In the 1990s Macy’s, a chain of department stores based in New York, began gobbling up rivals across America. By the late 2000s that strategy had turned it into the biggest fish...
CHINA IS, FAMOUSLY, the world’s factory and a giant market for the world’s companies. More unremarked is its growing role as the world’s research-and-development laboratory. Between 2012 and 2021 foreign firms increased...
PITY EUROPE’S luxury giants. On July 15th Swatch Group, a Swiss watchmaker, said its revenues and operating profit ticked down in the six months to June, by 14% and 70% year on...
J.D. Vance’s life is full of twists and turns. His memoir from 2016, “Hillbilly Elegy”, chronicles how a boy from a drug-afflicted home in the Ohio rustbelt, who almost flunked high school,...
WHEN BEYONCÉ performed at a pre-wedding party for Isha Ambani in 2018, India was agog. Merely receiving an invitation conferred bragging rights on status-obsessed business leaders and politicians. The cost of the...
Boom-and-bust cycles all tend to look the same. A consumer fad or industrial urgency fuels demand for a product. Prices rise. Producers invest in capacity. By the time new supply materialises it...
GERMAN POLITICS is followed closely in Paris. So is French politics in Berlin. Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, said on July 8th that he was “relieved” that the far right failed to...
Behind every on-screen loan shark is an even harder character making sure the mob’s debts are paid—make Peter pay, or Paulie might break your legs. The financial system is less violent, but...
