Opinion

A familiar band of fixers may be coming to JC Penney’s rescue. Can they do it again? Major mall operators Simon Property Group Inc. and Brookfield Property Partners LP, along with Authentic Brands Group LLC, are in talks to buy the bankrupt department store chain, Bloomberg News reported. This coalition has taken similar action before, rescuing teen clothing retailer Aeropostale ...

Life isn’t about finding perfect solutions but making difficult trade-offs. So it is with the contact-tracing apps that are proliferating faster than I can keep up with. In Germany’s newly launched “Corona App”, it has got several trade-offs wrong, and should have learned from the experience of nimbler countries like Singapore. The goal, of course, is the same for all ...

The Federal Reserve realises that it doesn’t have to buy US corporate bonds, right? I ask this question only somewhat in jest. In a surprise move, the central bank announced that it would start to buy individual company bonds under its $250 billion Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility, specifically by following a diversified index of US corporate bonds created expressly ...

Dwight Eisenhower’s cultured despisers, whose number was less impressive than the number of electoral votes Eisenhower reaped (899 of a possible 1,062), complained that his grin was his political philosophy. Ronald Reagan, who remained a Democrat for 10 years after he cast his first Republican presidential vote, for Eisenhower in 1952 (Reagan later won 1,014 of a possible 1,076 electoral ...

It has been a while since I thought back to that week in 2012 when I received news that three close family members had been diagnosed with cancer — two in my household. Newly published figures on how Covid-19 has delayed cancer referrals and treatments brought the memory back. I’m grateful those cases didn’t arise in the middle of a ...

Protests across America have prompted discussion about the value of different types of political action. There is even debate about how useful voting is. Unfortunately, our political culture and (mostly non-existent) civics education do a really poor job of explaining the role of voting in the US and how it relates to democracy. Our political culture envisions voting as the ...

Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony for the 2012 London Olympics briefly united the world in Anglophilia. The Britain celebrated there seemed amused, multicultural, cool — the Britain of the Beatles, the National Health Service, Shakespeare and Mr Bean. There was, however, one strong dissonant note: the moment when, as a camera follows the Queen’s supposed helicopter from Buckingham Palace to the ...

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo offered a telling explanation of why he fired Steve Linick last month as one of the inspectors general who are charged with keeping the federal government honest. “They work for the agency head — that’s me — and they are supposed to deliver and help make that organisation better,” Pompeo told reporters. “My mistake was ...

One of the talents of Tim Steiner, chief executive officer of Ocado Group Plc, is knowing how to negotiate from a position of strength. Over the past decade, the UK-based trailblazer for online grocery sales has been able to clinch contracts with British food retailers Wm Morrison Supermarkets Plc and Marks & Spencer Group Plc, offering digital capabilities just when ...

If Russia needed to be reminded of the costs of ignoring climate change and the transition to cleaner energy, 2020 has delivered. A devastating Arctic fuel spill appears to have been caused by melting permafrost. A heatwave has rekindled Siberian wildfires, which last year burned through 16 million hectares and choked cities. Oil, meanwhile, is still convalescing after sinking to ...