Global Economy

On September 28, 2014, PM Modi told 20,000 at Madison Square Garden that PIO cardholders would get lifetime visas and the PIO and OCI schemes would merge.

Folorunsho Alakija, worth $2.6 billion in 2014, told University of Lagos students she never attended one. The fashion-to-oil story behind it.

A 2013 CNNMoney report revealed startups like Lenddo and Kreditech were weighing your Facebook friends when deciding whether you get a loan.

iGATE fired CEO Phaneesh Murthy in May 2013 after a board probe into an undisclosed relationship with a subordinate — eleven years after his Infosys

In 2013, with growth halved and scandals mounting, the dragon-versus-elephant debate looked settled. A decade later, the race had a different leader.

In 2011 Aldi's UK business swung from a 56 million pound loss to a 57.8 million pound profit. Here is the discount model behind the turnaround.

In November 2012, France's industry minister said ArcelorMittal was no longer welcome in the country, escalating the fight over the Florange steel plant.

On Election Day 2012, President Obama made a surprise stop at a Chicago field office, congratulated Mitt Romney, and phone-banked volunteers himself.

In 2012, Wells Fargo contractors cleaned out a retired couple's Twentynine Palms home — twice — foreclosing on the wrong house in a wrong-address blunder.

The UK Border Agency revoked London Metropolitan University's visa licence in August 2012, leaving 2,600 international students 60 days to find a new sponsor.

Tropical Storm Isaac barreled toward the Gulf Coast on August 27, 2012 — forcing the GOP to delay its convention and reviving Katrina memories.

For the first time in 2012, Mitt Romney crossed 40% with 18–29-year-olds in a JZ Analytics poll — a warning sign for Obama’s youth-vote machine.

In 2012, Singapore topped global health rankings and led the world in education — a case study in what sustained public investment can buy.

Google announced 4,000 job cuts at Motorola Mobility in August 2012 — about 20% of the unit — just months after completing its $12.5 billion acquisition.

Kodak's bankruptcy, RIM's collapse, J.C. Penney's tailspin — a look at once-great American companies in 2012 that may never come back.

The 2012 Religious Congregations and Membership Study found Islam grew 67 percent in a decade — the fastest-growing major religion in the US.

Nouriel Roubini argued in July 2012 that the US recovery was a 'fairy tale', giving five reasons growth would slow to stall speed — and drag the world down

In July 2012, John McCain insisted his 2008 choice of Sarah Palin over Mitt Romney had nothing to do with Romney's tax returns — which McCain had seen 23

In July 2012, Michigan couple Usha and Deepak Shah, both 63, were charged by US federal authorities with filing over $8.8M in allegedly false Medicare bills.

In July 2012, reports said Facebook would launch a job-postings board aggregating listings from BranchOut, Jobvite, and Work4 Labs — a light step into

Apple paid $60 million in July 2012 to settle with Shenzhen Proview over the iPad trademark in China, clearing the way to sell the tablet in a key market.

In Herat, Afghanistan, farmers swapped opium poppies for saffron — the world's priciest spice — at the cost of Taliban threats and kidnappings.

How one Oregon woman's absurd $2.1 million fake state tax return sailed through the review process — and what it exposed about refund fraud.

June 2012: Wisconsin's recall defeat, anemic jobs numbers, Clinton freelancing, a looming Supreme Court verdict — Democrats woke to the possibility that

In May 2012 Kaspersky exposed Flame — a massive cyberespionage toolkit aimed at Iran, with 86 fake-identity domains and all the hallmarks of a state operation.

The '1%' was really a 0.1% problem: the elite whose wealth buys the rules themselves. On inequality, Occupy, and why the policy answers differ.

In May 2012 Ellen Pao sued Kleiner Perkins for gender discrimination — with harassment allegations against partner Ajit Nazre at its center.

The 1,360-km India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway — agreed in 2002, perpetually delayed and re-announced. India's road to Southeast Asia.

The 2012 western wildfire season — six states burning, Colorado's Waldo Canyon destroying 346 homes, and a firefighting system stretched past its limits.

May 2012: Egypt's first-round results pointed to a runoff between the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi and Mubarak's last prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq.

PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi once played serious cricket for an all-girls team in Chennai. Her career cost her the sport — and she has named what achievement took.

The 2012 speculation that Obama might swap Biden for Hillary Clinton as his running mate — the electoral logic, the arguments against, and why it never

In 2012 Gina Rinehart became the world's richest woman on iron ore wealth — polarizing Australia with her wages politics, media stakes, and a bitter family

In May 2012 a French prosecutor in Lille opened a preliminary rape investigation against Strauss-Kahn over an alleged December 2010 incident in Washington.

In 2012 Kabul, Shakila Naderi ran a driving school for women — a small, pointed act of normalization in a city where public space was still deeply gendered.

Denmark tried a fat tax in 2011 and repealed it in 2012; Mexico's sugary-drink tax worked better. The economics and the liberty debate behind taxing

Raise taxes and the rich will flee? The evidence on millionaire tax migration says the exodus is mostly myth — here is what the research actually found.

Documents seized from Abbottabad showed bin Laden wanted Obama assassinated but Biden spared — judging the vice president too unready to inherit the presidency.

Blind activist Chen Guangcheng's 2012 escape to the US Embassy in Beijing put Hillary Clinton at the center of a human-rights versus geopolitics crisis.

Americans abroad renounced citizenship in record numbers in the early 2010s — FATCA, citizenship-based taxation, and compliance costs drove the trend.

The former IMF chief was charged with aggravated pimping in the Carlton Affair probe. Three years later, a French court acquitted him of the charges.

India was working toward the Washington Accord, which would give its engineering graduates international credential recognition. Two years later, it happened.

When audience members fainted at Barack Obama's rallies, his response was unglamorous and dad-like: eat and drink before you come. Why the small moments worked.

After Super Tuesday 2012, Mitt Romney was the GOP frontrunner. What his managerial, crisis-room style said about the candidate — and the country choosing him.

In March 2012 India granted its first compulsory drug license: Natco Pharma could make a generic version of Bayer's cancer drug Nexavar at a fraction of the

A Michigan man sued AMC over its no-outside-food policy and $8 popcorn. The lawsuit failed — but it exposed the strange economics of the movie business.

Putin's tears in Manezhnaya Square after winning Russia's 2012 election — genuine emotion, staged vulnerability, or something else? What that night meant.

How the hydrogen bomb works — fission-triggered fusion, the 1961 Tsar Bomba test at 50 megatons, and the paradox of mutually assured destruction.

In 2010, a harassment complaint from contractor Jodie Fisher ended Mark Hurd's run as HP CEO. What the investigation found — and didn't — and why the letter

From Cheney's famous quip to Modern Monetary Theory: the serious economic case for deficit tolerance, the hawkish counter-case, and what Japan teaches us.

On April 13, 2011, the EU fined P&G €211.2M and Unilever €104M for a detergent cartel — Henkel blew the whistle and walked free; Colgate was never in the case.

An original essay on the end of the age of abundance: from the 1959 Nixon-Khrushchev kitchen debate to the reckoning of living beyond our means.

In autumn 2011 the eurozone's debt crisis had serious economists openly contemplating the unthinkable: the possible dissolution of the euro itself.

Mona Simpson's eulogy for her brother Steve Jobs — the intimate portrait, the family story, and those final words: Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.

They had no demands, they were all unemployed dropouts — the Occupy Wall Street myths, and what the movement actually changed.

October 15, 2011: Occupy goes global with London's 'Occupy the Stock Exchange' rally — Julian Assange and Peter Tatchell addressed the crowd at St Paul's.

Manmohan Singh skips the 2011 Commonwealth summit in Perth — and the reason is Australia's refusal to sell uranium to non-NPT India.

Occupy, Anna Hazare, China's factory strikes, Europe's austerity riots — the shared thread behind 2011's global wave of social unrest.

With US unemployment hovering near 9 percent, Hallmark launched eight 'Job Loss' greeting cards — mixing encouragement with recession humour.

In May 2011, Fortune's Adam Lashinsky published the most penetrating portrait yet of Jobs-era Apple — startup culture at the largest scale in business.

Price too low and you leave money on the table; price too high and the stock sinks. A plain-language look at how IPOs are priced and why the number matters.

In 2011, even Procter & Gamble admitted its middle-class shoppers were trading down — an early sign of the hollowing out that would define the decade's economy.

In 2011, World Bank economist Justin Lin forecast China would be twice the US economy by 2030. The forecast's hit-and-miss record is instructive.

Yahoo fired CEO Carol Bartz over the phone on September 6, 2011 — the latest turn in the former web giant's long struggle against Google and Facebook.

In the World Economic Forum's 2011-2012 competitiveness ranking, the U.S. slipped to 5th place behind Switzerland, Singapore, Sweden, and Finland.

From Indra Nooyi to Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai — how Indian-origin executives came to lead the world's biggest corporations.

Google's Vic Gundotra shared the famous 'Icon Ambulance' story after Steve Jobs's 2011 resignation — a Sunday call about a yellow gradient, and a lesson in

Groupon's China arm Gaopeng imploded months after launch — mass layoffs, a viral employee revolt, and 5,000 local clones. What the China debacle revealed.

Baltimore made headlines in 2011 with three-bedroom homes listed at $5,000. The catch: foreclosures, repair bills, and neighborhoods in freefall.

A 17-year-old in Anhui sold a kidney for 22,000 yuan to buy an iPad 2. The story that exposed a gadget frenzy — and a black market.

As Germany's E. coli outbreak grew, so did the politics: Putin's vegetable ban, Spain's fury at false blame, and Merkel's crisis task force.

Gaurav Sahai left HP in America for seven acres in Mohali. Raja Adhikary left trading for tea in Jalpaiguri. Meet farming's new entrepreneurs.

In May 2011 a killer E. coli strain swept northern Germany. Cucumbers took the blame — but the real culprit was fenugreek sprouts.

Shadow inventory, the robo-signing scandal, and the foreclosure overhang kept pressing on U.S. home prices through the crisis years.

Roubini’s 2011 “China’s Bad Growth Bet” warned of overinvestment at 50% of GDP and a hard landing after 2013. The thesis, the evidence, and what actually

In 2011, Amazon Web Services was a thrifty side bet renting servers for pennies an hour. How the cloud became Amazon's real empire.

After a 2011 New York Times expose on its paid-link scheme, Google manually penalized JCPenney -- proof no advertiser was above its search rules.

Stephen Elop's leaked 'burning platform' memo of February 2011: the most brutally honest corporate memo ever, and the prelude to Nokia's Microsoft deal.

In February 2011, Tehelka published the Liechtenstein list the government had kept sealed for two years: 15 names in the LGT black-money accounts.

Steve Jobs at 30, weeks after leaving Apple: a candid 1985 Newsweek interview on getting fired, staying unbitter, and why customers cannot invent the future.

In 2011, China was pushing yuan trade settlement and 'dim sum' bonds. Would the renminbi displace the dollar? Fifteen years on, the answer is instructive.

Admired and reviled in equal measure: Goldman Sachs after the 2008 crisis, from TARP repayment to the $550 million Abacus fraud settlement.

As the eurozone debt crisis deepened in November 2010, Germans were buying gold and silver at a remarkable pace. On the history behind the flight to safety.

In November 2010, Wen Jiabao and Vladimir Putin agreed that China-Russia trade would be settled in yuan and roubles instead of dollars.

With Ireland's bailout agreed but its coalition collapsing, markets turned on Portugal and Spain — and a North Korean bombardment added fear.

Ireland sought an 85-billion-euro rescue in November 2010 — not from budget deficits but from a bank guarantee that swallowed the state. On the eurozone crisis.

Chinese acquisitions of Western firms make geopolitical headlines — but inside the acquired company, the experience is cultural and human before anything else.

Greece, then Ireland, then Portugal, then Spain. Each bailout was promised to be the last firewall — and each failed, because the problem was structural.

In 2011 Google acquired a face-recognition startup — and then refused to ship the technology. The story of the one product Google held back.