Opinion

Millennials are growing up. After spending years splashing out on everything from skydiving excursions to Instagrammable vacations in Peru, 30-somethings with decent-paying jobs are making lasting purchases, buying cars, houses and everything inside them. The retreat from offices during pandemic has only cemented the urge to settle down and accumulate the trappings of adulthood. While Covid-era disruptions have been the ...

  In recent weeks, Democratic officials in New York and California have proposed legislation granting individual citizens the right to sue manufacturers of assault weapons and ghost guns. More aggressive action to curb gun violence is undoubtedly warranted. Openly subverting the will of federal courts is the wrong way to go about it. First proposed by California Governor Gavin Newsom, ...

  The reason that our initial and instinctive view of, well, all of you was so skewed is that we have a human brain. Cognitively, we’ve evolved to have what’s called a negativity bias. Our ancestors in the savannas had a better chance of surviving and, therefore, of passing on their genes, if they paid disproportionate attention to anything actually ...

  War is coming — a not-so-great northern war. Don’t be fooled by last week’s conversation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his American counterpart Joe Biden, with its promise of further negotiations in January. When one party is bent on war, this kind of diplomatic activity often continues until just hours before hostilities begin. We should not be deluded: ...

The year will be a money milestone. January 1 marks two decades since the first euro banknotes and coins got into people’s pockets. Even anarchic Bitcoiners should care: The euro was the first new currency of the 21st century (though clearly a product of the 20th). It was viewed with skepticism by economists (there was no country called ‘Euroland’, after ...

  In talking with a number of market players the last few weeks, there seems to be a broad consensus that 2022 is going to be more challenging than 2021, which almost makes me wonder if stocks won’t be up another 20% next year, defying bearish expectations yet again. But things are a little different than this time a year ...

  Rarely has an arcane interagency dispute proved so needlessly disruptive. On December 5, 2021, wireless carriers had expected to begin rolling out 5G, the next standard for cellular networks, on a critical new frequency known as the C-band. The deployment promised increased bandwidth, faster transmissions, wider range, and many new possibilities for wireless devices and apps, potentially turning a ...

  The north Indian town of Haridwar, where the Ganges River flows out of the Himalayas onto India’s vast plains, has been for centuries a destination for pilgrims. For three days in December, it also played host to what the Indian media has called a “hate-speech conclave,” in which multiple speakers — all dressed in saffron garb, the traditional signifier ...

Could London soon be known more for what arrives on its stock market than what gets taken off it? Private-equity firms feasted wantonly on UK stocks in 2021. Bid activity has softened lately and a tougher national-security regime from January threatens to slow takeovers further, with the result that fewer firms leave the London market. At the same time, there ...

  Governments, consumer internet behemoths, large banks and fintech firms will compete fiercely in 2022 to bring our cashless future a little closer — with Asia at the epicenter of innovation. In China, where authorities are increasingly uneasy with the domestic private sector’s control on citizens’ data, the state will seek to reassert its might: The Beijing Winter Olympics will ...