“LABELLING BASED on incomplete information, public shaming, and shunning wrapped in moral rhetoric,” said Hester Peirce, a straight-talking commissioner at America’s main financial regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, in June. She was taking aim at the scoring systems that purport to assess firms’ performance based on environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors. Yet love

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S attempts to orchestrate America’s trade relations are causing a cacophony. On December 2nd he trumpeted new tariffs on Brazilian and Argentine steel and aluminium. Hours later the United States Trade Representative (USTR) chimed in with two sets of tariffs on European products. Over the following days noise grew louder in Congress about

“UNACCEPTABLE”, harrumphed France’s finance minister. Worthy of a “pugnacious” response, thundered a colleague. The object of this Gallic ire was the Trump administration’s threat this week to impose 100% tariffs on some of France’s tastiest exports, from cheese to champagne, in response to its government’s planned digital-sales tax. Corporate tax has become a major source

AFTER REPAIR work during the sovereign-debt crisis in 2009-15, further fixes to the euro zone’s architecture have been few and slow. Northern countries have been unwilling to assume cross-border risks, as long as debts and non-performing loans in southern ones were high. Now quarrels within one of those southern countries, Italy, threaten what little progress

A RECENT EDITION of “The Joe Rogan Experience”, a popular podcast, features the comedian Artie Lange. Mr Lange is an engaging personality who, as he candidly admits, has battled with drugs and gambling. Not long out of his umpteenth period in rehab, he is working in stand-up again. “This business keeps taking me back,” he

THE PAST decade and a half has seen boom and bust, inflation and deflation, globalisation and trade tensions. Through such economic and political cycles you might expect currencies to go in and out of fashion. In fact the two that have strengthened the most against the dollar over this period—Thailand’s baht and Israel’s shekel—have done

KO PHOE THAR is a cheery 22-year-old liquor-store clerk from Mandalay, a city in central Myanmar. Death, and other less-certain future misfortunes, are far from his mind. A host of insurance companies newly arrived in the country would like to change that. Last week the finance ministry issued licences to foreign life insurers for the

JAPAN ONCE offered a cautionary tale of how macroeconomic mismanagement could transform a juggernaut into a laggard. As weak growth and low interest rates have spread to the rest of the world, however, it looks more like a window into the future. The view it reveals is less bleak than it used to be; “Abenomics”—the

“GET YOUR money right,” says a giant billboard in garish, Instagram-friendly colours in San Francisco’s downtown. It is part of a campaign by SoFi, a fintech firm, to position itself as a one-stop shop for alternative finance. Founded in 2011 to cut the cost of student loans by enabling alumni to sponsor undergraduates, last year

NZ Dollar Talking Points: The Kiwi has shifted from a range of fundamental and technical aspects across several crosses in recent weeks The EUR/NZD cross approaches key technical levels as the Kiwi struggles against the Euro DailyFX Forecasts are published on a variety of markets such as Gold, the US Dollar or the Euro and

Gold prices reversed an early-week advance on the heels of the Non-Farm Payroll release with XAU/USD down 0.30% ahead of the New York close on Friday. The decline takes gold back into a critical pivot zone we’ve been tracking for months now. These are the updated targets and invalidation levels that matter on the XAU/USD