Ben Marino

The FT's US finance editor Robert Armstrong asks if the recent stock market rally – driven partly by polls favouring a Joe Biden victory in the US presidential election – is a more sinister sign of a growing asset bubble

President Maduro resorts to desperate measures to arrest economic collapse

As the convoy of trucks laden with precious Burmese teak and sandalwood snakes its way into China from Myanmar, it comes perilously close to a ravine in the Himalayan foothills of Yunnan province. The caravan of timber being transported to China hails from Myanmar’s lawless northern state of Kachin. The resource-rich region bordering China and India is at the centre of a multibillion-dollar illicit economy fuelled by mining, logging and drug trafficking, according to observers and law enforceme…

As dusk settles on a smoggy Beijing Sunday evening, Kamiwase Satoshi quietly prepares to open his tiny whisky bar, hidden in an office building near the capital’s diplomatic area. The Japanese expatriate, who has been running his upmarket outlet for the past four years, is part of a close-knit community of independent bar owners who have been selling ­premium whiskies to the capital’s well-heeled drinkers for almost a decade. While whisky remains a luxury product in a domestic spirits market w…

China clampdown hits Ramadan celebrations