Opinion

It’s always easier to put up a barrier on an empty road than a busy highway. That’s worth remembering in light of recent reports that China has temporarily suspended cross-border listings between the Shanghai and London stock exchanges. The halt is a response to the UK’s stance on pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, Bloomberg News reported, citing a person familiar ...

So is China readying its own Bitcoin? Banish the thought. It’s far bigger than that. Yes, just like any other cryptocurrency — or for that matter, cigarettes in prisoners-of-war camps — the upcoming digital yuan will be “tokenised” money. But the similarity ends there. The crypto yuan, which may be on offer as soon as 2020, will be fully backed ...

Europe’s reputation on financial crime took another battering in 2019. Several of the region’s biggest lenders, including ABN Amro Bank NV and Swedbank AB, were tarred by allegations that they let criminals move around their cash unhindered, a reminder that Danske Bank A/S’s mammoth money-laundering failings weren’t isolated. At least the scale of the problem isn’t going unnoticed. Politicians and ...

The US economic recovery that began in June 2009 is now in its 127th month, which is a record. Even more impressive is that for the first time since the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the US just completed the first calendar decade without even one day of a recession. There are a few key reasons why ...

A few weeks ago, Twitter gave users an early holiday present in the form of “Topics,” a feature that lets them subscribe to feeds on a given subject. As the company explained it, the feature reduces the need for users to track down accounts to follow; rather, “the conversation will come to you.” Although Topics sound like it might be ...

Large tracts of the Australian continent are ablaze. Beyond the toll in lives and property, the most remarkable thing about this bushfire season is that people can see it, taste it and feel it. While fires have long been a product of the country’s hot, dry climate, they remained a remote idea for most Australians — something you caught for ...

It’s that time of year at the Federal Reserve, when the voting members that comprise the Federal Open Market Committee undergo their annual rotation. Don’t, however, expect to see any changes in policy this year now that the more hawkish central bankers have come to terms with last year’s dovish pivot. For 2020, the Fed anticipates holding policy rates steady ...

As a new decade begins, I see five big questions facing macroeconomists, which I’ve listed in a roughly increasing order of difficulty. Why not make full use of our productive resources? Inflation has been stuck below the Federal Reserve’s target of 2% for much of the past decade. It is expected to remain low for at least another year or ...

The Houdini-esque escape by Carlos Ghosn from his court-monitored Tokyo residence may be shrouded in intrigue, but one thing has been left in plain sight: A turnaround at Nissan Motor Co. won’t happen any time soon. Whatever he has to say from his refuge in Lebanon will be largely inconsequential for the Japanese car company. Nissan is in a state ...

The past decade hasn’t done much to inspire optimism about the future of the planet. Emissions from burning fossil fuels and land-use changes since the start of 2010 have been equivalent to about 407 billion tons of carbon dioxide. About one-sixth of all carbon emissions in human history happened in the past decade alone. Doom Loop Depending on the estimates ...