What will humans do if technology solves everything?

economist.com In “Permutation City”, a novel by Greg Egan, the character Peer, having achieved immortality within a virtual reality over which he has total control, finds himself terribly…

The UAE is using a wealth fund to gain diplomatic sway

economist.com Sovereign wealth funds seldom worry about foreign policy. Those that invest abroad typically do so in order to ensure stable returns or diversify holdings, meaning they tend…

Chinese authorities are now addicted to traffic fines

economist.com Ma Yijiayi was locked up in November. She did not stand in a square demanding political rights. Nor did she steal from state coffers. Instead, her crime was to ask a…

How fast is India’s economy really growing?

economist.com Optimism about India tends to spike now and again. In 1996, a few years after the country opened to foreign capital, the price of property in Mumbai, India’s financial hub,…

Ukrainian drone strikes are hurting Russia’s oil industry

economist.com Selling more oil at higher prices ought to be the stuff of dreams for a petrostate. But for Russia it is a sign of a new, punishing phase in its war with Ukraine. Months of…

China’s state is eating the private property market

economist.com At an upmarket housing development in Wuhan, sales agents want to make clear that their state-owned firm has severed all its ties to the private sector. The firm had at…

Don’t like your job? Quit for a rival firm

economist.com A fifth of American workers have a non-compete clause in their contract, barring them from leaving to join a rival. Owing to a new rule issued by the Federal Trade…

Is inflation morally wrong?

economist.com Where other historians saw a mob of hungry peasants, E.P. Thompson saw resistance to capitalism. Studying England’s 18th-century food riots, the Marxist historian coined the…

When will Americans see those interest-rate cuts?

economist.com Perhaps it was always too good to be true. The big economic story of 2023 was the seemingly painless disinflation in America, with consumer-price pressures receding even as…

China’s banks have a bad-debt problem

economist.com Bank of Jiujiang, a mid-tier lender from a southern Chinese river town, imparted some bad news on March 19th. In a rare disclosure, it told investors profits for 2023 might…

Which country will be last to escape inflation?

economist.com In January prices across the rich world rose by 5.7% year on year, down from a peak in late 2022 of 10.7%. This conceals wide variation, however. Some countries have slain…

Why a stronger dollar is dangerous

economist.com The dollar is looking increasingly formidable. As American growth has stayed strong and investors have scaled back bets that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates,…

The rich world faces a brutal spending crunch

economist.com A decade ago finance ministries were gripped by austerity fever. Governments were doing all they could to cut budget deficits, even with unemployment high and economic…

As markets soar, should investors look beyond America?

economist.com EVERY WEEK, a new high. Little wonder a sense of unease is settling over markets. Some 40% of global fund managers think that artificial-intelligence (AI) stocks—a crucial…

Why “Freakonomics” failed to transform economics

economist.com “Economics is a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life.” So starts Alfred Marshall’s “Principles of Economics”, a 19th-century textbook that helped create the…

America’s realtor racket is alive and kicking

economist.com For five years homeowners have been waging war. They have railed against the extortionate fees charged by estate agents, known as “realtors” in America, which are enforced…

Why America can’t escape inflation worries

economist.com Some hikers believe that the last mile is the hardest: all the blisters and accumulated aches slow progress at the very end. Others swear that it is the easiest because the…

Is the bull market about to turn into a bubble?

economist.com Two years ago, pretty much everyone agreed that one of the great bubbles was bursting. An era of rock-bottom interest rates was coming to a close, shaking the foundations of…

Russia’s economy once again defies the doomsayers

economist.com In the two years following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s economy has repeatedly defied the doomsayers. A financial collapse, widely predicted in the spring…

An economist’s guide to the luxury-handbag market

economist.com You could spot a fake a mile off. The plasticky “Prado” wallets arranged on bedsheets on the pavements lining Canal Street in New York bore only a passing resemblance to the…

America’s rental-market mystery

economist.com During the past few years of inflation, sceptics have insisted that governments are undercounting price rises—usually without much evidence to support their claims. But a…

Globalisation may not have increased income inequality, after all

economist.com Working out who earns what is surprisingly tricky. Both the very rich, who sometimes try to keep their wealth from the taxman, and the very poor, who are sometimes…

Bitcoin’s price is surging. What happens next?

economist.com For a brief moment, everyone who owned bitcoin had made money from it. On March 5th the crypto token rose to an all-time high of just above $69,000—a level sure to delight…

Can Israel afford to wage war?

economist.com In the next few weeks Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, hopes to gain final parliamentary approval for an emergency war budget. It includes more cash for settlers…

Stockmarkets are booming. But the good times are unlikely to last

economist.com Everywhere you look, stockmarkets are breaking records. American equities, as measured by the S&P 500 index, hit their first all-time high in more than two years in January,…

Gucci, Prada and Tiffany’s bet big on property

economist.com From the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street the facade of Tiffany’s looks just as it did in 1961 when Audrey Hepburn, dressed in a long black dress and pearls, nibbled…

Europe faces a painful adjustment to higher defence spending

economist.com With vladimir putin issuing threats and Donald Trump musing about withdrawing support, everyone agrees that Europe needs to spend more on its armed forces. What is less…

Trump wants to whack Chinese firms. How badly could he hurt them?

economist.com A few months before America’s presidential election in 1980, George H.W. Bush paid a visit to Beijing. He got a frosty reception. Days earlier, Bush’s running mate, Ronald…

As the Nikkei 225 hits record highs, Japan’s young start investing

economist.com Saito Mari, a 28-year-old nurse, was frustrated. Her pay, at just ¥160,000 ($1,100) a month, was meagre; after bills, rent, shopping and a few holidays, she had little left…

The false promise of Indonesia’s economy

economist.com In politics, repetition is a crucial part of any campaign. But for Indonesian voters, who go to the polls to elect a new president on February 14th, one pledge is starting…

Bankers have reason to hope Trump triumphs

economist.com Have you noticed that America’s bankers are seething over proposed new capital rules? What gave it away? Perhaps it was the advertisements that warn of dire consequences for…

Are NYCB’s troubles the start of another banking panic?

economist.com A bank publishes lousy earnings or an “update” on its business. Its share price plunges. Its name is splashed on newspaper front pages. The bank’s bosses hold a conference…

China’s stockmarket nightmare is nowhere near over

economist.com Running China’s securities watchdog is a perilous job. A market rout can end your career, or worse. On February 7th, after weeks of stockmarket instability, Yi Huiman, the…

Universities are failing to boost economic growth

economist.com Universities have boomed in recent decades. Higher-education institutions across the world now employ in the order of 15m researchers, up from 4m in 1980. These workers…

The false promise of friendshoring

economist.com Each year the 193 member states of the United Nations General Assembly vote on dozens of resolutions, earnestly setting the world to rights. Last month, for example, they…

How American states squeeze athletes (and remote workers)

economist.com Sports are big business in America. The country’s four largest professional leagues generate about $45bn in revenues a year, more than half of the total produced by leagues…

Why sweet treats are increasingly expensive

economist.com When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the arrival of war in one of the world’s breadbaskets sent the price of foodstuffs soaring—with one exception, sugar. But last year was…

What Donald Trump can learn from the Big Mac index

economist.com Little is more symbolic of globalisation than a McDonald’s hamburger. The American fast-food chain opened its first Chinese branch in 1990. The outlet was in Shenzhen, a…

As China’s markets suffer, what alternatives do investors have?

economist.com Some foreign investors in China are most worried by the country’s souring relations with the West. Others fret about the unprecedented slump in its property market. Many are…

Will spiking shipping costs cause inflation to surge?

economist.com When economists talk about bottlenecks, they typically refer to points in a supply chain that slow down production. The global economy is at present providing a rather…

A guide to the Chinese Communist Party’s economic jargon

economist.com A new Communist Party slogan was born on January 9th. The phrase, which appeared on the front page of the People’s Daily, a party mouthpiece, defies easy interpretation. A…

Has Team Transitory really won America’s inflation debate?

economist.com In late 2021 Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, called for the retirement of “transitory” as a description for the inflation afflicting America. The word had…

Citigroup, Wall Street’s biggest loser, is at last on the up

economist.com Unmanageable and uninvestible. That is how investors have long considered Citigroup. For over a decade the bank, which was once the largest and most valuable in America, has…

Can the IMF solve the poor world’s debt crisis?

economist.com It is now four years since the first poor countries were plunged into default because of spiralling costs from covid-19 spending and investors pulling capital from risky…

Will FTX’s customers be repaid?

economist.com In the days after the fall of his crypto exchange, Sam Bankman-Fried opened a Google Doc and began to type. Beneath the title “probably bad ideas” he listed potential…

The Federal Reserve cleans up its money-printing mess

economist.com At this point, almost everyone in global markets is familiar with the notion of higher-for-longer interest rates. Soon, they are likely to meet another concept as important…

Frozen Russian assets will soon pay for Ukraine’s war

economist.com After Russia destroyed the Trypilska power plant on April 11th, Ukraine blamed a lack of anti-missile ammunition. The country’s leaders are also desperate for more financial…

Wall Street’s biggest loser at last looks to be on the up

economist.com Unmanageable and uninvestible. That is how investors have long considered Citigroup. For over a decade the bank, which was once the largest and most valuable in America, has…

Daniel Kahneman was a master of teasing questions

economist.com Winners of the Nobel prize in economics tend to sprinkle their papers with equations. Daniel Kahneman, who died on March 27th, populated his best-known work with characters…

Japan ends the world’s greatest monetary-policy experiment

economist.com On March 19th officials at the Bank of Japan (BoJ) announced that, with sustainable inflation of 2% “in sight”, they would scrap a suite of measures instituted to pull the…

How NIMBYs increase carbon emissions

economist.com A shopkeeper’s son smashes a window, causing a crowd to gather. Its members tell the shopkeeper not to be angry: in fact, the broken window is a reason to celebrate, since…

China’s economic bright spots provide a warning

economist.com If America’s economy begins to deteriorate, people in Ningbo will be among the first to know. The eastern Chinese port, home to 9.6m residents, contains a sprawling…

Saudi Arabia’s investment fund has been set an impossible task

economist.com About a decade ago, a flashy, deep-pocketed investor made an appearance. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) had a mandate to go big, and was ready to: it picked up…

China is churning out solar panels

economist.com Sand is everywhere. Yet only a certain sort can be used to make the ultra-clear glass required for smartphones and solar panels. It must have a silica concentration of more…

Activist investing is no longer the preserve of hedge-fund sharks

economist.com Trade unions rarely look to corporate raiders for inspiration. Yet the Strategic Organising Centre (SOC), a coalition of North American workers groups, is mounting the sort…

Are passive funds to blame for market mania?

economist.com The year is 2034. America’s “magnificent seven” firms make up almost the entirety of the country’s stockmarket. For Jensen Huang, the boss of Nvidia, another knockout…

What do you do with 191bn frozen euros owned by Russia?

economist.com In economic terms, an asset has value because an owner might derive future benefits from it. Some assets, like cryptocurrencies, require a collective belief in those…

How Trump and Biden have failed to cut ties with China

economist.com Donald Trump and Joe Biden do not agree on much, but they are of a similar mind when it comes to America’s trade relations with China. They believe that the world’s largest…

The Ukraine war offers energy arbitrage opportunities

economist.com Europe had weathered one winter since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But although gas prices had returned to Earth, they were sure to rise in the colder months to…

In defence of a financial instrument that fails to do its job

economist.com Although buying inflation-protected bonds to protect against inflation does not seem unreasonable, it would have been a spectacularly unprofitable move during the latest…