Opinion

One great unknown about the coronavirus pandemic currently circling the globe is how it will respond as the weather gets warmer. The virus will “go away in April,” President Donald Trump told a meeting of governors last month, “as the heat comes in.” That over-confident assertion has attracted criticism from virologists and fact-checkers. Most respiratory diseases — such as influenza ...

The bipartisan Cassandra caucus includes Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren (“the rich get richer while everyone else falls behind”) and Senator Bernie Sanders (“our standard of living has fallen”) and Republican Senator Marco Rubio (“we have been left with an economy and a society no one is happy with”) and Josh Hawley (“Over the last several decades, inflation-adjusted wages for the ...

Like the eye of a hurricane, the epicenter of coronavirus disease Covid-19 has shifted from Asia to Europe, bringing with it a rising toll of infections, deaths and economic damage. After a messy few weeks in which the region’s leaders seemed incapable of hitting on a common response to the crisis — which has hit healthcare, consumer confidence and financial ...

No one seems to know quite what to make of the stunning price drop in the largest high-yield municipal-bond exchange-traded fund. The VanEck Vectors High Yield Municipal Index (ticker HYD), with $3.6 billion in assets, was the picture of tranquility for much of the past three years. From the start of 2017 through February, its share price traded in a ...

The coronavirus pandemic is giving birth to a new doctrine in central banking. What matters most isn’t transparency or forecasts, but the ability to move quickly. One of the big themes coming out of the global financial crisis was the idea that central banks should flood the zone with information — be it dot plots, forward guidance, statements, interviews or ...

One of the more notable ideas to float up last week — or, as I like to call it, my year indoors — was a federal bailout of some sort for US oil and gas producers. Harold Hamm, founder of Continental Resources Inc and sometime energy adviser to the president, called on the Trump Administration to help domestic frackers fight ...

In what’s likely be his final nomination debate, former vice president Joe Biden started strong and ended strong when he talked about the coronavirus pandemic. And he did well enough in the rest of the two-hour event on March 15 with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Biden had given a solid speech laying out a plan for how the government should ...

Markets dominated by companies sensitive to global business cycles may have little choice when investors start to use them as a proxy for general pessimism. In that light, South Korea’s measure to ban short selling for six months, the first such restriction since 2011, isn’t as rash as it might seem. The coronavirus outbreak came at the worst time for ...

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first inaugural address, March 4, 1933 When Roosevelt uttered these famous words, the nation was grappling with more than fear. For all intents and purposes, the economy had shut down. Roughly a quarter of the labour force was out of work. Thousands of the nation’s banks were ...

I’m not prone to making directive calls in columns like this one or to using capital letters in my social media posts. Rather than telling people what to think, I strongly prefer to try to help them reach their own conclusions by providing analysis and insights. In the last few weeks, however, I’ve made two notable exceptions: in repeatedly urging ...