Opinion

If Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen means anything to business, labour and the world right now, it is as the avatar of the moral that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Yellen, who was the only female chair of the 108-year-old Federal Reserve, has never done anything without exceptional due diligence. Her best-in-class career delivering financial stability bodes well ...

Researchers estimate that about four out of five Covid-19 patients suffer a partial or total loss of smell, a condition known as anosmia. Many have no other symptoms. And no, it’s got nothing to do with stuffy noses; it’s all about the havoc the coronavirus wreaks on our nervous systems. Many patients recover their olfaction quickly. Others smell less than ...

At a time when the economy is growing rapidly again, the last thing Congress should do is make unemployment more financially rewarding than working. Unfortunately, a part of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion pandemic relief plan would do just that. The president proposes paying unemployed workers a $400 weekly supplement on top of other jobless benefits they receive. If adopted, ...

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is due to provide a roadmap out of England’s lockdown restrictions on February 22, but those in his party who want the curbs lifted are growing impatient. The UK government is on track to reach its target of vaccinating the top four priority groups by the middle of the month. The over-50s could be largely vaccinated ...

Natixis SA’s 14 years as a publicly traded bank will be best forgotten. Losses during the global financial crisis pushed the French firm, which trades securities and owns an asset manager, to the edge soon after its 2006 creation. While the company has been profitable since then, repeated trading losses and funds that ran wild have been a constant reminder ...

In the technology world, this may be remembered as the month when Clubhouse started to matter. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg made appearances on the service. For a short time, Chinese-language discussions dealt with the Xinjiang issue in a frank and open manner, attracting wide public attention. If you don’t already know, Clubhouse is a year-old social media service consisting ...

The Senate’s impeachment trial of Donald Trump is unprecedented: It’s the first time a president has been tried twice, and the first time an ex-president has been tried at all. The fact that it is taking place is a testament to how outrageous Trump’s conduct was in his last months in office. Even opponents of the impeachment trial, such as ...

The extended trial brief filed by Donald Trump’s lawyers advances three defenses: that Trump did not incite the January 6 attack on the Capitol; that the Senate can’t try a president who is no longer in office; and that the First Amendment protects Trump from being impeached for words that, they say, don’t meet the requirements for criminal incitement conviction ...

The biggest sterling corporate bond deal ever is being launched to refinance the purchase of Asda, a British supermarket owned previously by Walmart Inc. It will be a real test of investor appetite amid the mad market rush for seemingly any kind of asset. In normal times, it would be a brave move funding a leveraged buyout by new entrants ...

It looks like congressional Democrats and the White House will get those $1,400 stimulus checks out the door in the next few weeks. Economists and the government are hoping you spend 100% of that money immediately to boost the economy. A booming economy would be a good thing, but that doesn’t mean you should spend your whole check. Instead, consider ...