Opinion

I’ve long wondered what might be the most typical place in the world, and I believe I now have an answer. It is Cebu, the second largest city in the Philippines, from which I have just returned. What do I mean by the world’s most typical place? On a variety of measures — economic, demographic and cultural, to name a ...

The three-day sell-off in US stocks, which has wiped nearly 2 percent off the value of the S&P 500 Index, is a timely reminder to investors that they need to temper a bias towards short-term optimism with the recognition of unusual uncertainties stemming from the global system. It also raises interesting questions as to the best tactical response to what ...

Elizabeth Warren was supposed to be the thinking person’s Bernie Sanders, impeccably progressive but with realistic arithmetic connecting aspirations to resources. Then came her explanation of how she would finance “Medicare for All.” Before Republicans wearied of pretending to care about fiscal rectitude, they pretended that they could eliminate budget deficits by eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse,” a pledge that ...

On London’s Oxford Street, you could almost forget we were in the midst of a retail apocalypse. Christmas lights and a slew of special offers marking an ever earlier start to the imported bargain frenzy, Black Friday, brought out the crowds. Similar holiday cheer and promotions have spread elsewhere in Europe too. But European retailers face a new worry: shoppers ...

Local news is in steep decline. A recent report from Pen America finds that the US has lost more than 1,800 newspapers since 2004. The consequences include a decline in civic engagement and an increase in corruption. The report mentions how government officials in Bell, California, a city without a newspaper, were able to get rid of caps on their ...

With India’s growth tumbling to 4.5% from 8.1% in little more than a year, you’d be surprised to know that Shaktikanta Das has one of the easiest jobs in central banking. He just has to keep doing what he’s been doing since becoming governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) last December: cut interest rates. Fortunately, political will is ...

Reading Susan Rice’s new memoir, “Tough Love,” is a reminder of two things: what a remarkably gifted, subtle and perhaps tragic man President Obama was; and how people like Rice who served him endured ceaseless public attacks in a country that was already on the ragged edge, though we didn’t yet know it. Washington memoirs are most valuable for the ...

Three years ago Tidjane Thiam stirred hopes that the banking industry was looking at new ways to tackle its bloated cost base. The chief executive officer of Credit Suisse Group AG said his company was working on a common platform with another lender to share expenses. The project has made little visible progress since then, and it’s not because the ...

Has the golden age of asset management finally arrived in Asia? For years, Asia’s hottest unicorns left their homelands to list in New York for one simple reason: a deep pool of US money. And they have been rewarded. From Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to JD.com Inc., more than a dozen Chinese companies listed there have a market capitalization of ...

President Trump’s attempt to manipulate military justice had a sorry outcome with the firing of Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer. For the past nine months, Spencer had tried to dissuade Trump from dictating special treatment for Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher — but in the end Spencer was sacked for his efforts to protect his service. With Spencer’s firing, Trump has ...