David McHugh writes: The European Central Bank is edging closer to unleashing more monetary stimulus on top of the 1.1 trillion euros ($1.2 trillion) it is already pumping into the eurozone’s less than impressive economic recovery.

While no immediate action is expected at Thursday’s meeting in Malta, investors will look for hints from ECB President Mario Draghi that the bank is willing or preparing to extend the stimulus effort rather than let it end next year.

A big concern is preventing the euro from rising from its current level around $1.13 per euro. A higher euro hurts exporters, who are key contributors to growth and jobs, and tends to weaken inflation by weighing on import prices.

A currency tends to weaken as a side effect of monetary stimulus, whose primary aim is to raise consumer price inflation. Currently, the eurozone’s inflation rate is alarmingly weak at an annual minus 0.1 percent. Europe’s economy grew 0.4 percent in the second quarter but unemployment remains high at 11 percent.

Draghi is getting no help on the exchange rate from his counterparts across the Atlantic at the U.S. Federal Reserve. The Fed has sent the dollar lower by postponing its first rate increase in seven years. Higher interest rates in the United States would draw more investment into dollar-denominated investments, increasing demand for the dollar and boosting its exchange rate against other currencies. So when the Fed backed off a rate increase at its September meeting, it put some upward pressure on the euro versus the dollar.

The ECB, the chief monetary authority for the 19 countries that use the shared euro currency, is currently making monthly purchases of government and corporate bonds using newly created money.

Draghi will probably  try to keep a lid on the euro by making clear that more stimulus could be coming.

“We expect no action and dovish rhetoric, mainly intended to stem the euro appreciating trend,” Valli wrote in a research note. “Dovish” means inclined to loosen monetary policy, whether through lower interest rates or more stimulus.

The ECB has already cut its benchmark interest rate to 0.05 percent and has said that is as close to zero as it can get, so attention is focused on its stimulus program. That consists of buying bonds with freshly created money, effectively pumping cash into the banking system in hopes it will encourage lending and borrowing, and thus boost the economy.

The Fed, Bank of England, and Bank of Japan have all carried out such purchases, with mixed results. The U.S. and British economies have shown stronger growth, and U.S. unemployment has fallen. But the global economy continues to show signs of weakness, such as a drop in prices for fuel and other commodities and low market interest rates.

Yahoo’s earnings are down. Bests prospects are the sale of their Alibaba stock.  Did Marissa Mayer take on an impossible job?  At least she is being paid lots of money.

Business Insider reports:  Three years into Marissa Mayer’s project to rebuild Yahoo, the wheels are starting to come off.

Never mind that the company’s revenue remains stagnant and that it has not yet managed to create anything close to a hit product that would spark some buzz among consumers and investors.

Or that Snapchat reportedly dumped Yahoo from its Discover service because it decided Yahoo was simply not relevant to its younger “millennial” audience. Or that Yahoo’s stock has fallen 25% since May.

The real problem facing Yahoo is that its own team looks as if it’s giving up.

That became all too clear with Monday’s news that Jackie Reses, one of Mayer’s key lieutenants who joined the team early on, is leaving to join the digital-payments company Square, which is approaching an initial public offering.

Reses and some of the other recent departures are not long-suffering Yahoo employees who have finally decided to move on after years of CEO changes, company re-orgs, and other hardships.

This is the core team handpicked by Mayer to lead the comeback effort. These are the people who bought in to the vision and, it would appear, who have now lost faith that Mayer will lead them to the promised land.

Kathy Savitt, the chief marketing officer and another marquee Mayer hire, left Yahoo last month. Lisa Licht, Yahoo’s senior vice president of marketing partnerships, and roughly a dozen other execs have also left in recent months.

Yahoo’s management page still shows a 15-person senior leadership team (not including Reses, who is still listed).

But a few big names on that list would really damage whatever credibility the company’s comeback effort still has if they were to leave.

These include Jeff Bonforte, a Yahoo “boomerang” hire who oversees the company’s communications products, and Adam Cahan, who spearheads Yahoo’s video and emerging products.

And then of course, there is CFO Ken Goldman, who Mayer tapped early on to bring some Silicon Valley experience and gravitas to the turnaround effort.

Of course, with Yahoo moving forward with the planned spin-off of its 15% stake in the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, it may simply be that it’s mission-accomplished time for much of the executive team.

The IRS has refused to give its advanced blessing to make the Alibaba spin-off a tax-free transaction, as Yahoo and its shareholders want. But Yahoo has indicated that it will push forward with the plan regardless.

Yahoo’s stake in Alibaba is the real reason Yahoo’s own stock has more than doubled since Mayer took the reins in July 2012.

Yahoo’s shareholders would prefer a tax-free spin-off. But even if the spin-off is not entirely tax-free, completing it will give Yahoo’s management team a convenient opportunity to trumpet an achievement and to wash their hands of the rest of Yahoo.

Sun Trust analyst Robert Peck speculated in a note to investors that Yahoo could become an acquisition target or a private-equity play after the Alibaba spin-off.

Yahoo’s turnaround would of course still be a work in progress. But then, maybe it was never about that to begin with.

Carbon pricing will be a critical piece in global warming control.

Christine Lagarde and Jim Young Kim write:  Carbon pricing policies are already being implemented by some 40 national governments, including that of China, the world’s largest emitter, and 23 cities, states, and regions that are putting a price on carbon. Many other governments also are reforming energy prices, and more than 400 companies report using a voluntary, internal carbon price. That makes sense. Top companies must effectively manage exposure to climate risk in order to generate higher profits and ensure more stable earnings.  Carbon Pricing

Hovering over the annual International Monetary Fund/World Bank meeting in Lima, Peru, were the China-inspired Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and New Development Bank (or “BRICS Development Bank,” as it was originally called). Will these new institutions behave like the World Bank or the more conventionally “bank-like” European Investment Bank (EIB)? Above all, will they be vehicles to promote – or, paradoxically, constrain – China’s interests?

Devesh Kapur writes”  The reality is that over the next decade, these new institutions will not be huge lenders. The paid-in capital of each is $10 billion; so, even with an equity-to-loan ratio of 20% (the current floor for the World Bank), each will be able to lend only about $50 billion  – not chump change, but hardly a game changer – unless they “crowd in” substantial private investment. What matters is that the larger emerging markets are putting substantial capital into institutions that will be dominated by China – an indication of how frustrated they are with the World Bank and the IMF.

In the 2015 financial year, the EIB lent more than twice the amount provided by the Bank, but with one-sixth the staff. Whether measured by flows (loan disbursements) or stock (loans outstanding), the World Bank is massively over-staffed.

When the Bank was formed, the key governance mechanism was a resident Board of Directors that reported to a Board of Governors.  Over time, new offices proliferated.

Most of this bureaucratic growth was the result of pressure from developed countries.

The Bank’s extreme risk-averse culture reflects a rational response to critics who make a huge fuss about every project or program failure. Critics who take failures in commercial projects in stride find the Bank sloth-like compared with the private sector and become indignant when its projects fail. Yet, instead of making the case that risk is intrinsic to economic development and developing a risk-balanced portfolio of projects (and loans priced accordingly), the Bank pretends that it can be infallible. As a result, the best has become the enemy of the good.

Risk aversion has gone hand in hand with skewed institutional priorities, as is evident in the Bank’s budget. In the 2015 financial year, $623 million was allocated to “Client Engagement,” while nearly 1.5 times that amount, or $931.6 million, went to “Institutional, Governance & Administration” (the remaining $600 million, for “Program and Practice Management,” is ostensibly for supporting lending operations). Expenses for the Executive Board alone were $87 million. The Bank loudly proclaims the virtues of research – and then spends almost as much – $44 million – on “External and Corporate Relations.”  The Future of the World Bank

Along the rocky road to globalization, US corporations get taxed twice as much as corporations in other countries.  If they’re going to be competitive in business worldwide, they can’t pay disproportionate taxes.  Some people argue that taxing corporations and dividends is double taxation and perhaps we should limit the tax to dividends, and eliminate the corporate tax.  In any case, we should probably modify our tax code to bring it in better conformity with other countries around the world.