Opinion

“Welcome, welcome!” My guide, Philip, waves at me from his seat in a virtual conference room, where he’s wearing a green shirt and sitting at a desk. I’m at Facebook’s Reality Labs headquarters in Burlingame, California, wearing Meta Platform Inc.’s Quest 2 headset. Philip is in another room there as his cartoonish-looking avatar hops to another seat using a button ...

  With energy prices soaring, few houses will be fully illuminated during the festive season. Don’t expect glowing reindeers on lawns or Santas on rooftops. Up and down the country, these holiday features will likely be absent this year. But don’t think Christmas trees will be totally stripped of their fairy lights. Despite the dire predictions, Brits will try to ...

  With Pakistan reeling from devastating floods and spiraling inflation, it’s an exceptionally bad time for a political crisis. Unfortunately, that’s what seems to be shaping up in the standoff between the government and ex-prime minister Imran Khan. All sides should recognize that compromise is in their best interests — and, more to the point, in Pakistan’s. Khan bears the ...

Mikhail Gorbachev failed at everything he tried as the Soviet Union’s last leader. The state he led could only change the world for the better by failing — and it did. But, alas, not for long. I will never forget the moment in August 1991 when — at 19 years old, slightly stoned and very much in love — I ...

Since the start of the pandemic, online learning has become far more common — and so have online examinations. Typically, the examination software also proctors the test, observing with the student’s own camera. Does this process violate the Constitution? A federal judge in Ohio decided last week that at least in some circumstances, the answer is yes. The court’s impeccable ...

  Home price appreciation is slowing fast across the country under the weight of higher mortgage rates, with typical property values even falling month-over-month in about a fifth of major metro areas in July. Clearly, the slowdown is necessary if Federal Reserve policy makers are going to cool inflation and restore affordability to the housing market. The challenge is to ...

  Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s dream of a miraculous and pain-free labor market disinflation just faced a surprise setback. Powell wants the number of job openings to decline to cool wage pressure, but a Labor Department report showed it’s starting to move in the wrong direction. Powell shouldn’t be betting the house on his scenario, and chances are that ...

  Two decades ago, I spent more than two years sleeping a few decks above eight nuclear reactors onboard the Enterprise, the US Navy’s oldest nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. I was the rear admiral in command of the Enterprise’s strike group, and “broke my flag” and sailed to a long combat deployment. I didn’t lose much sleep thinking about those reactors, ...

Labor markets might not be nearly as tight as they seem from employment data. That’s a headache for banks trying to judge the risks of an uptick in borrowers’ repayment problems. Traditionally, what matters most for banks lending to consumers is unemployment because it can lead to disastrous drops in income for debtors. That’s why it’s one of the first ...

  Credit Suisse Group AG’s poaching of Dixit Joshi from Deutsche Bank AG to become its new chief finance officer means the Swiss bank now has outsiders in three top executive roles. They all have plenty of experience fixing problems in their former roles. The new leadership team should have the cool ruthlessness to make unbiased decisions about what Credit ...