Opinion

  Wall Street seers expect the benchmark S&P 500 Index to generate earnings per share that are up 46% this year from 2020’s depressed level, with growth decelerating to 8% in 2022, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Even that lower number for the coming year may be too rosy. Covid-19 isn’t going away, as shown by the fast-spreading omicron ...

  In 2021, inflation returned. After a year-long debate, nobody can any longer deny this. In 2022, we will discover whether it’s here to stay and how much bitter economic medicine will be required to quell it. On this vital issue, opinion is as divided as ever. Optimists still maintain that even if inflation has turned out to be more ...

As the world hurtles into a new year, excitement about the reality of electric vehicles — and the challenge of powering them — will only grow. The future of EV batteries looks uncertain: How will they be manufactured? Will they be safe and, at long last, affordable? The supply chain snarls of 2021 will bleed into next year, only adding ...

  Ironically, the first major central bank likely to be tested in 2022 is the most dovish: The European Central Bank (ECB). Since the December 16 unveiling of its post-pandemic stimulus policy review, there has been a gradual but persistent widening of Italian government bond yields, showing that weaning markets off unlimited quantitative easing is no simple task. As Italian ...

  After trade and technology, financial markets are shaping up to be the next front in the cold war between the US and China. Policy makers shouldn’t plunge into this battle too eagerly. Chinese regulators imposed new curbs on companies seeking to list overseas, potentially closing a loophole that technology firms have used to raise capital in the US. Broader ...

  Amsterdam’s historical significance for global capitalism is hard to overstate. It created the stock market, the tulip bubble and a mega-corporation so big it had its own money, army and colony. Economists later wondered if there was something almost spiritual in the way the Dutch took to money. That fascination ebbed as empires fell and the era of global ...

Like 2021, next year will be a pivotal one for Hong Kong and China. For the former British colony, the template appears set: The system has been remade to entrench Beijing’s control, freedoms that were guaranteed under “one country, two systems” have been eroded, hundreds are in prison for political offenses, and tens of thousands of people who can are ...

  Imagine this: You test positive for Covid-19 and begin self-isolating at home. It’s Day Two of quarantine and you’re happier than Kevin McCallister in “Home Alone.” You’ve already completed a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle and binged the entire second season of “Emily in Paris” on Netflix. Everything is just peachy — until some authorities in hazmat suits barge in on ...

  In mid-1989, shortly before the collapse of the USSR, an outgoing Rand Corporation Soviet-watcher named Francis Fukuyama captivated the chattering classes with an essay predicting “The End of History.” Short version: The impending demise of communism made the universal triumph of liberal democracy all but inevitable. To borrow from what Wordsworth said about the French Revolution, that would have ...

  The coming year may be one of the most crucial for the global energy system and the climate that absorbs so much of its carbon dioxide waste. After the pandemic collapse of 2020 and the chaotic restart of economies over the past year, 2022 will be the first time we can get a picture of what normality might be ...