Opinion

Florida’s response to Hurricane Ian illustrates how governments are making it harder to adjust to climate change by subsidizing the insurance market. One of the classic rejoinders to worries about climate change is the claim that people can move out of highly vulnerable areas into safer areas. Maybe the world will not be willing to accept hundreds of millions of ...

  “Cramming more components onto integrated circuits.” That was the blunt title of Gordon E. Moore’s essay on silicon chips published in Electronics magazine in April 1965. In the space of just three pages, the director of semiconductor R&D at Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp. outlined one of the most powerful observations in modern business and science. He wouldn’t have ...

  Trying to guess what Elon Musk will do from day to day is like trying to hold a moonbeam in your hand. But the state of play, as of Tuesday, October 4, 2022, is that Elon Musk now wants to buy Twitter for the $54.20 he initially offered for the social-media company back in April, according to Bloomberg News. ...

The US and Russia are waging the most intense contest in great-power coercion since the height of the Cold War. Russian President Vladimir Putin is using nuclear threats and other escalations in a bid to avoid humiliation in Ukraine. Washington is wielding its own array of pressures to force Putin to accept just that outcome. The good news is that, ...

  If there’s one city in the world that has reason to welcome the latest bout of global currency turmoil, it’s Hong Kong. With Britain shooting down the pound, Japan intervening to support the yen for the first time in almost a quarter-century, and Europe’s single currency reaching a two-decade low, there’s less attention on the Chinese territory’s 39-year-old dollar ...

  “The better part of valor is discretion,” Shakespeare wrote in Henry IV, Part One. Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng bowed to the inevitable and U-turned on his plans to lower the highest rate of income tax. The Bank of England should mirror his caution by shelving plans to sell its bond holdings for at least the rest of ...

  Treasury securities play a crucial role in global finance. They’re widely viewed as a close substitute for dollars, a safe place to park everything from a company’s cash to a central bank’s reserves. They provide a benchmark for determining the value of a vast array of assets, including mortgages, corporate bonds and shares in public companies. They’re the ultimate ...

Even as Russian President Vladimir Putin prosecutes his vicious and failing war in Ukraine, he continues to cast his ambitions further afield. Russia is trying to undermine democracies throughout Europe, funneling funds and support to far-right groups and propaganda operations. Putin has found particularly fertile ground in the Balkans, pushing his view that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is intent ...

  In rural America, the shoulder-high corn is increasingly competing with a new cash crop: solar power. Acres of solar panels shine brightly in fields along interstates and rural byways, signaling a change in how America’s farming country generates income. The need for a happy marriage between these old and new industries has inspired a burst of innovation and a ...

  If Europe was a school student, last week it sat its first exam in Energy Savings 101. It failed. And that doesn’t bode well for much tougher tests to come in January. Despite strong imports of liquefied natural gas to replace Russian shipments, Europe needs to reduce gas consumption — by a lot — if it’s going to make ...