this photograph, is one of the largest open-air markets in Latin America. But when I came across this 26-year-old slide, it was the smell not the size that I remember most clearly.
WASHINGTON — I loved Amazon when it first appeared. It was the 1990s, and I was living in Italy and then China, two countries that are strongly monolingual with a scarce number of foreign-language bookstores. Rome for instance, with three and a half million inhabitants at the time, had a couple of English bookstores and […]
-Essay- PARIS — I shall spare my readers today a highfalutin reflection on the obsolescence of the French Fifth Republic, evolutions in Romanian culture or the worldwide rise of the extreme Right — thanks to Banksy! The uber-famous but ever elusive London street artist recently returned to the limelight with another of his visual pranks: […]
Since turtle shells are used in traditional Chinese medicine and their meat is considered a delicacy there, this bit of Guangzhou’s street market is definitely not a pet sale.
Taking pictures at the vibrant marketplace in Otavalo, Ecuador required more than just pointing and shooting: I also had to avoid getting trodden on by one of the many, many pigs for sale.
What would be a good soundtrack to this picture of my then four-year-old daughter Cécile, posing in a flower market in southern France? Though I’m more partial to classical music, Sidney Bechet’s “Petite Fleur” seems a better fit than, say, Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” …
PARIS — The address is not by chance. Courbet, a jewelry designer that sells synthetic diamonds, has decided to open at the world’s most prestigious location for any jeweler: the Place Vendôme in Paris. Setting up shop at No. 7, becoming neighbor to establishments like Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels, is a daring move, […]
Upstarts no longer, the so-called BAT companies — Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent — are a force to be reckoned with.
-Analysis- PARIS — It’s a plan of titanic proportions, with a budget of close to $1 trillion and transport projects, for both land and sea, on almost every continent. No single fund can finance it, and the development bank created for it brings together more than 60 countries. The “New Silk Road,” and the figures […]
-Analysis- PARIS — The whole world has been talking about it for over a week, and yet, — admit it — you still don’t quite get what all the Bitcoin fuss is about. You know it’s a virtual currency. But what is the point of having a currency you can barely use to pay for […]
Bling and style are barriers that the Chinese-owned, Swedish-based company may not be able to overcome.
NEW YORK CITY — The 19th-century French sociologist Gabriel Tarde defined the marketplace as a war between buyers and sellers. He called price “a truce” obtained by haggling. It was because of that “war” mentality, he explained in his Selected Papers, that authorities in Europe began fixing prices on goods and services. The goal was […]
Ghardaïa is famous for its carpets. At the marketplace, there weren’t any women — but there were plenty of fabrics in this corner of M’zab in Algeria. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
Of the many vendors at the numerous markets I’ve visited through the years, the women selling herbs in Jakarta were probably the ones with the biggest smiles. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World.
It is yet another alliance of ideas that fiction could not have invented. The leftist vice president of Bolivia, who has never disavowed his Marxist past, is seeing eye-to-eye with a certain out-for-himself American real estate mogul with a taste for gold-plated everything. Writing for America Economia, Álvaro García Linera has penned a kind of […]
For some, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has become both the economic and moral leader of Europe. From tackling the eurozone’s debt crisis to countering Russian ambitions to bucking the tide of populism to welcome a million refugees into her country last year, Merkel has been lauded for her quiet but principled pragmatism in the face […]
Another week that will be stained in blood. For people in the West and throughout the (non-Orthodox) Christian world, this happens to be the week before the Christmas holiday, which leads us toward a new year. Few, at this point, have any illusions that 2017 can really be any less dreadful than 2016. Monday’s attacks […]
-OpEd- KALAMAZOO — People from China who travel abroad are struck by the stark differences between their countries. In the U.S. and Europe, they probably envy how people live in comfort and are rich enough to engage in arts and public service. These countries in general have more honest and transparent governments, as well as […]