Schumpeter

ARE China's state secrets no longer sacrosanct? American regulators and their Chinese counterparts have been at loggerheads for some time over American demands to review the working papers of firms that audit Chinese companies listed on American stock exchanges. The snag, as the Chinese divisions of the Big Four accountancies have noisily complained, is that the Chinese government forbids them from turning over the working documents demanded by America's Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

GOOGLE’S lawyers and lobbyists in Washington rarely have an idle moment. According to a report by Bloomberg on May 23rd, America’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has opened a preliminary investigation into whether the internet behemoth has abused its clout in display advertising to give it an unfair advantage over competitors. There is no guarantee that this will turn into a formal investigation, but it is yet another example of how Google is coming under intense scrutiny from regulators.

COMPANIES such as Apple and Google are renowned for their ground-breaking technological innovations. They have also put a great deal of effort into reducing the amount of tax they pay on the mountains of cash those innovations produce. Their tactics are now attracting the attention of governments, who have been putting tech firms’ tax strategies under a microscope. Last week, Google came under fire from British politicians, one of whom publicly accused the internet giant of using unethical methods to avoid paying its fair share of tax. The company says it has done nothing wrong.

AT A recent conference, Ken Goldman, the chief financial officer of Yahoo, admitted that the internet giant had an ageing audience and was looking for things to “make us cool again”. The firm's senior executives appear to think Tumblr can give it a shot at rejuvenation. According to various media reports, Yahoo is likely to announce tomorrow that it is paying $1.1 billion for the popular blogging service. (Editor's update (May 20th, 12pm GMT): Yahoo announced the deal on Monday morning.) Other companies like Facebook are said to be interested in Tumblr, but Yahoo is thought to be the preferred bidder.

ONCE illustrated with pictures of happy village women engaged in lending circles, and celebrated as an ideal charitable activity that helps people earn their way out of poverty, in recent years microcredit has become increasingly controversial. Critics have argued that giving poor people a small affordable loan is not in fact an effective way to help them escape from poverty. And the growth in loan volume has been driven lately by a bunch of for-profit microlenders who their critics say have motives that are anything but charitable.

The most successful of these for-profit lenders is a case in point.

GIVEN that oil is a vital source of energy and its price has ramifications for every economy on the planet, it is not surprising that regulators keep an eye on the way it is set. Europe’s antitrust watchdogs clearly believe something is amiss. On May 14th the European Commission said that it had carried out “unannounced inspections” at big oil and biofuel companies which it suspects of having colluded to manipulate prices in the physical market.

Some big names are involved: Shell, BP, Norway’s Statoil, and Platts, the world's leading price reporting agency that surveys buyers and sellers to set prices for crude and oil products.

WOLFGANG SCHÄUBLE backs a European banking union, global markets climb and a handful of English shops open in China, where some are snatching up luxury goods