Opinion

  After the Brexit vote, Christmas was always going to be the British consumer’s last hurrah. Official data today makes it look like the party never even got started. The volume of goods sold in December fell 1.9 percent from November, the Office for National Statistics said on Friday, the biggest drop since April 2012. This bad news is at …

  Posterity will pass fuller and fairer judgment on the presidency of Barack Obama than is possible today, but on one issue the verdict is already clear: personal integrity. In an especially hostile political environment, Obama was civil and decent, and he served with honor and dignity. Partisanship should not prevent Republicans from acknowledging these truths. Like his predecessor, George …

  And finally Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States on Friday, becoming commander-in- chief of a riven nation facing uncertainty under a leader who had never held before any political office or high military rank. In his inaugural speech, which lasted for about 16 minutes, Trump painted a bleak picture of America, which …

  Last week, I joined the New Mexico governor, congressional delegation members, the mayors of Carlsbad and Hobbs, citizens and a proud workforce in commemorating the reopening of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant after a three-year shutdown because of an underground accident. The facility is the US’s only geological repository for nuclear waste, such as plutonium-contaminated materials from the Department …

  It takes around 35 years for a median-income household to buy a 90-square-meter (970 square foot) apartment in Hong Kong. So, by 2052 in other words. That makes the former British colony the world’s least affordable city, according to Oxford Economics. Now, with Chinese buyers forking out ever-higher amounts for land sold by the government and outbidding domestic stalwarts, …

  It’s a new year, and for many investors that means it’s time to rebalance that old portfolio. Portfolio rebalancing is one of the most cherished wisdoms in investing. The markets can whipsaw investments in a portfolio over time, and rebalancing brings it back into, well, balance. Rebalancing is also a backdoor way to buy low and sell high because …

  CIA Director John Brennan’s biggest concern the past few years hasn’t been Russian hacking, or even the wars in the Middle East, but what he calls “modernization” of the agency. In an effort to improve performance of this notoriously siloed organization, Brennan moved to fuse operations (the agency’s vaunted spies) and analysis (its less glamorous but no less essential …

  It’s been two years since the European Central Bank decided to combat the region’s economic woes by expanding the supply of money, buying bonds and slashing interest rates to nothing. The moves effectively debased the euro, prompting a chorus of investors and strategists to opine that the shared currency would soon tumble to parity with the dollar for the …

On Tuesday, UK Prime Minister Theresa May set out her fullest account yet of her aims in the forthcoming Brexit negotiations. Greater clarity was overdue, and welcome — but with it comes a clearer understanding of the enormous hazards Britain faces as this process moves forward. May said, “What I am proposing cannot mean membership of the single market.” That …

  World is waiting to see where the mutual admiration between President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will proceed to. Will this wooing translate into a long-term courtship? Trump called Putin smart guy. The Republican said, “if Putin likes me, it’s an asset.” Trump also initially out-rightly rejected the intelligence agencies’ findings about Russian hacking and called it …