Opinion

The lockdowns of the past year have tempted food delivery companies in the US and Europe to gorge. But they’re filling up on the equivalent of junk food — offerings that accelerate growth but have little nutritional value. Top of the list is grocery deliveries. Platforms such as Uber Eats and Deliveroo have capitalised on more people ordering groceries online ...

Australia’s iron-ore miners could be excused for casting a nervous eye north. With little fanfare, China, the world’s biggest consumer of iron ore, opened its doors to 3,000 tons of Japanese scrap metal. It was the country’s first such import since it imposed a near-total ban on “foreign garbage” in 2019. It won’t be the last. In the short-term, that ...

The demise of the Keystone XL pipeline heralds the beginning of the end for the oil age in the US and Canada. This is a necessary evolution, but it raises many challenges. Workers displaced by the shift away from oil will need new jobs, and energy industry clusters like Houston and Alberta will need new activities to sustain their economies. ...

The impeachment defense brief of former president Donald Trump mostly consists of three elements, each of which I’ve addressed (and rejected) in previous columns: the purported unconstitutionality of trying the president once he is out of office; his supposed First Amendment rights; and his denial that he incited the attack on the Capitol. But there is something new in the ...

Hong Kong is no stranger to goodbyes. In the lead-up to the 1997 handover to China, thousands left, often for Canada and Australia. Now, hundreds of thousands more may be contemplating a new British immigration program aimed at providing solace to a former colony increasingly in Beijing’s grip. It’s a long-delayed wave of departures from a defunct empire, with all ...

Debt-ridden HNA Group Co, which splashed out over $40 billion on stakes in high-profile companies across the world, has been unwinding and selling down its assets fairly quickly. It didn’t even have to accept bargain-basement prices. The firm has been under the government’s watch for over a year. Why, then, is it going into bankruptcy? In a statement, the airlines-to-insurance ...

The European Commission’s fiasco over the vaccine rollout is above all else a terrible concern because of the potential cost in human lives. It also risks damaging Brussels’ reputation for technocratic competence with regard to its own citizens, giving fresh impetus to euroskeptic forces. It may diminish the European Union’s brand in the world, especially in those countries that might ...

India’s annual budget made equity investors ecstatic and the bond market morose. Could both of them be right? In her speech, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman pegged total government expenditure for the current fiscal year at 34.5 trillion rupees ($472 billion). That’s $57 billion more than what analysts had forecast based on a muted April-to-November trend, extrapolated for a bump in ...

One upshot of Covid-19 has been closer coordination between monetary and fiscal powers. This has led to a revolution in macroeconomic policy — one that countries should continue building upon. Just as central banks have been rethinking their frameworks, there is a strong case for governments to similarly reconsider their approach to fiscal policy. Europe now has the perfect opportunity ...

Crowds are easily exploited by their leaders, theorised 19th-century psychologist Gustave Le Bon, whose mantra for guiding the masses was: “Assertion, repetition, contagion.” Today’s financial markets are much the same — but crowd control has its challenges. Easily-shared memes, GIFs and tweets have fuelled a volatile stampede into corners of the stock market, metals and cryptocurrencies, with tech billionaires such ...