Opinion

  The end of Iceland’s nine years of capital controls is an occasion to celebrate for Icelandic businesses — and for those economists who, like Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, touted Iceland’s post-crisis recovery as an example of how it should be done. Yet even after almost a decade, Iceland may still need a relatively closed financial market for that …

  European companies are rushing to sell bonds in dollars. After all, that’s where the investors are. So far this year, dollar-denominated syndicated new bond sales have exceeded $475 billion, a record for any quarter. A surprising amount — about 22 percent — has come from European issuers. Within this, about $81 billion is from euro-area companies, including banks, according …

  In the dusty scrub of the Thar desert, Pakistan has begun to dig up one of the world’s largest deposits of low-grade, brown, dirty coal to fuel new power stations that could revolutionize the country’s economy. The project is one of the most expensive among an array of ambitious energy developments that China is helping the country to build …

  Mend it, don’t end it’ was Bill Clinton’s rhetorical straddle regarding affirmative action. Republican efforts to ‘repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act (ACA) (Obamacare) look increasingly like ‘mend it, don’t end it.’ The problem is not that, as is frequently said, no entitlement can be ended. The most consequential legislation of the 1990s, the 1996 welfare reform, repealed …

  Among financial geeks, the repurchase market is seen as the lifeblood of a monetary system. Without it, banks can’t really operate. China’s seized up, prompting the People’s Bank to perform an emergency cardiac massage. Other regulators in Beijing may want to look on closely, because they may be called upon to undertake a similar maneuver shortly. To understand what …

  The Federal Reserve might be doing the right thing for the US economy by moving to bring interest rates back up to normal. But for foreign companies and governments that have borrowed trillions of US dollars, the adjustment could be painful. Thanks in large part to a prolonged period of extremely low US interest rates, borrowers around the world …

  North Korea launched yet another missile. The missile test, though it turned out to be damp-squib, is nevertheless evidence of Pyongyang’s continued determination to develop intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). It seems there is nothing which can hold it back from pursuing its nuclear ambitions. North Korea is pushing hard to upgrade its weapons systems to cope with the so …

  The legal cases against Yogi Adityanath, the new chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous and politically significant state, include attempted murder and criminal intimidation. This freshly anointed leader of 200 million Indians, nearly 20% of whom are Muslim, wishes to install Hindu idols in every mosque in India, and has said that “if one Hindu is killed …

  Psst… want a frothy sale price? Sell a Hong Kong insurance asset, but do it quick, before Chinese regulators cotton on to mainland firms paying over the odds for the best yuan hedge around. Take Hong Kong Life Insurance Ltd., a small firm that an investment company associated with China UCF Group Co., the conglomerate led by businessman Zhang …

  Research on the so-called productivity paradox — declining productivity despite the ongoing technological revolution — abounds in explanations ranging from statistical error to theories predicting that a productivity leap is just around the corner. One possibility is conspicuously missing: Any positive effect digital innovation is having on productivity is offset by how counterproductively distracting and energy-draining its fruits have …