Opinion

  The greatest bank robberies happen from the inside, Manchurian-Candidate style, where a sleeper agent infiltrates an organization and collects intelligence until it’s time to strike. Such was the case in the Bangladesh bank heist. Back in February, Bangladesh’s central bank revealed that it had fallen victim to an $81 million theft. (Actually, the Philippine Daily Inquirer broke the news …

  The Group of 20 meeting last weekend received only light coverage from the press and market analysts. Imagine my surprise when I read the content-heavy 48-paragraph statement issued at the conclusion of the gathering by country leaders. Either few took the trouble to read the communique or, more likely, its contents were dismissed as wishful thinking that wouldn’t be …

  German Chancellor Angela Merkel may have adjusted her policies after last year’s refugee influx. But on Sunday, she was punished anyhow by voters in her own constituency of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. That’s one sign that the EU migration crisis is far from resolved yet. Ever since March, when Merkel rammed through a European Union deal with Turkey under which undocumented …

  German Chancellor Angela Merkel suffered a humiliating electoral defeat in her home state on Sunday. The result, driven by a growing backlash against her policy on refugees, calls for hard thinking not just on her part but also from Germany’s partners in the European Union. Voters in rural Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a tiny state of 1.6 million, didn’t just defeat …

  Nearly one in every 200 children in the world today is a refugee. Kids now make up about half of all refugees. The stats may not appear as alarming as the ground situation is. Many miseries that the child migrants face are hidden from the view. Displaced undocumented children face the risk of abuse. A new UNICEF report reveals …

  Despite Hillary Clinton’s recent slip in the polls, she has a big political opportunity, even though some of her advisers might regard it as a curse: She can run as the candidate who represents the “mainstream” leadership of both parties and knows how to fix our broken political system. In a year when anti-elitism has been a dominant theme …

  Amid all the buzz about China’s hosting the G-20 summit in Hangzhou — all the accords, arguments and alleged snubs — another symbolically significant event was largely obscured. Last week, the World Bank issued bonds denominated in Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, in China’s interbank market. Beginning in October, the yuan will be included in the basket of currencies …

E-books are not taking over the world! That seems pretty clear from a Pew Research Center survey released last week, which showed that the percentage of Americans who read digital books hasn’t risen since 2014. The survey didn’t show any real sign of a print resurgence either, though. Overall, the percentage of Americans consuming books in any form appears to …

  In the two months since Britain voted to leave the European Union, its government has done little to clarify where this project is going. It would be wrong to expect a detailed plan, because the terms of exit and whatever arrangements follow must be negotiated. But surely a statement setting out priorities and basic principles wasn’t too much to …

  Financial crises are becoming more frequent as markets and the rules that govern them grow ever more complex. New research suggests that this is no coincidence — and that a simpler system would be a lot more resilient. Forward-thinking officials have long argued that financial regulation needs to be simpler. In his much-quoted speech “The Dog and the Frisbee,” …