Opinion

A federal judge in California has struck down President Donald Trump’s executive order barring many types of visa entrants into the US. As a reminder, Trump issued this order in June because of the supposed threat foreign workers pose to native-born employment during the Covid-19 pandemic. The decision flatly contradicts a different ruling last month by a different federal district ...

Despite intermittent negotiations for three months, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have made remarkably little progress on a coronavirus relief plan that both Republicans and Democrats can accept. Wall Street is beginning to lose hope, and Main Street will soon run out of financial support. It’s time to call in Joe Biden. “I am the Democratic ...

The world’s one-time economic rebel now looks staid. Japan was the first mover in some of the most radical steps in monetary policy, so it’s troubling that officials have done far less than their peers since the pandemic tore through global growth. Time for Bank of Japan (BOJ) officials to forge the Next Big Thing. The third-largest economy on the ...

Pin up the artful balloon garlands and toss the custom glitter confetti: Etsy Inc is having a gangbusters year. The online marketplace for handmade, vintage and other creative goods, which joined the S&P 500 Index last month, is the best-performing stock in that group year to date: Like many of its e-commerce-focussed peers, Etsy benefited earlier this year when brick-and-mortar ...

Now that President Donald Trump has tested positive for Covid-19, the Department of Justice is almost certainly focussing on the 25th Amendment, which provides for the transfer of presidential authority to the vice president. No one who works for a sitting president wants to think about that amendment. But in any administration, worst-case scenarios get attention, and if the president ...

Some political debates have highlights. The first presidential debate this year had only lowlights. Joe Biden called President Donald Trump “a clown.” Trump said Biden wasn’t smart. Biden said Trump “has been a fool.” And on it went, in what must have been the nastiest presidential debate in US history. The most common word in the transcript will be “[crosstalk].” ...

There has always been a paradox at the heart of Uber Technologies Inc’s business model. The ride-hailing firm aimed to attract users with prices that undercut the traditional taxi industry, thereby squeezing out the competition. With a monopoly, it would be able to raise its fares and turn a profit. But higher fares then risk irritating the customers it wooed ...

The history of epidemics is rife with examples of society rebelling against tough public-health edicts, such as the breach of plague quarantine in 18th-century Marseille or protests against face masks during the 1918 influenza pandemic. The grim consequence is a fresh wave of deadly infections. Covid-19’s million deaths may pale in comparison to the estimated 50 million lives lost in ...

Joe Biden’s official statement on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett mentions her name once. It mentions Roe v Wade once. It has eight sentences alluding to the court’s pending case on the Affordable Care Act. The fate of Obamacare is the issue that Biden, and other Democrats, think gives them their best political opportunity during Barrett’s ...

Most years, the end of the retail industry’s sales calendar is defined by a tidy succession of seasonal events: back-to-school, Halloween and Christmas. With the pandemic, this isn’t an ordinary year. The result? Those shopping rituals are poised to converge into a super season of sorts in October, creating a tricky balancing act that is bound to trip up some ...