Opinion

China flew a significant force of bombers and fighters near the Taiwan Strait over the weekend, one of the largest in an escalation of nerves over several months but more important as a test of President Joe Biden’s administration. The new team didn’t give Beijing a free pass. The State Department quickly issued a press release about the Chinese military ...

The inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris last week will help to reset an unbalanced nation. But the armed camp in which they took their oaths is testament to the precarious state of democracy in America. The loss of democratic muscle in the US over the past four years has been precipitous. It wasn’t simply the election of a ...

The next killer smartphone app has arrived — and it offers the potential to transform how we communicate, share knowledge and even make new friends. I am talking about voice-and-audio-based social networking startup Clubhouse. Its platform enables users to drop in and out of ephemeral chat rooms and take part in a range of gatherings, from small “water-cooler” type conversations ...

At her confirmation hearing, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said many cryptocurrencies are used “mainly for illicit financing, and I think we really need to examine ways in which we can curtail their use.” Although her written testimony says the government also needs to “look closely at how to encourage their use for legitimate activities,” it seems clear: More regulation of ...

The Covid-19 pandemic has seen a series of clashes in the UK between Boris Johnson and a bighearted 23-year-old soccer star called Marcus Rashford who campaigns to end child poverty. There’s only ever one winner in a sporting contest — and it’s not the prime minister, even with an 80-strong Conservative majority in the House of Commons. Johnson has joked ...

The storming of the US Capitol on January 6 was a real lowlight for Congress. At least during the sacking of Washington in the war of 1812, the White House burned alongside the Capitol. But on January 6, 2021 the head of the executive branch urged his followers to interfere with the operation of the legislative branch. The entire sequence ...

The latest scrap over London’s post-Brexit finance business has a clear winner. Britain and the European Union might have been hoping to fight over the juicy bone of derivatives trading, but a third dog is running off with the prize: New York. New trading limits between the UK and the continent have prompted a large chunk of this lucrative work ...

We have to wait a few weeks to see just how green President Joe Biden’s stimulus plan turns out to be. But we’re already in the middle of an unplanned green investment boom. It will end both badly and usefully. Energy of all varieties is a capital-intensive business, so the cost of that capital often makes or breaks a new ...

Why should only the wealthy get to ride unicorns to further riches? Privately held firms with at least $1 billion in value come with daunting price tags that freeze out ordinary investors. Banks that help unicorns raise money are glad to chalk up a few bulky subscriptions — $1 million and more — from top clients. It works fine with ...

Amid the flurry of new executive orders and memoranda signed by President Joe Biden on his first day in office, there’s a sleeper. It’s called Modernizing Regulatory Review, and it’s exceedingly important. Crucially, the memorandum affirms the long-standing process managed by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), which includes a significant role for cost-benefit analysis. At the same ...