Opinion

  In 1906, Leonor Loree, an accomplished railroad executive, examined the dilapidated Kansas City Southern Railroad that he had been hired to rehabilitate. Dismayed, he permanently enriched American slang by exclaiming: “This is a helluva way to run a railroad!” Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the nation’s second-most important court, recently said, with judicial …

  There is a very unusual thing going on in the municipal market right now: People are losing money by the bucket, and soon they’ll be losing money by the boatload. While regrettable, this is what happens when reality intrudes upon a fantasy. Because Puerto Rico has defaulted, is defaulting and will default on some or all of the $70 …

Can Americans work longer? Or, are we so broken down by our 60s that extending work life would be cruel? These questions stalk the debate over Social Security and Medicare. Critics of current policy, including me, have long urged that eligibility ages slowly rise to reflect longer life expectancy. Not so fast, counter others. Just because people live longer doesn’t …

  With suspension of Brazil’s first woman President Dilma Rousseff on Thursday, a curtain will be rolled down on 13 years of leftist rule over Latin America’s biggest nation. Throughout these years, Brazil’s economy improved but nosedived in the last two years. Rousseff was suspended by the Senate for up to 180 days pending an impeachment trial on charges of …

  Narayana Kocherlakota Have the U.S. Federal Reserve’s policies contributed to wealth inequality? Probably, but not in the way the central bank’s detractors think. Critics of the Fed’s efforts to support economic growth often argue that policies such as low interest rates and asset purchases have disproportionately benefited the rich. After all, they work in part by pushing up the …

  Jean-Michel Paul The dilapidated state of infrastructure in Belgium, home to the European Union’s main institutions, has become emblematic of a lack of investment that blights the whole continent and, according to the EU itself, is creating “lasting bottlenecks that undermine productivity growth.” This problem can be fixed, but probably not without reforming the bloc’s destructive restrictions on government …

Trade policy has taken a beating on the U.S. presidential campaign trail. It’s been blamed for the United States’ economic troubles and for creating the social strife and unease that has driven an unusually populist presidential campaign season. It’s a difficult context in which to pitch the Trans Pacific Partnership, one of the most ambitious trade agreements in history. But …

  Prashanth Parameswaran SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS On May 6, Singapore and Australia announced a series of moves that they had undertaken to boost their defense relationship. While much of the initial media coverage has focused narrowly on a new, multi-billion dollar agreement to jointly develop military training areas and facilities in Australia and what it says about China’s regional …

  Gary Sands SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS On May 1, residents of Ho Chi Minh City, still commonly referred to as Saigon, were waking up after marking the 41st anniversary of the reunification of Vietnam. Fireworks the previous night gloriously celebrated the victory of a steadfast army of communist North Vietnamese over the crumbling government of South Vietnam and the …

  Early in his tenure as director of national intelligence, James Clapper could sometimes be heard complaining “I’m too old for this [expletive]!” He has now served almost six years as America’s top intelligence official, and when I asked him this week how much longer he would be in harness, he consulted his calendar and answered with relief, “265 days!” …