Opinion

It’s not just manufacturing that’s struggling with disrupted logistics. As more countries bring down the shutters to limit the spread of the coronavirus, risks are rising for the world’s complex food supply networks. Snarl-ups in processing and transport could result in painful price spikes for many fresh goods, even if farms in developed markets can keep working through the outbreak. ...

We’ve been here before. Unemployment is high and rising. Americans fear for the future. Politicians of both parties are unsure about what to do, though they’re quick to criticise the other party’s suggestions. Regardless of which way they turn, the choices seem dismal. Sound familiar? It’s not 2019 or 2020, and the subject is not the coronavirus. It’s late 1970s ...

Crises such wars, depressions, natural disasters and pandemics can reveal differences in how effectively a society organises itself. In the 1600s and 1700s, for example, Britain’s more advanced tax system allowed it to outspend Spain and France, while Prussia’s efficient army let it overcome larger opponents such as Austria. In the Civil War, the Union’s industrial prowess allowed it to ...

All upheavals leave their marks. Some fade away, some linger. Following the Black Death, the plague that’s believed to have killed 60% of Europe’s population in the second half of the 14th century, the realisation that life is short, played a big role in shaping interest rates in late medieval Europe, stretching all the way to the Enlightenment. Could we ...

If the recent selloff in markets proves anything, it’s that for too many years too many people were focussed solely on returns with zero consideration for risk or safety. The last time anyone really thought about safety in markets was during the financial crisis more than a decade ago, when investors couldn’t get enough government bonds or cash. But as ...

It doesn’t matter that the United States doubled China in reported Covid-19 cases because those numbers (164,610 and 82,198 respectively as of March 31) don’t tell us how many people actually became infected in either country. Nor do they tell us how fast the disease is spreading, since only a tiny portion of the population in the United States has ...

Authorities’ efforts to stem the spread of the coronavirus have plunged the US economy into a sharp contraction, leading some to argue that the cure may be worse than the disease. This misguided thinking ignores a crucial consideration: As Congress and the Federal Reserve have demonstrated, we can improve the trade-off by lowering the cost of saving lives. No doubt, ...

The UK housing market — that obsession of middle-class Brits — has been placed in suspended animation. Buyers and renters have been told to delay moving home to limit the spread of coronavirus. While a few transactions are still going through, a functioning market depends on prospective buyers and surveyors being able to view people’s homes. Mobility restrictions and distancing ...

When America wakes up from its enforced hibernation sometime later this year, will Joe Biden and the Democrats look like the team that can manage a transformed, post-coronavirus country most effectively? The Democrats will resume campaigning with a discordant but perhaps beneficial mix of candidate and base. They have a genially reassuring, 77-year-old former vice president standing atop a party ...

At first blush, this coronavirus pandemic would seem to be social media’s moment. Social distancing has us stuck in our homes, cut off from family and friends, trying to work, parent or — blessed be — both, and most of all trying to keep up with the avalanche of information coming out every day about Covid-19. Indeed, Facebook use is ...