FEW ECONOMISTS can claim either to have successfully challenged the bedrock beliefs of their field or to have altered how governments pursue policies that affect millions. Alan Krueger, who died on March 16th, managed both. In research with David Card in the early 1990s, Mr Krueger showed, through careful data analysis, that increases in the…
As regulators at the Federal Aviation Administration reviewed designs for Boeing’s newest passenger jet, they paid extra attention to several features, including the lithium batteries, the pressure fueling system and the inflatable safety slides. One feature that did not receive exceptional scrutiny: a new software system intended to prevent stalls. That same software is suspected…
In the midst of the New York attorney general’s and two different Congressional committees’ simultaneous investigations into President Donald Trump’s relationship with Deutsche Bank AG, the New York Times reported Monday that Trump received more than $2 billion in loans over the course of two decades. The Times interviewed 20 Deutsche board members and executives…
The New York Times just reported an explosive piece about President Donald Trump's history with Deutsche Bank, saying the German bank lent the real-estate mogul about $2 billion during their relationship. The president's association with the struggling German lender was born in the late 1990s, when major Wall Street firms stopped loaning Trump money after…
THE PROCESSING of payments was once regarded as a boring piece of financial plumbing. So dull, in fact, that even banks shunned it. Fidelity National Information Services, aka FIS, which provides computing systems for thousands of financial institutions, finds pipework positively alluring. On March 18th the Florida-based financial-technology group agreed to take over Worldpay, a…
The so-called roadshow seemed to go well. At every stop, Mr. Trump was greeted by large audiences of fund managers, executives and lower-level employees eager to see the famous mogul. The problem, as a Deutsche Bank executive would explain to Mr. Trump, was that few of them were willing to entrust money to him. Mr.…
A design team led by DAMO Academy, the $15 billion research initiative formed by China’s premier e-commerce site, Alibaba, is working to make smartphones more accessible to the blind and visually impaired. There are more than 1.4 billion smartphones in China, more than anywhere else in the world. China also has the highest population of…
MoviePass is bringing back an unlimited plan. Despite a recent exodus of executives and managers, the movie-ticket subscription service has been working to bring back a plan similar to the one that got it so many subscribers two summers ago: a $9.95-a-month unlimited plan. The launch has been delayed for weeks, according to a source…
THE ATLANTIC OCEAN is starting to look awfully wide. To Europeans the United States appears ever more remote, under a puzzling president who delights in bullying them, questions the future of the transatlantic alliance and sometimes shows more warmth towards dictators than democrats. Americans see an ageing continent that, though fine for tourists, is coming…
WASHINGTON — Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia authorized a secret campaign to silence dissenters — which included the surveillance, kidnapping, detention and torture of Saudi citizens — over a year before the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, according to American officials who have read classified intelligence reports about the campaign. At least some…
