Opinion

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, we’ve become accustomed to banks being slapped with sanctions running into the billions. So at the equivalent of $57 million, Citigroup Inc.’s new fine for reporting failures could well go unnoticed. That would be a mistake. The third-largest US bank, with assets in excess of $2 trillion, inaccurately reported its capital and liquidity ...

Plenty of shoppers opt for swiping and tapping on their phones instead of bumping and elbowing their way through the mall on Black Friday . But the changing nature of this American-invented shopping holiday should hardly be taken as a signal that physical stores don’t matter. While consumers say they plan to spend more online than in stores, the data ...

In her first month as president of the European Central Bank (ECB), Christine Lagarde has spoken remarkably little about monetary policy. However, she’s made clear that she wants to launch a review of the ECB’s strategy to ensure it is fit for the times we live in. It’s an exercise that’s well worth doing. The last rethink of the ECB’s ...

The German government is often accused of spending too little money. With interest rates low or negative, the thinking goes, Europe’s biggest country should be using its fiscal discretion to stimulate the region’s economy. But then, German households exhibit similar behaviour. Even as rates fell, they saved as much as ever, more than people in most other rich countries, and ...

The people who oversee America’s financial system seem to think that climate change isn’t their problem. As one official quipped in recent congressional testimony, he’s “not a meteorologist or a climate scientist.” They should think again. By failing to take action, regulators are leaving the country exposed to a devastating crisis. Financial institutions, from banks to insurers to asset managers, ...

Some people are fuming at Facebook for allowing unfiltered political ads, while others are fuming at Twitter for banning them. There’s lots of confusion and speculation, but what we know is that these social media companies have fundamentally changed how people exchange information. What we need to figure out is whether they also change how people spread disinformation — and ...

To the question of who created today’s economic inequality, there is now a new and intriguing answer: the internet. It has apparently turned millions among us into workaholics, lugging around our laptops, ready at a moment’s notice to tackle the latest digital chore. The trouble is that all this extra work — and the income it generates — is heavily ...

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a human face biting into a burger — forever. That’s certainly a popular view of the way the human diet is headed. As the world’s population grows and incomes rise, we’ll inevitably eat far more beef — the meat that’s considered the most expensive and prestigious in a remarkably wide range ...

For decades now, Australian banks have been a class apart. Thanks to a ceaselessly growing economy, an oligopolistic structure that prevents mergers between the big four lenders, and the loyalty of self-funded retirees who play a large part in the local stock market, they’ve been valued as if they’re in a fundamentally different business from counterparts in other countries. At ...

Any attempt at sweeping out a corner of India’s financial system means bringing investors face to face with creepy-crawlies. Disagreeable as the task is, it’s also necessary. More than $200 billion in bad loans tumbled out when banks were made to open their attics to the regulatory broom four years ago. That cleanup isn’t over, and already it’s the stockbrokers’ ...