Think traffic is bad in New York or London? They ain’t got nothing on Jakarta and Chongqing.The top of TomTom NV’s ranking of the world’s most congested places is dominated by emerging markets. Among cities in rich countries, only Los Angeles makes it into the top 15, and then only just. Some of the world’s worst traffic snarls are in South Asian cities not even picked up by TomTom’s ranking, such as Dhaka, Delhi and Karachi. Their problems are only likely to get worse as growing populations and

Viewpoints Nov. 11, 2018

President Donald Trump pushed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign Wednesday. Matthew Whitaker, Sessions’ chief of staff, who has expressed hostility to special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry, will step in as acting attorney general and, according to reports, take over supervision of the investigation.The president has the right to replace his cabinet officials. After all, it’s not unusual, as Trump said in his press conference earlier Wednesday, to have some turnover after an election.But

Viewpoints Nov. 11, 2018

If the European Commission’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, utters the words “decisive progress” sometime in the next few days, take notice. It would be the signal that the UK and the European Union have agreed on the terms of their divorce. A summit can be held and the white smoke sent up.That would be a watershed after 16 months of negotiations and drama. It would mean broad agreement has been reached, including one on the tricky problem of the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.Bu

Viewpoints Nov. 11, 2018

If Haruhiko Kuroda is starting to lay the groundwork to trim Japan’s huge stimulus, he’ll be looking over his shoulder at two things: the world outside and a deceased predecessor.The first issue for the Bank of Japan governor to watch is the international scene, which is getting tougher for central banks eyeing steps away from ultra-accommodation. Kuroda’s speech this week in Nagoya that hinted at policy normalization described a benign global growth outlook. It’s as though the weaker data of th

Viewpoints Nov. 8, 2018

How many jobs are vulnerable to automation? Plenty of people ask that question, and plenty of people try to give numerical answers. A recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said that about 46 percent of jobs have a better-than-even chance of being automated. A 2016 study by Citigroup and the University of Oxford reported that 57 percent of jobs were at high risk of automation, although a 2013 paper by two of the same researchers predicted 47 percent. A recent P

Viewpoints Nov. 6, 2018

The US economy is less than one year away from breaking the record for the longest expansion in the country‘s history. Despite the length of the recovery from the Great Recession, data from the middle two quarters of 2018 suggest the economy is still growing with considerable strength. It is on track to grow around 3 percent for the year, about an entire percentage point above estimates of its maximum sustainable rate of growth.This strength is reflected in the job market, which continues to exp

Viewpoints Nov. 6, 2018

Is central bank independence the next casualty of the age of populism? In the US, President Donald Trump has declared that the Federal Reserve is “going loco.” He blames Fed Chairman Jerome Powell for threatening “his” recovery and for market volatility caused in part by uncertainty over the trade war Trump himself started.In India, reports emerged this week that the government might invoke a never-before-used section of the law governing the Reserve Bank of India to force it to reverse course o

Viewpoints Nov. 5, 2018

Mexico and Brazil have a long-simmering rivalry, each aspiring to lead Latin America. Now, as two strong-willed outsiders take office as president in each country, tensions that have been more or less innocuous could escalate, with negative consequences for the entire region.Consider the passive-aggressive diplomatic game Mexico and Brazil have often played. In global forums, each rarely votes in favor of the other: Brazil endorsed France’s Christine Lagarde over Mexico’s Agustin Carstens for th

Viewpoints Nov. 5, 2018

“To get rich, first build a road” is one of those Chinese proverbs that tends to impress foreigners -- evoking a combination of farsightedness and concern for practicalities. As China is discovering with its globe-spanning “Belt and Road” project, though, the world doesn’t always play along. The initiative has run into trouble, and its success now depends on revisiting both the vision and the details.Five years ago Chinese President Xi Jinping began promoting a network of Chinese-financed roads,

Viewpoints Nov. 4, 2018

The global walkout by Google workers, a response to parent company Alphabet’s reported protection of executives accused of sexual misconduct, may be a harbinger of something new in employer-employee relations: empowered workers’ moral-political protests directed as much against the general culture as against management.Although the walkout is connected in a broad sense to workplace conditions, this is not the trade union strike of old. Google’s workers are mainly professionals: engineers, not la

Viewpoints Nov. 4, 2018

As the US dollar hits highs for the year, the People’s Bank of China seems determined to hold the value of the yuan at 7-to-1, or stronger. This barrier holds little technical significance, but its psychological value and the central bank’s interest in holding the line are enormous.While it’s difficult to confirm, there’s strong evidence that the PBOC is managing prices in the foreign-exchange market. Renminbi forward rates are essentially unchanged from spot rates extending out as far as three

Viewpoints Nov. 4, 2018

Italy’s horror show has just started -- and it’s bound to get worse.The country’s economy stagnated in the third quarter, according to figures released on Tuesday. The slowdown may be part of a wider trend: The eurozone economy expanded by a meager 0.2 percent in same three months. But it’s clear that the uncertainty which has accompanied the rise to power of Italy’s populist government has started to take its toll.The deceleration will throw a spanner in the plans of Finance Minister Giovanni T

Viewpoints Nov. 1, 2018