The optimistic narrative about Apple’s iPhone business is falling apart in front of our eyes.　The company on Wednesday stunningly slashed its own revenue forecast for its first fiscal quarter that ended in December. Apple led by blaming a slowing economy in China and the trade skirmish with the US for worse-than-expected consumer transactions in the region that includes China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Apple said its first quarter revenue is now expected to fall about 5 percent from a year earlier.

Viewpoints Jan. 7, 2019

It’s that time of the year when a middle-aged person’s fancy turns to treadmills and diets. Scientific literature on excess weight and health is expanding along with global waistlines, and yet, it is hard to find a solid, coherent scientific explanation for why some people get fat and others do not, and why some overweight people get Type 2 diabetes and heart disease and others do not.　In the US, beliefs about fat follow a science-y sounding quasi-religious narrative: Our prehistoric ancestors h

Viewpoints Jan. 7, 2019

On Wednesday, China successfully landed its Chang’e-4 spacecraft on the moon’s far side -- an impressive technological accomplishment that speaks to China’s emergence as a major space power. Understandably, some Chinese scientists are taking a victory lap, with one going so far as to gloat to the New York Times that “We Chinese people have done something that the Americans have not dared try.”That cockiness speaks to the spirit of great-power competition animating the Chinese space program. Chin

Viewpoints Jan. 6, 2019

One might suspect scientists of belaboring the obvious with the recent study called “Belief in Fake News Is Associated With Delusionality, Dogmatism, Religious Fundamentalism and Reduced Analytical Thinking.” The conclusion that some people are more gullible than others is the understanding in popular culture -- but in the scientific world it’s pitted against another widely believed paradigm, shaped by several counterintuitive studies that indicate we’re all equally biased, irrational and likely

Viewpoints Jan. 3, 2019

The optimistic narrative about Apple Inc.’s iPhone business is falling apart in front of our eyes. The company on Wednesday stunningly slashed its own revenue forecast for its first fiscal quarter that ended in December. Apple led by blaming a slowing economy in China and the trade skirmish with the US for worse-than-expected consumer transactions in the region that includes China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Apple said its first quarter revenue is now expected to fall about 5 percent from a year earl

Viewpoints Jan. 3, 2019

A new year, a new central bank governor. Yet the first salvo to come out of the Reserve Bank of India’s policy arsenal in 2019 is encouragement of good old “extend and pretend” lending.Banks and shadow banks are being allowed a one-time restructuring of loans of up to 250 million rupees ($3.6 million) to micro, small and medium enterprises that were in default on Jan. 1, without having to mark them as nonperforming, the RBI said Tuesday. Lenders are being given an extension of 15 months (up to M

Viewpoints Jan. 3, 2019

As the great unwind of global monetary stimulus gains momentum, markets are at increased risk of experiencing doom loops. Investors need to be prepared for these downward spirals, where shocks set off a self-perpetuating sequence of disruptions.There are five doom loops that feed each other in a financial crisis. The collateral doom loop. Declines in the value of stocks, bonds, property or derivatives tied to them trigger margin calls. These demands for collateral absorb cash or necessitate liqu

Viewpoints Jan. 2, 2019

When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo shows up in Brasilia on New Year’s Day for the inauguration of Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, he should prepare for some bad press.The incoming leader of the Western Hemisphere’s second-largest economy campaigned like the strong men of Latin America’s past. One newspaper marked his victory in October with the headline: “Fascism Has Arrived in Brazil.” A headline in a foreign-policy magazine compared his political style to that of Joseph Goebbels.The

Viewpoints Jan. 2, 2019

China’s annual economic policy summit has come and gone, leaving a wet lump of coal in place of stimulus hopes. Beijing will have to do better if it wants to steer the country to another year of robust growth.The economy started slowing in September, and has only worsened since then. Consumption tax revenue was up 16.3 percent year-to-date as of that month. In the following two months, it collapsed, recording declines of 62 percent and 71 percent from a year earlier. Value-added tax revenue has

Viewpoints Jan. 2, 2019

In the first half of 2019, a billion Asians will elect the next leaders of the region‘s two largest democracies. Half -- 400 million in India, and 79 million in Indonesia -- are from the millennial generation, born roughly between 1982 and 2001. Many will cast ballots for the first time. Although the threat of sectarian hatred looms large over both the Indian and Indonesian elections, economics will still take center stage.The issue that will resonate most with younger voters is jobs.Indonesia’s

Viewpoints Dec. 31, 2018

Women hold up half of the sky, or so Communist China’s founding father, Mao Zedong, liked to say. These days, that’s certainly the case in Vietnam. 　Throughout the country, many well-known businesses are run by women. There’s Mai Kieu Lien, who captured the rising middle class’s thirst for protein-rich milk drinks and built Vietnam Dairy Products JSC into a $10 billion empire. Then there’s Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, founder of budget airline VietJet Aviation JSC, who became Vietnam’s first female b

Viewpoints Dec. 27, 2018

Eight years after supplying the spark that lit the Arab Spring, Tunisia is again bracing for political upheaval in 2019. Prime Minister Youssef Chahed is openly scrapping with President Beji Caid Essebsi, who has in turn broken his four-year partnership with the powerful Islamist Ennahda party, the single largest party in parliament. As the head of a coalition government, Chahed is under increasing pressure from public-sector unions over salaries, and the sale of state-owned companies. Meanwhile

Viewpoints Dec. 26, 2018

As US political parties diverge ever more distinctly into a defender of the old and the past versus an advocate of the young and the future, corporate America -- at least the parts with consumer-facing business -- is increasingly two-faced.　To the multiracial, cosmopolitan younger America with money to spend, it shows the face of the future. Meanwhile, to secure its tax preferences, deregulation and clampdown on labor rights, it spends its political money on the party of Fox News.　It’s amazing t

Viewpoints Dec. 26, 2018