Opinion

  It is not true that we need to gut our environmental protections in order to scale up green energy,” said Mahyar Sorour, deputy legislative director for Beyond Dirty Fuels at the Sierra Club. And thus goes the next chapter in the political war over whether and how the United States will join the battle against climate change. Unlike America’s ...

  China’s ambitious students and their parents once dreamed of acquiring an American university education. Now that dream is dying. During the first half of 2022, US student visas issued to Chinese nationals plummeted more than 50% compared with pre-pandemic levels, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The US isn’t directly limiting the number of visas. Rather, ...

Wall Street banker bonuses are supposed to be kept secret for a variety of reasons. If everyone knew who was paid what, there would be an uprising as people discovered that clear underperformers were getting compensated more than them. It happens. Wall Street compensation is not always about performance. As I outlined in a column earlier this year, it’s largely ...

  SoftBank Group Corp Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son and Credit Suisse AG Chairman Axel Lehmann doubtless wish their respective firms had never met disgraced financier Lex Greensill. But hopefully they — and the finance industry at large — can learn lessons from the scandal that ensued. Greensill’s charm, self-belief and supposed skill at turning the staid business of supply-chain ...

  After the worst first half in memory for European credit markets, the ship has steadied. The euro-aggregate index rose 4% in July, its best month ever. That reversed a similar-sized loss in June, which punctuated a 13% drop in the first six months for supposedly safe investment-grade bonds. In the midst of high summer, as is to be expected, ...

In 2001, Silvio Berlusconi was running for prime minister and produced what became a symbol of an epoch. On prime-time national TV, he signed his political manifesto promising to cut taxes, increase pensions and carry out a massive investment program. He went on to win that election and remained a central figure in Italian politics until the euro crisis forced ...

Singapore’s property market is in the throes of a 2008-type mania, with landlords squeezing tenants for the last possible cent. The previous bout of frenzy ended with the collapse of Lehman Brothers. This time, too, stratospheric apartment rents will return to earth, though the process is unlikely to be as swift as the city-state’s expat community might hope for. Among ...

  Does an industrial-sized dog whistle go off when advocates boast about cryptocurrency’s ability to evade US government sanctions? Back in March, a founder of Tornado Cash — a so-called “mixer” service that masks cryptocurrency transactions by mixing them with others — told Bloomberg it would be “technically impossible” for sanctions to be enforced against decentralised protocols. Surprise: Tornado has ...

  Against all expectation (not a single economist polled by Bloomberg had predicted it), the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has cut interest rates. The ease was only by 10 basis points, to the bank’s one-year lending rate, but it was still in the exact opposite direction to the monetary route being taken in the west and in the rest ...

Japan observed the end of World War II on Monday, an anniversary that even 77 years later remains a source of contention both domestically and overseas. Statements by the country’s leaders are routinely examined for whether their level of contrition matches expectations. In the not-too-distant past, it was often a day for prime ministers to visit Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, the ...