Opinion

Oil majors and big miners have been falling over themselves to promise better behaviour when it comes to greenhouse gases. A significant number now say they are targeting zero emissions. Unfortunately, not everyone agrees on exactly what that means. It leaves investors clear on good intentions, but far less so on how to price transition risk, compare strategies and judge ...

There are still many states left to vote in the 2020 Democratic primary election, but the outcome now looks all but certain. Following a series of catastrophic losses in states such as Michigan and Missouri, and facing big deficits in the polls in coming states, Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign has very little chance of victory. Sanders’s so-called political revolution, centred ...

Hospitals often speak of what’s called “surge capacity” — the ability to absorb a sudden influx of patients because of a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, or even, yes, a pandemic. Given the possible influx of patients sickened by the new coronavirus, how much of a surge can US hospitals accommodate? Not as much as you might think. For years, ...

At last the creaking wheels of the European Union are starting to turn in motion — its leaders scared, no doubt, by the violent market reaction to the underwhelming performance by European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde. The entire viability of the euro project was once again coming into question because of the single currency area’s fractured response to the ...

Confidence in the Indian financial system has been breaking down for some time. Instead of trying to restore trust, it may be time to require less of it — with the help of an official rupee cryptocurrency. The last straw was the collapse of corporate lender Yes Bank Ltd, which failed in slow motion in full view of authorities. Depositors ...

Amid the chaos of coronavirus, it was encouraging to see a bipartisan, blue-ribbon commission announce a coherent plan for dealing with the next potential catastrophe — a major cyberattack against the United States. Covid-19 has given us all a foretaste of what a crippling cyberattack would look like: Transportation, infrastructure and health care services would all be severely disrupted. We’d ...

Suddenly, every country in the world has to decide whether or not to close schools to slow the Covid-19 pandemic. France will, as of Monday; the UK won’t, and so on. Within federal systems like the US and Germany, states or school districts have to make the decision. In Germany, tiny Saarland is shuttering its schools, while other states are ...

The US woke up to its first good coronavirus testing news in a while last week, after weeks of hearing about nothing but delays and dangerously inadequate capacity. The Food and Drug Administration announced an emergency authorisation of a Roche Holding AG test that can screen patients substantially faster than existing options. It’s good news for Roche — the approval ...

Three months ago, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, announced — to much fanfare — a “Green Deal” to make the EU carbon neutral by 2050. Alas, a few things have happened since, including a pandemic and an oil shock. Together, these unforeseeable events cast doubt over the Green Deal just as it’s supposed to become legislation ...

The most infuriating aspect of the government’s response to the 2008 financial crisis was the contrast between its generosity to companies and its lack of generosity to citizens. Congress passed a $700 billion bailout for the banking industry. AIG received $180 billion worth of loans from the Federal Reserve. The auto industry received nearly $81 billion in taxpayer funds. Yet ...