Opinion

It is easy enough to imagine a less sadistic system. But reimagining enforcement altogether — its ends and means — is a more complicated undertaking. The early history of vaccines is a male-dominated field. The science, which is currently showing spectacular results, is now led by women. Therein lies a lesson about the allocation of talent. Consider the history of ...

At the end of a terrible 2020, Pedro Sanchez has something to celebrate. Spain’s prime minister has succeeded in passing the country’s first full-year budget since 2016 even though he presides over a minority government. A string of regional parties suddenly warmed to his left-wing coalition of the Socialists and Podemos — and especially to the nearly 140 billion euros ...

China has all but met President Xi Jinping’s pledge to eradicate extreme poverty by 2020. More than 800 counties considered severely impoverished just under a decade ago have now cleared a government-defined line of 4,000 yuan, or roughly $600, in annual per-capita income. The last nine, in the province of Guizhou in China’s southwest, were removed from the list this ...

Ivan Glasenberg, the pugnacious boss of commodities giant Glencore Plc, says he will retire next year. His influence will linger beyond that. After years of brushing off succession questions with the reassurance that he wouldn’t outstay his welcome, Glasenberg slipped the word into a mundane investor presentation. He’ll be replaced by a lieutenant, Gary Nagle, who takes the helm as ...

For the past four years, debate about immigration policies has grown both more heated and more beside the point. President Donald Trump was committed to immiserating as many immigrants as possible, and any cost/benefit analysis was irrelevant. It is easy enough to imagine a less sadistic system. But reimagining enforcement altogether — its ends and means — is a more ...

Presidential transitions, even when they are less fraught than this one, prompt more apprehension among America’s allies than among its enemies. This is especially true of the British. The British government is exerting itself to show the incoming Joe Biden administration that the UK remains a useful ally. Last month, Prime Minister Boris Johnson agreed to a remarkably generous supplementary ...

The presidential election seemed to mark a revival in American civic engagement. A record two-thirds of the electorate voted. Candidates raised at least $3 billion in small-dollar donations, and historic get-out-the-vote efforts had an impact in Nevada, Georgia and elsewhere. Yet large numbers of Americans appear to believe President Donald Trump’s baseless charges of election fraud. Civic life and discourse ...

Emerging from nearly a year of battling an economy dragged down by Covid-19 and a rickety financial system, Beijing is realising what the most important collateral damage has been: consumers. Without their wallets and balance sheets, China’s economic blueprint for the next five years won’t work. That explains why authorities have been talking up consumer protection, household leverage and the ...

President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to end many of Trump’s harsh new immigration policies. But his choice of Alejandro Mayorkas to lead his Department of Homeland Security indicates the new administration won’t be embracing open borders, or even crafting especially welcoming policies towards migrants arriving over the Mexican border. President Donald Trump’s harsh treatment of immigrants was one of the ...

Back in the mid-2000s, when finance was booming and the City of London was at the peak of its powers, brokerage boss Michael Spencer joked that statues of two US politicians — Paul Sarbanes and Michael Oxley — should be put up near the London Stock Exchange. Their tough regulation of Wall Street had sent the cost of being publicly ...