Opinion

  There’s certainly no shortage of cash lying around at Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Even so, Warren Buffett’s struggle to find the $407 billion company’s next meaningful acquisition shows that his relative buying power has diminished. If you attended or streamed the shareholder meeting on Saturday, you heard a lot about Berkshire’s soaring cash pile, which stood at $96.5 billion as …

  In his new book “The Complacent Class,” my Bloomberg View colleague Tyler Cowen mentions that more Americans may be slacking off at work. He offers this as one more measure of the comfortable malaise into which American culture has settled. But it also occurs to me that if leisure is replacing effort at work, it means that the country …

  In his heroically doomed 48-year campaign to promote The Washington Monthly, Charles Peters hit upon one especially apt (if un-catchy) slogan: “If you’re not afraid of being right too soon.” Peters founded his little magazine in 1969. From the start, he needled mainstream liberals about issues that weren’t getting enough attention at the time: income inequality, entrepreneurship, Wall Street’s …

  A victory for liberal candidate Moon Jae-in, the favourite in Tuesday’s presidential elections in South Korea, would end nine years of conservative rule, and may energize what Mirae Asset Daewoo Co.’s investment strategist Peter Kim calls the “Occupy chaebol” movement. For shareholders of Samsung Electronics Co., the shifting political winds could mean more dividends and share buybacks. Popular angst …

  Energy Secretary Rick Perry is right to say the U.S. needs a long-term solution to its massive nuclear waste problem. It also makes sense for Perry and some members of Congress to see Yucca Mountain as part of that solution — though many Nevadans promise to make sure it won’t be. But even if Yucca can survive the political …

  Venezuela is slipping into chaos as President Nicolas Maduro called for the popular assembly last week in a fresh attempt to consolidate his hold on the nation. The opposition has refused to help draft a new constitution, calling the process fraudulent. The opposition coalition has accused Maduro of going against the country’s charter as any constitutional change requires the …

  What happens when strongmen meet? We know that the world is slowly filling up with populist nationalists, from Manila to Washington. But how do they plan to deal with each other? Will they join forces against the sanctimonious, supra-national powers that dismay them all? Or will they compete, as erstwhile tough guys seem most comfortable doing? Perhaps we shouldn’t …

  News that Alipay hooked up with First Data Corp. in the US may end up being more significant for both the Chinese fintech player and for Apple Inc. than Jack Ma’s $1.2 billion bid for an old-school payments provider, MoneyGram International Inc. In one swoop, the payments affiliate of Ma’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. gets access to 4 million …

  In 1989, Sears Roebuck & Co. ruled America as its biggest retailer. It loomed over rivals from a perch high above Chicago, inside what was once the world’s tallest building—one bearing the company’s name. The fall from that height may finally be nearing an end. Over the course of almost three decades, the company experienced what industry observers described …

  Once the initial market relief plays out — that, even during an unprecedented ‘anti-establishment’ wave in both Europe and the US, French voters rejected a far right president in Marine Le Pen of the National Front — interest will shift to how relative newcomer Emmanuel Macron will manage to govern in a country accustomed to mainstream politics. And it …