The Economist - November 15 2025

Год выпуска: November 2025

Автор: The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group

Жанр: Экономика/Политика

Издательство: «The Economist Newspaper Ltd»

Формат: PDF (журнал на английском языке)

Качество: OCR

Количество страниц: 192

HOW MARKETS COULD TOPPLE THE ECONOMY

• If the Al bubble bursts, an unusual recession could follow: leader, page 11.
• Downturns have become ultra-rare. That is storing up trouble, page 63.
• Old folk are fuelling America’s stockmarket. What would that mean in a crash? Page 65.
• The seven sins of corporate exuberance, page 55.

Trumpforce: the president’s police

• Donald Trump is putting together his own police force to operate in cities, with few legal constraints, page 21.

How to fix the BBC

• The exasperating, indispensable BBC must change: leader, page 13.
• Shifts in politics and in the media business are making the broadcaster more crisis-prone. It is now under fire not just at home but from the White House, page 48.

The hidden risks in Taiwan’s boom

• A weak-currency policy is punishing consumers and raising financial risk: leader, page 12.
• Taiwan’s amazing economic achievements are yielding alarming strains: briefing, page 18.

Can Al chatbots be therapists?

• Millions of people are turning to Al for mental health. Is it ready for them? Page 71.

The world this week Politics

• America’s Congress passed legislation to end the government shutdown, the longest on record. Several Democrats voted with Republicans to break the impasse, though the deal does nothing to tackle the Democrats’ main concern about the forthcoming expiry of health-insurance tax credits; a separate vote has been promised on that issue. Some leftwingers mumbled that Chuck Schumer should resign as the party’s leader in the Senate. Federal workers who were on furlough returned to work; they will receive back pay.
• The USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest warship, arrived in Latin American waters, part of a military deployment in the region ordered by Donald Trump to fight drug-smuggling at sea. Tensions are high. Speculation is rife in Venezuela that America will invade the country and topple Nicolas Maduro from the presidency. Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, has ordered his intelligence services not to share information with the United States.
• Fighting between rival gang members at a prison in Ecuador killed at least 31 inmates. Most of them had been hanged. The prison service said the trouble started when the convicts resisted being transferred to a new maximum-security prison, a facility which Daniel Noboa, the president, says will break the gangs’ network. At least 300 criminals were recently sent to the new penitentiary.
• COP30, the UN conference on climate change, opened in Belem, in northern Brazil. The two-week summit will take place without the United States; Mr Trump withdrew his country from the gathering.

Truthiness at the Beeb

• The director-general of the BBC, Britain’s public broadcaster, quit, following revelations that it had run a programme that stitched together two separate parts of Donald Trump’s speech on January 6th 2021 to create an untrue impression of his remarks ahead of the storming of the Capitol in Washington. The programme was broadcast in October 2024 and produced by an independent company. The BBC’s head of news also resigned. The organisation’s critics have long claimed it has a left-wing bias, pointing to a litany of complaints about its reporting, such as on Gaza. Mr Trump has threatened to sue.
• Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s leader, visited the White House. After a meeting with Mr Trump it was announced that Syria would join the American-led coalition against Islamic State, a jihadist group still present in Syria. To boost reconstruction, Mr Trump also said that he would suspend some sanctions that have been imposed on the country under the Caesar Act for six months.
• In Iraq Muhammad Shia al-Sudani, the prime minister, secured another term in office following a parliamentary election that was won by the coalition he leads. Turnout was a little over 56%.
• Jihadists in Mali executed a young social-media influencer who supported the country’s junta. They also claimed to have killed 48 soldiers and wounded dozens more in an attack, though the army did not confirm the death toll. Conditions in Mali have deteriorated sharply since September, when the jihadists began stopping lorries from delivering fuel. For weeks schools have been shut and business has been disrupted, including in Bamako, the capital.
• A car explosion near the historic Red Fort in Delhi, India’s capital, killed at least eight people and was being investigated as an act of terrorism. The Indian press reported that the possible suspect was probably linked to a group of plotters arrested near Delhi earlier in the day, who were found with large quantities of explosives. Narendra Modi, the prime minister, said that “The conspirators behind this will not be spared.”
• A suicide-bomber killed 12 people in Islamabad, the first attack on civilians in Pakistan’s capital in a decade. The government blamed the Pakistani Taliban that operates from Afghanistan and said the terrorists were supported by India, a claim that India’s foreign ministry described as baseless. Militants also attacked a military school in north-west Pakistan. “We are in a state of war,” said the defence minister. The Taliban government in Kabul denies that the Pakistan Taliban launches attacks from Afghan territory.

Wading in dangerous waters

• China lodged a formal protest after Japan’s new prime minister, Takaichi Sanae, suggested that any attack by China on Taiwan threatened Japan’s survival and would warrant a military response. Chinese state media described her as a “troublemaker”. China’s consul in Osaka suggested Ms Takaichi’s head should be cut off in a social-media post that was later deleted.
• Four Thai soldiers were injured by a landmine while patrolling the border with Cambodia, causing Thailand to suspend the recently signed deal to cease hostilities that have flared up this year. Anutin Charnvirakul, the Thai prime minister, said the incident demonstrated that Cambodia is a continuing security threat. Cambodia denies laying fresh mines. A later skirmish between Thai and Cambodian troops near a disputed village killed one person.
• Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn made a state visit to China to mark 50 years of diplomatic relations. Thailand is an American ally, but the king’s visit underscores what the Thai government describes as a “deep-rooted friendship and mutual understanding” with China.
• Nicolas Sarkozy was released from the prison where he was sent immediately after receiving a five-year sentence for conspiring to fund an election campaign with illicit money from Libya. The former French president’s lawyers had requested his release pending his appeal against the verdict. He is subject to strict supervision ahead of that appeal.
• Hungary’s populist-right prime minister, Viktor Orban, visited the White House, where he secured an opt-out from America’s sanctions on Russian oil. Hungary relies heavily on Russian energy imports. In order to secure the opt-out, Mr Orban agreed to buy more American liquefied natural gas.
• Turkish prosecutors said they would seek a prison sentence of up to 2,352 years for Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul, who is in detention ahead of his trial for alleged corruption. His supporters say the charges are politically motivated. Mr Imamoglu is the main rival to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president. His arrest in March triggered protests and a fall in the stockmarket. Separately, 20 Turkish troops were killed when their transport plane crashed in Georgia.

The world this week Business

• SoftBank sold its entire stake in Nvidia for $5.8bn. It will use the money to help fund its other Al investments, which include the Stargate project and a possible $itrn Ai and robotics hub in Arizona. Its investment in OpenAl, which is a partner in Stargate, is $30bn alone. The Japanese tech conglomerate made net income of ¥2.5trn ($16.2bn) in the latest quarter, double its profit from the same period last year, in part because of investment gains at its Vision Funds. Soft-Bank also announced a four-for-one stock split starting in January that it hopes will make its shares more accessible to investors.
• SoftBank’s share price fell on the news it was cashing out of Nvidia, underlining investors’ skittishness about the uncertainty of the huge bets being placed on Al. Tech stocks tumbled recently after several companies announced big increases in their Al spending. The NASDAQ Composite fell by 3% over a week, though it has since bounced back. Confounding the sceptics, AMD’s stock surged after it forecast bumper sales for its Ai chips.
• Tesla’s share price struggled to recover from the tumble it took after Elon Musk’s $itrn pay package was approved by the carmaker’s shareholders. Mr Musk will obtain the $itrn reward only if Tesla hits a series of highly ambitious financial and sales goals, including in its development of Al. Mr Musk came onto the stage at the shareholders’ meeting accompanied by dancing robots.
• Britain’s economy grew by a tepid 1.3% in the third quarter, year on year, and by just 0.1% compared with the second quarter. Separate data showed the unemployment rate had risen to 5%, the highest since late 2020 and early 2021, amid the pandemic. The figures complicate the economic picture for the government as it considers a tax-raising budget on November 26th.
• Britain’s weak job figures helped propel the FTSE100 share-price index to a record high, as investors bet that the Bank of England was now all but certain to cut interest rates at its meeting in December.
• Foxconn’s revenues from making Ai servers and datacentre equipment surpassed revenues from its consumer-electronics business, such as assembling the iPhone, for the second quarter in a row. The company said it would soon announce a deal with OpenAl.

Lukoil’s luck runs out

• Lukoil, a big Russian oil company, was thrown into crisis after its proposal to sell its international assets to Gunvor, a commodities-trading group, was blocked by America. Lukoil has been forced to sell its holdings because of America’s sanctions on Russian energy, which come into force on November 21st. The US Treasury said it would not grant a licence to Gunvor to use the assets, describing it as “the Kremlin’s puppet” in a socialmedia post. Gunvor said the statement was “fundamentally misinformed and false”. Lukoil now has to find another buyer, or write off the assets.
• The Trump administration stepped up its effort to scrap the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an independent government agency, by deciding that the way it is funded is illegal. The CFPB gets its funding from the Federal Reserve, and says it has enough money to continue operating until at least the end of the year. The agency has been hated by conservatives ever since its launch in 20U under the Dodd-Frank Act.
• Paramount published its first earnings since being taken over by Skydance Media and reported a big rise in revenues from streaming. It is increasing the subscription cost in America for Paramount+ from January. Paramount Skydance, as it is formally known, also increased its estimate of cost savings (ie, lay-offs) from the merger from $2bn to $3bn.

The battle of the bulge

• Underlining the intense competition in the market for weight-loss drugs, Pfizer won a bidding war for Metsera, a biotech firm specialising in obesity treatments, with a deal worth up to $10bn. Pfizer had to increase its offer when Novo Nordisk submitted a rival proposal in late October. The process even went to court, when Pfizer tried to get a judge to block Novo’s proposal (the judge rejected the lawsuit). Metsera described Pfizer’s litigation as “nonsense”, but it ultimately accepted Pfizer’s deal because Novo’s plan risked an antitrust challenge.
• Beyond Meat reported another quarterly net loss and produced a sales forecast that came in under analysts’ expectations. The maker of plantbased meat was the darling of Wall Street in 2019 when its share price surged to almost $240, before the pandemic and rising cost of living caused consumers to spurn its pricey grub. Though the share price has since slumped it has lately become something of a meme stock, rising by nearly 600% over three days in October.

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