Opinion

A nightmare began with Donald Trump’s victory in November 2016. It has just been extended indefinitely with his narrow loss and wild allegations of electoral fraud. In his 2016 campaign, Trump prospered by challenging the legitimacy of America’s political and economic system, arguing that it was rigged to benefit a few elites. Over the next four years, he demonstrated, in ...

Coming into the US elections, Democrats dreamed of flipping all of the rapidly growing and urbanising Sun Belt states and having the kind of landslide election result they haven’t had in decades. With larger-than-expected losses in Florida and Texas, and a third straight defeat likely in North Carolina, it didn’t turn out that way. Georgia, where Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden ...

Jack Ma was right: You can’t use rules for a railway station to run an airport. Or, regulate a cutting-edge online lending platform like a traditional bank. Chinese authorities effectively took the founder of e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group Holding Ltd to task for such views by suspending the $35 billion initial public offering of its fintech offspring, Ant Group Co, ...

Suddenly, it seems all the world is heading to zero. Just a month after Chinese President Xi Jinping promised to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2060, the leaders of Japan and South Korea pledged to hit the same target 10 years sooner. The European Union and UK have already put their 2050 pledges into law. In total, countries ...

Warren Buffett has always taken the stance that regardless of who is president or which party holds power, each generation of Americans will be better off than the one that came before it — even if dark moments test our ability to believe it. But that’s not to say the outcome of this election doesn’t matter. It’s pivotal for wealthy ...

There were already lawsuits challenging votes and voting procedures even on the Election Day. Some of them are invoking the Supreme Court’s 2000 decision in Bush v. Gore, which effectively handed that year’s presidential election to George W Bush. We should expect a lot more to come. Bush v. Gore is widely misunderstood. It rested on exceedingly narrow grounds. As ...

Diversification has been a blessing for BNP Paribas SA. France’s biggest bank is emerging from the economic carnage unleashed by the first wave of the pandemic better than competitors, even after losing money on derivatives. But absent a repeat of the buoyant trading markets we’ve seen this year, not even BNP can escape the pressures of souring debt and declining ...

The Bank of England meets on Thursday against the backdrop of a newly imposed lockdown that’s designed to curb the spread of the coronavirus, but will also crimp the economy. For lenders who were already nervous about borrowers being unable to pay their debts, the prospect of a second collapse in growth will prompt them to rein in their support ...

Ant Group Co will survive the 11th-hour suspension of its blockbuster $35 billion listing in Shanghai and Hong Kong if the company can learn from its technology peers. If there’s one thing that founder Jack Ma and Chinese regulators probably agree upon, it’s that finance and technology make for a powerful combination. The mix is where they ran into trouble. ...

After four years of President Donald Trump’s assault on the Constitution, it comes down to this. The courts have done what they could to limit the damage; the House impeached him; and the Senate let him get away with it. Now all that remains is the final check provided by the Constitution: a vote of the people. James Madison would ...