Opinion

For all the talk of tax cuts in UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini budget last week, the most significant stealth tax imposed by his predecessor Rishi Sunak remains very much in place. In his spring budget of 2021, Sunak sought to offset the cost of the pandemic with a four-year freeze in income-tax thresholds. Ordinarily, these thresholds ...

  The new US Covid booster campaign needs a dose of clarity about its goals and limitations. The latest “bivalent” vaccine — retooled to protect against the currently circulating BA.5 variant — will benefit some more than others. The oldest and most vulnerable citizens are likely to benefit most. Public health officials should aim to protect them through a targeted ...

  A rush to dump UK government bonds following a botched budget announcement forced a dramatic intervention by the Bank of England on Wednesday. The central bank promised to buy long-term bonds “on whatever scale is necessary” to restore order in the market. It amounted to an official declaration of imminent financial crisis, apparently centered on pension funds facing insolvency ...

The £40 billion ($43 billion) plan announced in the first days of Liz Truss’s government to bolster energy traders remains a black box. Who benefits, at what cost and under what conditions is a mystery the Treasury and the Bank of England have yet to explain — with three weeks to go until the fund is formally launched. The Energy ...

In 2016, Alan Jope did an energetic workout with the host of the “Spartan UP!” motivational podcast series, at one point even doing burpees. But the longtime Unilever Plc executive turned out to be less of a corporate action man. The maker of Marmite and Magnum ice cream said that Jope would retire at the end of next year. The ...

  In 1961, a boxy sedan called the Ford Cortina kicked off Thailand’s auto industry with local workers assembling the cars using parts shipped from Britain. A few years later, Toyota Motor Corp. and Nissan Motor Co. set up factories, launching a decades-long expansion that made the country Asia’s third-largest — and the world’s No. 10 — auto manufacturer. That ...

  Amid the stir caused by President Biden’s plan to cancel student loan debts, far too little attention has been paid to another far-reaching reform: the administration’s change to a lending program known as income-driven repayment (or IDR). If widely applied, Biden’s proposal would provide additional relief to millions of borrowers — and make the US student loan system even ...

Who is the real “change candidate” after 12 years of Conservative government in the UK: Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition Labour party? Or Liz Truss, the fourth successive Tory prime minister? That is the question Starmer must answer at his annual party conference in Liverpool this weekend. The result of the next general election in two years’ time ...

The Bank of England’s next scheduled monetary policy gathering on Nov. 3 is a long, long way away. With the pound dropping to a record low against the dollar this week and UK borrowing costs surging, market soothsayers have called for an inter-meeting intervention. But Governor Andrew Bailey has resisted that temptation — and he’s right not to fall into ...

  Do Kwon is not on the run. We know that because the cryptocurrency founder said so. Singapore authorities announced that he’s no longer in their country, a South Korean court issued a warrant for his arrest, and Interpol put out a Red Notice. But that doesn’t mean he’s ready to reveal his whereabouts, or his legal strategy to fight ...