World business briefs from the Economist

Glo­bal busi­ness

China's boom­ing stock mar­kets wob­bled on Dec. 9 af­ter the gov­ern­ment an­nounced a tight­en­ing of the rules on using cor­po­rate debt as col­lat­er­al for loans. The Shang­hai Composite plunged by 5.4 percent over a day, the big­gest sin­gle fall in the in­dex since 2009. Mean­while, Chi­nese im­ports fell the most in No­vem­ber for eight months while ex­ports grew at their slow­est pace for six months. In­fla­tion fell to 1.4 percent, a five-year low.

OPEC cut its es­ti­mate for de­mand for oil next year; its cur­rent out­put is 1 mil­lion bar­rels a day more than it thinks will be need­ed in 2015. With American oil in­ven­tor­ies ris­ing more than had been ex­pect­ed, oil prices fell fur­ther. Re­spond­ing to the bear­ish oil mar­ket, BP be­came the lat­est en­er­gy com­pany to say it would cut back on its de­vel­op­ment spend­ing.

Reports sug­gest­ed that JPMorgan Chase may be left with a short­fall of about $22 bil­lion un­der the Federal Reserve's lat­est re­quire­ments for America's big­gest banks to hold more cap­i­tal to pro­tect them in a cri­sis. The bank has un­til 2019 to in­crease its cap­i­tal buff­er.

Lend­ing Club, the world's big­gest peer-to-peer lend­er, priced its IPO at $15 a share, which valued the firm at $5.4 bil­lion. So far it has is­sued $6 bil­lion worth of loans.

A se­cond of­fi­cial es­ti­mate showed that Ja­pan's ec­on­omy shrank by 1.9 percent at an an­nu­al­ized rate in the third quar­ter, worse than the con­trac­tion of 1.6 percent that a first es­ti­mate had re­cord­ed, add­ing more pres­sure on Shinzo Abe's gov­ern­ment as it head­ed into an e­lec­tion. Nonetheless, Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party claimed a land­slide vic­to­ry over the week­end.

The Brit­ish Treasury pub­lished draft pro­po­sals of a new tax on di­vert­ed prof­its to "coun­ter­act con­trived ar­range­ments." Aimed at mul­ti­na­tion­als, the tax will be set at 25 percent of the prof­it a com­pany makes from its ac­tiv­i­ties in Brit­ain but which it has di­vert­ed over­seas to es­cape tax. Al­though wel­comed by some, the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Brit­ish Industry wants the gov­ern­ment to ad­here to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD] proc­ess on in­ter­na­tion­al tax re­form, and says going it alone is a "con­cern."

The OECD as­sessed the ef­fects of in­e­qual­i­ty on eco­nom­ic growth, find­ing that it has a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nifi­cant neg­a­tive im­pact. It reck­oned, for ex­am­ple, that in­come in­e­qual­i­ty knocked 10 per­cent­age points off cu­mu­la­tive GDP growth in Mexi­co be­tween 1990 and 2010, 9 points off Brit­ain's growth and up to 7 points off the United States'. Redistributive polic­es do not hind­er growth, it ar­gued, as long as they are tar­get­ed ef­fec­tive­ly, spe­cif­i­cal­ly at ed­u­ca­tion.

Merck, a drug com­pany based in New Jer­sey, agreed to buy cub­ist, a bio­tech firm in Mas­sa­chu­setts, in a $9.5 bil­lion ac­qui­si­tion. Cub­ist spe­cial­iz­es in the grow­ing mar­ket for cre­at­ing an­ti­bi­ot­ics to com­bat the rise of "super­bugs," such as MRSA, that are re­sist­ant to old­er drugs. A study led by Jim O'Neill, the e­con­o­mist who coined the term BRICs (for Brazil, Russia, India and China), fore­casts that 10 mil­lion peo­ple a year will die from drug-re­sist­ant in­fec­tions by 2050.

Po­lit­i­cal ec­on­omy

Af­ter 13 years in Af­ghan­i­stan, NATO-led com­bat mis­sions for­mal­ly end­ed with a flag-low­er­ing cer­e­mo­ny in Ka­bul, the na­tion's cap­i­tal. About 13,000 main­ly U.S. troops will re­main to train Af­ghan for­ces and help them with air sup­port and med­i­cal e­vac­u­a­tion in com­bat op­er­ations against the Taliban.

Bra­zil's National Truth Commission named 377 peo­ple it says are re­spon­sible for 434 murd­ers and dis­ap­pear­ances dur­ing the mil­i­tar­y re­gime that ruled from 1964 to 1985. About 100 of the cul­prits are still a­live, but un­der an am­nes­ty law they can­not be pros­ecut­ed. Many fewer peo­ple were mur­dered by Bra­zil's dic­ta­tor­ship than were killed by oth­er Lat­in American re­gimes, such as those of Ar­gen­ti­na and Chi­le.

China's Communist Party ex­pelled Zhou Yongkang, who re­tired two years ago from its most pow­er­ful body, the Po­lit­bu­ro Stand­ing Committee. It ac­cused him of brib­er­y, a­dul­ter­y with sev­er­al women and leak­ing se­crets. Zhou is now all but cer­tain to be­come the most seni­or fig­ure to be put on tri­al in China since the Gang of Four in 1980.

Robert Mugabe, who has been pres­i­dent of Zim­bab­we since in­de­pend­ence in 1980, sacked his vice pres­i­dent, Joice Mujuru, and seven min­is­ters in a purge that cleared the way for Em­mer­son Mnangagwa, the hard-line form­er jus­tice min­is­ter, to be­come his like­li­est suc­ces­sor. Mujuru de­nied ac­cu­sa­tions of cor­rup­tion and plot­ting to kill Mugabe.