Oct 7th 2017

Asset prices are high across the board. Is it time to worry?

The world this week

Leaders

Separatism in Catalonia

It is not too late to stop the break-up of Spain

To avoid calamity, ask Catalans what they really want

The legacy of Ma Ellen

Praise for the woman who put Liberia back on its feet

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has not been a perfect president, but she has been good enough

A deathly silence

After the massacre in Las Vegas, nothing is set to change

But do not despair. Some progress on gun laws is possible in America

Having it all

The gender pay gap that still needs to be closed

Making it easier to combine family and work would help both men and women

The bull market in everything

Asset prices are high across the board. Is it time to worry?

With ultra-loose monetary policy coming to an end, it is best to tread carefully

Letters

Letters to the editor

Briefing

Asset prices

The bubble without any fizz

Low interest rates have made more or less all investments expensive

United States

What happened in Vegas

The Las Vegas shooting has reinvigorated calls for gun control

Maria, via the Bronx

Puerto Ricans on the mainland United States

A real catastrophe

Riding around Puerto Rico with a truck driver

Rex Tillerson’s agonies

Politicians choosing voters

The Supreme Court ponders whether gerrymandering has gone too far

Lexington

Superstition helps explain how people think about gun laws

The Americas

Crime in Brazil

Rio’s post-Olympic blues

Bello

Deciphering Donald Trump’s thinking on Latin America

Canadian politics

A Sikh becomes leader of Canada’s left-leaning opposition party

Tropical ice

The death of Venezuela’s Humboldt glacier

Asia

Jokowi at bay

Indonesian politics are becoming less predictable

Mannequins do not cast ballots

Japanese voters want a plan to handle a declining population

Making waves

The air around North Korea is getting crowded

Fifth columnists

India’s prime minister is attacked from an unexpected quarter

Almost one in three

Australia admits more migrants than any other big Western country

Banyan

Events in Catalonia and Kurdistan are causing pangs in Taiwan

China

Grey angst

Hong Kong is divided over how to cope with its rapid ageing

Jobs at The Economist

Job listing: Foreign correspondent

Gissimo and Missimo’s mansions

Chiang Kai-shek’s former homes are open to tourists

Middle East & Africa

Into a vague future

Liberia gears up for an election

Unity v diversity

Ethiopia’s ethnic federalism is being tested

No place like home

The birthplaces of African leaders receive an awful lot of aid

Hamas extends a hand

The Palestinians try to reconcile

Back on track in Lebanon?

Syria’s destruction revives a dream of rebuilding Lebanon’s railway

A lamented Kurd

Jalal Talabani’s mediating skills will be much missed

Europe

Outrage in Catalonia

An imminent threat to the unity of Spain

Back to the table

Why Russia wants to talk about Ukraine

Disappointed suitors

The EU’s Eastern Partnership

Who owns the people’s stage?

An escalating row over the future of Berlin’s most iconic theatre

Into the trees

Preserving Bialowieza

Charlemagne: Love triangle

Trade deals between the EU and Japan only get you so far

Britain

Spluttering

Theresa May’s fluffed speech reopens the matter of her sell-by date

All about Boris

Is Boris Johnson really unsackable?

Crash-landing

Monarch Airlines runs out of runway

Down with the kids

The Tories make an awkward bid for the youth vote

It’s not the American way

Britain’s labour-force participation has jumped

Everyone’s a winner

From dentistry to car-park planning, industry awards are growing

Lurking in the dark

After failing to take over UKIP, the far right is at bay

Bagehot

Meet the Conservative Party’s new torchbearers

International

Men, women and work

The gender pay gap

Sharing chores at home

Houses divided

Special report

Out of the traps

Emerging markets are up and running

What’s in a name?

Defining emerging markets

Mixed-income myths

The middle-income trap has little evidence going for it

Freedom from financial fear

Emerging markets have become more resilient

A drag, not a curse

Commodities are not always bad for you

Sew what now?

Worries about premature deindustrialisation

Anti-trumping duties

Protectionism and its risks

Movements in EM major

Populism’s pervasive cycle

Merging markets

Rich and less rich markets are converging

Business

From Uber to kinder

Dara Khosrowshahi is off to a strong start but there are miles to go

Raining on Amazon

After a bite of Apple, Margrethe Vestager targets another tech giant

Waiting for parts

Ford has a clear plan to fix its present failings

Pipe dreams

Tech giants are building their own undersea fibre-optic networks

Jioseismic

Dirt-cheap mobile data is a thrill for Indian consumers

Be a sinner, be a saint

The bosses of two famous French firms struggle to keep customers

Schumpeter

Goldman Sags

Finance & economics

The big squeeze

American public pensions suffer from a gaping hole

Buttonwood

Mergers and acquisitions often disappoint

Silver and gold

Unequal at work, men and women are even more so in retirement

All at sea

How protectionism sank America’s entire merchant fleet

Fat is a fiscal-policy issue

Taxing fat and subsidising healthy eating widens inequality

Buried treasure

A new study details the wealth hidden in tax havens

From freezers to finance

A Chinese carmaker agrees to buy a Danish investment bank

Free exchange

Manias, panics and Initial Coin Offerings

Science & technology

The 2017 Nobel prize for chemistry

How to look at proteins without distorting them

The 2017 Nobel science prizes

Body clocks, gravitational waves and studying protein structure

The virtues of uprightness

Standing is good for your mind as well as your body

Scientific productivity

Researchers who change country produce more influential work

Ornithology

Birds choose where to live based on their personalities

Meteorology

Pollution from ships is changing maritime weather

Books & arts

Rising through the ranks

Today’s historians have a higher opinion of Ulysses S. Grant

Lonely at the top

Why pessimism is key to understanding the Victorians

Peak Britannia

The decadent late-Victorian and Edwardian era

Adam Smith in the finance ministry

Meet the invisible hand behind Hong Kong’s rise

The crooked timber of humanity

When architectural idealism meets reality

Johnson

An argument over the evolution of language, with high stakes

Economic & financial indicators

Output, prices and jobs

Trade, exchange rates, budget balances and interest rates

The Economist commodity-price index

The Economist poll of forecasters, October averages

Markets

Obituary

Living the dream