Opinion

The UK Debt Management Office (DMO) has put out a signal of intent: More government bond supply is about to come thick and fast. The amount of gilts to be sold in April will be raised from 20 billion pounds ($22 billion) to 45 billion pounds. Boris Johnson’s government needs swift access to more funding to support the economy during ...

As fashion retailers shutter their storefronts across Europe and North America due to the coronavirus, some of the world’s most vulnerable workers are feeling the pain — and getting shafted. In Bangladesh, garment factories have already furloughed more than 1 million workers thanks to at least $3 billion in cancelled and postponed orders. Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, a key hub ...

The Covid-19 epidemic is a fight with an invisible enemy. What’s also worrying is that we just don’t know how bad the disease really is. Many people wonder whether we’re overestimating its deadliness, since countries find it impossible to test those with few or no symptoms. The case fatality rate is the ratio of coronavirus deaths to the number of ...

Lakeside shopping centre, just outside of London, is a mecca of consumerism. It’s situated in the county of Essex, which loves shopping so much that a reality TV show captures the exploits of its glamorous, bauble-buying residents. But since last week, the mall has been open for only essential purchases, in line with government guidance. Its owner Intu Properties Plc ...

Among western nations, Italy has been the canary in the mine of the Covid-19 epidemic. For the past month, the daily life of Italians has been marked by a dreadful combination of a rising death toll and tightening restrictions. Soon, it turned out that the rest of the world was no different: From Spain to the UK, countries have had ...

In the pre-coronavirus world, retailers big and small were in an arms race over free and fast delivery. In New York City, where I live, that meant you could get a range of items from toothpaste to batteries within 48 hours or less without paying an extra fee. Now, the wait for such items via my Amazon Prime account is ...

During the past few weeks the spreads on corporate bonds relative to Treasuries with comparable maturities have risen sharply. This kind of increase is a natural part of recessions, as investors demand more compensation for the default risks of corporate debt issuers. But a key and unusual part of the government economic response to the pandemic (and the associated recession) ...

The coronavirus crisis has thrust the world’s financial markets into extreme uncertainty. The wild swings in asset prices, along with the sudden and pervasive demand for cash, reflect people’s struggles to understand how bad things can get and how damaging the losses will ultimately be. Back in 2009, amid a similarly frightening crisis, the US discovered a novel way to ...

The US is finally starting to take a sensible and proactive approach towards the Covid-19 pandemic. After a disastrous initial failure, coronavirus testing has now risen to levels similar to or higher than South Korea. Meanwhile, although he almost succumbed to the temptation to reopen the economy before shutdowns had time to quell the epidemic, President Donald Trump has wisely ...

To have any idea whether our current social distancing efforts in the United States are helping slow the spread of coronavirus, and to gauge how long we should go on this way, scientists need to know how many people have mild or asymptomatic cases of Covid-19. There could be many such people. Since their symptoms are vague and possibly non-existent, ...