Opinion

There’s a conflict brewing in Europe between regulators, banks and some politicians over how new Basel III-compliant rules will be framed. Several banks, as well as policymakers in countries including France and Germany, say the capital requirements called for under the new regulations are too high. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision thinks that these last-ditch efforts to weaken Basel ...

Mercedes-Benz AG recently introduced its Maybach sport utility vehicle in India — right in the middle of a fierce second wave of the pandemic. The 50 cars the German automaker wanted to sell by the end of 2021 were lapped up in a month. It turns out that just as the rich were scrambling to own these $400,000 wheels, annual ...

Of the natural gas burned in American homes, just 2.8% is used for cooking, according to a 2015 survey by the US Energy Information Administration. Residential natural-gas use in turn makes up just 15% of total US consumption, a percentage that has fallen over the past decade as natural gas passed coal to become the country’s main power-plant fuel and ...

Patients and their families may see hope in the news that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a drug to slow the pace of Alzheimer’s disease. Aducanumab is the first medicine authorised to treat what might be an underlying cause of the disease: amyloid beta clumps that accumulate in the brain. Yet the evidence from clinical trials that ...

The last time Geneva served as the venue for a US-Russia summit — in 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev, still fresh in his role as Secretary General of the Soviet Communist Party, met with Ronald Reagan — the US president remarked that “people didn’t get into trouble when they talked to each other but rather when they talked about each other.” ...

I see symbolism in Joe Biden’s calendar over the coming days — and an opportunity for a new US approach to the European Union. With luck, it’ll culminate in American support for European military integration. Here’s the US president’s line-up: This weekend, he’s in the UK, America’s main ally in World War II. On Monday, he’ll be in Brussels for ...

Britain is undergoing a regional renaissance. People have moved to Dorset from London and are holidaying in Suffolk rather than Spain. Call it the legacy of lockdown: Things are finally heating up outside of the capital. Demand for property in outer regions of the UK has surged, as has interest in domestic tourism. With England’s reopening on June 21 looking ...

Current labour shortages might be temporary as workers re-enter the labour force over the next several months, but the higher pay they’re earning won’t be, given the tendency for wages to be sticky. That’s going to make this economic expansion different than the last one. An expansion starting with high wages and a constrained labour pool will encourage the creation ...

Over the past month, campaigners have been celebrating moves to get the world’s biggest oil companies to address climate change. In the US, shareholders of Exxon Mobil Corp overruled top management to appoint new board members dedicated to accelerating the firm’s transition away from fossil fuels. At the same time, in Europe, a court in The Hague ruled that Royal ...

Consumer advocates are cheering Amazon’s quiet decision to stop mandating arbitration for most customer disputes. The online retail giant, like other vendors, has heretofore included in its terms of service a ban on lawsuits. Without making a public announcement, the company has switched gears. We might be cheering too soon. Even though Amazon had little choice — more on that ...