Opinion

  When disgraced Brazilian powerbroker Eduardo Cunha was arrested last week, the country’s political establishment wobbled. Known for his Machiavellian skills as Brazil’s Frank Underwood, the former lower house speaker was the biggest target in the biggest corruption scandal on record. He had repeatedly insinuated that he wouldn’t go down alone. No one has more to fear from that threat …

  The U.K. may be on the verge of an unprecedented experiment in public accountability. The courts may soon be invited to consider the following question: Should government officials face prosecution if the actions they took to support the financial system during the credit crisis stink in hindsight? In late 2007 and early 2008, with markets in a meltdown and …

  With Donald Trump’s chances of winning the White House narrowing, it’s not too soon to ask: If Hillary Clinton wins the presidency in November, what attitude should Democrats and Republicans alike take toward Trump voters? It will be tempting to excoriate or patronize them, or to woo them to your cause. But all of these approaches would be mistaken. …

  One of President Obama’s cherished conceits is that disagreement with him can have no rational basis, and it was the theme of his most recent speech in defense of his health-care law. Only “ideology” and “politics” are keeping Republicans from working with him to expand Obamacare’s reach. He himself is, as always in his self-portraits, the picture of reasonableness, …

  Can she get anything done? That’s the question now that nearly every poll shows Hillary Clinton winning the presidency and the Republicans holding on to the House, albeit with a weaker hand. Even if the Democrats take control of the Senate — a strong possibility though not a certainty — House Republicans could block Clinton’s agenda of taxing the …

  Their situation can be described by the proverb ‘out of the frying pan into the fire’. Their past was gloomy and future appears to be dark. They are trapped between hope and despair. They are the migrants at Calais ‘Jungle’ camp. On Monday, over 1,000 migrants rode buses out of the ‘Jungle’ as French authorities kicked off an operation …

Economies need competition to work. Almost all basic economic theories, including supply and demand itself, rely on the assumption that companies lower prices to undercut the competition whenever possible. If sellers can set whatever prices they like, that’s a monopoly. And as any good Econ 101 class will teach you, monopolies hold production below its economically efficient level, in order …

  Change can sneak up on lawmakers and judges, rendering old laws obsolete. Often, that’s harmless. (When was the last time you ran afoul of Reno’s ban on benches in streets or Wyoming’s prohibition on fishing with firearms?) But sometimes, laws that once served a good purpose can get in the way of progress. That’s what’s going on now in …

  He is the least sentimental of the media moguls, known for being a dispassionate judge of a business’s worth. And now he wants to sell Time Warner. Maybe we should be listening to what Jeff Bewkes is telling us. Sure, there are lots of other things one can discuss regarding the AT&T-Time Warner deal: AT&T’s plan for a 5G-wireless …

  Donald Trump and his populist, nationalist counterparts in Europe are often portrayed as a threat to democracy. Their supporters argue that establishment politicians and technocrats are an even bigger threat because they listen only to the special interests that feed them. Could it be, then, that democracy in its current American and European forms is a threat to itself? …