Opinion

The effects of this month’s global ransomware attack seem to be fading, fortunately. But a crucial question the incident raised is only getting more urgent. When it comes to online security, the U.S. government’s priorities — preventing terrorism and protecting cyberspace — are in permanent tension. Is there a way to resolve it? The National Security Agency (NSA) routinely seeks out …

Germany wants good relations with both Russia and the English-speaking world, but it can’t really trust either, according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Such admissions don’t advance her re-election campaign as some claim, but her aim is much broader than that anyhow. Merkel’s remarks that “the time when we could fully rely on others is pretty much gone” and that …

Investors with a macro view of the global economy will undoubtedly take into account population growth. Even though the pace of the expansion has peaked (1962-3), the overall number of people continues to grow, led by emerging markets. Estimates have put the total at 8.4 billion by mid-2030, and 9.6 billion by mid-2050. Contributing to this statistic is that people …

For decades, Nestle SA has tried to get its infant milk powder into the hands of China’s new mothers with promises of brighter, healthier babies. Now it’s trying to do the same for the elderly. Last week, the company launched “Nestle YIYANG Fuel for brainTM senior milk powder,” a formula designed to help China’s seniors “refuel their brains and start …

When in the Senate chamber, Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, sits by choice at the desk used by the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan. New York’s scholar-senator would have recognized that Sasse has published a book of political philosophy in the form of a guide to parenting. Moynihan understood that politics is downstream from culture, which flows through families. Sasse, a …

After China, it’s Hong Kong’s turn to take Moody’s Investors Service to task. The city’s financial secretary wrote a blog post on Sunday to express his displeasure with the recent one-notch cut in Hong Kong’s sovereign rating to Aa2. More than the downgrade, what seems to have really irked Paul Chan are the 16 references to “links” and “linkages;” four …

The gory details of the Congressional Budget Office’s report on the House legislation to “repeal and replace” Obamacare are, in many ways, superfluous. The bill’s flaws, substantive and otherwise, have long been evident. Less clearly understood, though equally disturbing, is the larger political context. That’s not to say the particulars of the CBO report, released Wednesday, are irrelevant: far from …

Three years after he was elected, Prime Minister Narendra Modi looms over India’s political scene like no other leader in the country’s recent history. And his critics must explain why his mass appeal seems unimpaired, despite his increasingly authoritarian ways and growing failures. Modi is far from realizing his promises of economic and military security. Pakistan-backed militants continue to strike …

Universal basic income (UBI) schemes are often rejected out of hand as too expensive. In some countries, however, paying every resident a basic income sufficient for survival could actually result in budget savings. That’s the surprising conclusion in a fresh policy brief from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The OECD decided to contribute to the basic income …

Almost a decade after a crisis that nearly brought down the global financial system, markets still aren’t showing much confidence in banks. It’s a troubling phenomenon that U.S. and European leaders ignore at their peril. It’s understandable that, after years of wrangling and thousands of pages of new rules, regulators might want to consider their mission accomplished. They have changed …