Opinion

People who invest in the world’s energy systems often want to know how many trillions of dollars will be needed to finance renewable energy and natural gas. One way to find the answer is to look at what those who have already invested trillions of dollars want to happen as the world transitions to a lower-carbon power system and electrifies …

Sir John Templeton, the pioneer in global mutual funds, once said “the four most costly words in the annals of investing” are “this time is different.” That should resonate with monetary policy makers and institutional investors grappling with the causes, impacts and risks of the lowest market volatility, by far, in the era of modern finance. As this cycle of …

We don’t need an economic boom, but that’s what we may be getting. Since the 2016 election, the stock market is up roughly 24 percent, reports Wilshire Associates. The price of the cybercurrency bitcoin soared more than 1,000 percent before retreating. The unemployment rate of 4.1 percent is the lowest since 2000. The economy’s growth has exceeded 3 percent for …

China has begun a great rental giveaway, offering cheap land and subsidized loans in an effort to kick-start development of home leasing markets in major cities across the nation. Anyone expecting a rental housing boom to match the growth of the private purchase market may be disappointed, though: China’s real estate industry is likely to remain dominated by the development …

‘California Regulates Cow Farts,’ is how a New York Post headline put it, implying it was a wacky move by Governor Jerry Brown. In fact, California’s methane law represents a serious attempt by America’s biggest dairy state to come to grips with a potent greenhouse gas. Methane is responsible for about a quarter of human-generated global warming. While it’s not …

Even by government standards, it is a colossally dumb idea: revoking someone’s license to work as a way to get them to pay off their student loans. Yet many states do just that. Student loan debt has more than doubled since 2009 to $1.3 trillion today. The average borrower in the class of 2016 left campus more than $30,000 in …

Bad things don’t happen to good banks. Or that’s the carefully crafted image projected by the world’s priciest lender. Assiduously shielding its loan book from the flying debris of India’s $207 billion bad-debt crisis, HDFC Bank Ltd. has kept its balance sheet in a near-pristine condition. The aura of invincibility bestowed by a 1.26 percent soured-loan ratio — compared with …

Questions, questions, questions. If there’s one thing that’s tailed China’s Xiaomi Corp. for the past six years, it’s questions. The most recent come as a pair: Will the company IPO next year, and will it fetch the $50 billion it’s supposedly seeking? Last weekend, tech industry newsletter The Information reported that the maker of smartphones and other devices is eyeing …

Not much time passes these days between so-called major advancements in artificial intelligence. Yet researchers are not much closer than they were decades ago to the big goal: actually replicating human intelligence. That’s the most surprising revelation by a team of eminent scholars who just released the first in what is meant to be a series of annual reports on …

What the Republicans are offering on taxes is a bad bargain for America’s future. They would borrow — roughly $1.5 trillion over a decade — to finance tax cuts that are pleasing for the present. Future Americans would pay the bill. There are at least three reasons why the Senate should reject its version of this self-serving deal. First, it’s …