Opinion

Back in March, Adidas AG Chief Executive Officer Kasper Rorsted likened dealing with the Covid-19 outbreak to a football match. There was a great first half of the game before the virus struck. The half-time break was longer than expected, but play would eventually resume. He showed just how damaging that halt was, but he said the tournament is now ...

It finally happened. After a month of threatening to do so, President Donald Trump issued executive orders that will ban the popular Chinese-owned social media apps TikTok and WeChat in the US on national security concerns. There are still some unknowns around the language and implementation of the decrees, and there’s a chance they get dialed back later during trade ...

Over the past decade, it’s almost been too easy for Americans to manage their wealth. A textbook 60/40 portfolio — in its simplest incarnation, exposure to the S&P 500 Index and Treasury bonds — was an effortless winner. The US boasted the world’s best stock market, and bonds, apart from offering interest income, provided a nice hedge against equity risks. ...

Seventy-five years ago, three days after the first use of a nuclear weapon, the second occurred. There has not been a third in the subsequent 27,394 days. One of humanity’s remarkable achievements is this absence of something. President Harry S Truman, who ordered the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, did not learn about the existence of the Manhattan Project that ...

The Bank of England (BOE) risks being in a category of one. In its quarterly monetary policy report, it presented a surprisingly chipper assessment of how it expects the UK to recover from the pandemic lockdown. Its relative optimism was in jarring contrast to the gloom that’s engulfed Britain’s big lending banks. BOE Governor Andrew Bailey has had a decent crisis ...

The true financial cost of Covid-19 is something India would rather not acknowledge, let alone bear — at least not until the pandemic has played out. That explains why the central bank allowed a one-time restructuring of corporate and personal loans that have been under stress ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi put the country under a severe lockdown in ...

In case it wasn’t obvious by now, the economic downturn in America has been most unusual during the past several months. But just to hammer home the point, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Report on Household Debt and Credit for the second quarter, disclosed that total household debt decreased in the three months through June for the first ...

Moments after becoming president on August 9, 1974, Gerald Ford said, “Our long national nightmare is over.” Having served a quarter-century in Congress, he understood that presidents are to “take care” that laws produced by the first branch of government are “faithfully executed.” The nation in 1974 was eager for a collegial respite from the gladiatorial strife that had consumed ...

Europe has the motivation, but not the means, to break up Big Tech. For the US, the inverse is true. That’s bad news for anyone hoping for a full regulatory reckoning with Silicon Valley’s and Seattle’s giants over their monopolistic tendencies. Washington lawmakers see their job as protecting the consumer first and foremost, while Brussels wants to make sure other ...

The coronavirus pandemic has stress-tested the world. Beyond challenging human fortitude, national health services and international rivalries, it has forced a series of moral choices. Many have provoked impassioned disagreement — over whether governments can force businesses and schools to close, over sacrifices for the sake of the elderly and, most bitterly and surprisingly, over whether being asked to wear ...