Still possessed: Investors in America’s housing-finance giants lose in court

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Investors in America’s housing-finance giants have a bad day in court

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Still possessed

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Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

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Wind and solar power are disrupting electricity systems

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Still possessed

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NEW YORK

ONE unresolved issue from the financial crisis is the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two firms that stand behind much of America’s housing market. Fannie and Freddie purchase mortgages, bundle them into securities and sell them on to investors with a guarantee. When America’s housing market collapsed a decade ago, the government had to bail them out. Its treatment of the firms since then has created a titanic legal struggle. Shareholders have cried foul. On February 21st, a federal appeals court upheld a ruling in the government’s …

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Poverty Plus A Poisonous Plant Blamed For Paralysis In Rural Africa

Some African countries have long witnessed mysterious outbreaks of paralysis. Affected regions are poor and conflict-ridden, where people’s main food is a bitter, poisonous variety of cassava.

(Image credit: Amy Maxmen for NPR)

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Bouncing back: Asia’s exports rebound

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The world’s export dynamos shrug off the threat of a trade war, for now

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Bouncing back

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Asian trade

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Gene editing, clones and the science of making babies

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Bouncing back

IT IS easy to be downcast about the state of global trade. It has faced stiff headwinds in recent years: in 2016, for the first time in 15 years, it grew more slowly than the world economy. Regional and global trade deals are going nowhere, slowly. And America’s new president has promised to protect his country from trade-inflicted “carnage”.
Amid all this gloom, optimism seems foolhardy. But in Asia’s export dynamos, trade is picking up steam. In January, Chinese exports rose year-on-year for the first time in ten months; South Korean shipments have increased for three months in a row. Surveys reveal strong export pipelines in Japan, Singapore and …

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Turkeys and blockbusters: Investing in emerging markets

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Why and how the paths of developing economies are set to diverge

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Turkeys and blockbusters

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Emerging markets

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An insurgent in the White House

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Turkeys and blockbusters

WISE investors know that winning bets shine more brightly if they are not overshadowed by big loss-making trades. The way in which capital flowed to and from emerging markets in recent years meant that such discrimination went out of the window. Now, however, change is coming.
Two influences in particular are behind this. The first is the retreat by America’s Federal Reserve from ultra-loose monetary policy. Cheap credit gave good and bad economies alike a boost; as its effect fades, capital allocation will become more disciplined. The peculiar traits of each emerging market, from macroeconomic management to productivity growth, will have a greater say …

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