Opinion

  US Secretary of Defense James Mattis and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg have taken a tough line against Russia’s many recent provocations. Other than calling for all members of the alliance to pay their fair share of the military bill, however, they have offered no real plan of action. Russia’s aggressions call for a stronger response. While Mattis is …

  US President Donald Trump’s pick for national security adviser drew praise even from his staunchest critic Senator John McCain of Arizona. Trump chose H.R McMaster to fill the post left vacant after the resignation of Michael Flynn over Russian call controversy. Flynn resigned last week over the allegation that he misled Vice President Pence about contacts with Russian envoy. …

  mid the blizzard of election news last November, two writers at the nonprofit news organization ProPublica came out with a startling investigative report. Jesse Eisinger and Justin Elliott wrote about a small but very wealthy group of American economists who make millions of dollars helping companies deal with the federal government on antitrust cases. They focused on Dennis Carlton, …

  About a year ago, I wrote a couple of columns examining the data available in the industries responsible for moving goods from A to B. “Shipping News Says World Economy Is Toast,” was my dour conclusion. Today, however, many of those indicators are pointing to a much brighter outlook for the global economy, suggesting that reflation has indeed replaced …

  The advent of big data was supposed to usher in a more precise and rational world. Instead, it might be leading us into the swamp of “alternative facts.” Data may not lie, but they can be interpreted in ways that have the same effect. Consider President Donald Trump’s persistent claim that millions voted fraudulently in the 2016 election. In …

  It’s time to put the Korea reunification trade back on the table, but only after ditching the German blueprint. With China suspending coal imports from North Korea, Pyongyang may have lost between a third and two-fifths of its export income. One gauge of whether investors perceive the embargo to be harsh enough to destabilize the despotic Kim Jong Un …

  President Trump confronts complicated problems as the investigation widens into Russia’s attack on our political system. But his responsibilities are simple: A month ago, he swore an oath that he would “faithfully execute” his office and “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” That’s apparently easier said than done. In a rambling press conference Thursday and …

  Speculators have piled back into oil since OPEC announced output cuts in November. But don’t be fooled into thinking that means prices are set to soar. As my Bloomberg News colleague Alex Longley pointed out last week, hedge funds and money managers have placed record trades on an oil rally. Net long positions of so-called oil speculators reached an …

  Europe’s promise to lower greenhouse-gas emissions looked bright a dozen years ago, when its leaders created the first big market for trading carbon permits. Sadly, though, its system has failed to encourage investment in clean technology and appreciably lower carbon dioxide emissions. Until the European Union trims the number of permits traded enough to drastically raise the cost of …

  US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in Iraq as forces of the war-torn country embarked on major air-and-ground offensive to drive IS extremists from western Mosul. Iraq’s second-largest city Mosul fell into the hands of the extremists in the summer of 2014, when the group captured large swaths of northern and western Iraq. Iraqi army, special operations forces, and federal …