Opinion

When it comes to economic development, China’s amazing success soaks up much of the attention. But another huge region has quietly begun what looks like a new phase of exponential growth: Southeast Asia. The sustained enrichment of this region will transform the world, and carry important lessons for struggling countries like those in Africa. Southeast Asia was once almost completely ...

It’s hard to imagine a more daunting task than taking the reins from Ivan Glasenberg, Glencore Plc’s chief executive officer, a man who put his stamp on his company like few other corporate leaders have. Thankfully, his 45-year-old successor, fellow South African Gary Nagle, has a way to make his own mark: by finding a way for the mining giant ...

The Joe Biden administration has pledged to deploy fiscal stimulus to get the stricken US economy back on its feet, as well as increase government investment to boost long-run growth. This means the Republican opposition in Congress is back to arguing that austerity is the best way to compensate for the economic damage done by the pandemic. Even before the ...

Having spent the past four years with the political equivalent of heavy metal music blasting outside their psychic windows late into the night, millions of Americans are hoping that the Biden administration will usher in a new era of calm. They are likely to be disappointed. To a limited extent, such wishes will be granted. Under President Joe Biden, the ...

A Covid-19 vaccine is getting closer, and governments are scrambling to meet the financial and logistical challenge of immunising their populations in a short space of time. Hopes for a pickup in global economic growth next year depend on it. But the bigger challenge may end up being psychological: How to convince people to actually take the shot. Achieving herd ...

There are only a few basic rules of investing: diversify, keep your costs low and probably most important, hang on when markets tumble occasionally. The last one is the trickiest. It’s not easy watching money vanish as the market plunges, particularly when many people, some of them highly respected, are carping about the end of the world, which invariably accompanies ...

The most enthusiastic campaigners for Britain’s exit from the European Union insisted that Brexit’s end result would be a “Global Britain” — a country set free to forge alliances, agreements and trading pacts across the world. More than four years on, we still have no clear idea what a Global Britain would actually look like. No enthusiastic new trading partners ...

“I profoundly disagree” with the German defense minister, French President Emmanuel Macron said the other day, calling her view on transatlantic relations “a historical misinterpretation.” The German minister in question, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, promptly upped the ante, labelling Macron’s contrasting vision “an illusion.” This unusual dialectic between a French president sometimes described as “Jupiterian” and a generally understated German cabinet member ...

The world is unequal enough and the Covid-19 pandemic threatens to make things more unequal still. Poorer countries have had to take on debt they will struggle to pay back. Their more fragile healthcare systems and crowded cities forced them into stricter and more economically harmful lockdowns, and poverty rates have risen dramatically. Now, they rightly fear a staggered recovery ...

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 ...