Opinion

Uncertainty about federal economic policy is greater than any time in the last 40 years. On one hand we have senior policy makers calling for increasing already massive budget deficits, locking in the loosest imaginable monetary policy for the foreseeable future, and boosting taxes on businesses, Wall Street and the rich if inflation rates spike higher. On the other hand ...

London is finally getting a proper test of its appetite for loss-making, high-growth technology stocks. The impending initial public offering of cybersecurity startup Darktrace Plc fulfills many of the criteria that much-hyped Deliveroo Holdings Plc didn’t, but investors are still being asked to overlook some issues that would likely be less of a concern in the US. Deliveroo’s experience made ...

A 2021 remake of Get Shorty might not have much use for John Travolta’s Miami mobster character. The debt collector role could go to a bot. You can test this hypothesis in a most unlikely place to roll out a new technology: the Indian countryside. The setting is perhaps not as odd as it seems, with about 5% to 10% ...

For years, video consumption was rising — from television to streaming apps to social media platforms. But one of the most thrilling parts of entertainment was mostly missing from the video world until the pandemic hit: the power of truly “live” streaming content. But with large gatherings off-limits during the pandemic, musicians and arts organisations started putting together live performances ...

The fixed-income landscape is set to be transformed as the European Union revs up to borrow $1 trillion by selling bonds in its own right. While talk of creating a market to rival US Treasuries is overblown, the forthcoming flood of securities will offer investors a genuine alternative to German bunds as the region’s debt benchmark. The EU will issue ...

Here’s another reason to thank the medical profession amid the misery of Covid — doctors want you to have more space to spread out when flying. The risk of catching the virus onboard drops by 57% when middle seats are left unoccupied on planes, according to a study by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That validates the ...

I can’t understand why people are pouring their hard-earned money into cryptocurrencies instead of campers. The RV boom that began last year shows no sign of slowing down. Shipments are expected to reach record levels this year, and buyers are snatching up units as soon as they hit the lot. Inventory for used RVs is just as tight, and the ...

There’s something fitting about Morgan Stanley’s loss from the blowup of Archegos Capital Management totalling $911 million. By all accounts, the episode was among the biggest emergencies within the banking industry since the global financial crisis. The hit certainly came as something of a surprise, given that there was little indication of this kind of loss in advance, and Goldman ...

We’re all pinning our hopes on vaccines to free us to meet friends and family, travel and return to something like our normal lives. Oil market forecasters, too, are finally getting a little more optimistic about the recovery in demand that should accompany that return. But a closer look shows we’re just not there yet. In their latest monthly reports, ...

The US is once again facing a border crisis — a wave of asylum seekers from Central America. President Joe Biden knows that the only long-term way to make the issue go away is to improve the economies of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. But doing that will require more than foreign aid, it will require US companies to actually ...