Opinion

British voters are being hit over the head with the key message of Boris Johnson’s campaign for the December 12 election: In speeches and on posters and on campaign flyers is the promise that his government would “get Brexit done” quickly and move on to other things. The Conservative Party is in a hurry. Johnson’s team is promising that Brexit ...

The Christine Lagarde-era at the European Central Bank (ECB) is barely a week old, but these first few days raise concern that her political agenda risks undermining trust in the institution. More specifically, Lagarde is expected to use the might of her new position to push through ideas that European elites prefer, such as closer fiscal coordination, but that broader ...

By this point, everyone knows that the US health-care system is fundamentally broken. But every plan to fix it runs into a fusillade of opposition. This dynamic could be seen in the reaction to the Affordable Care Act, which remained unpopular for years after its passage. The Obamacare system substantially reduced the number of Americans who were uninsured, but costs ...

President Trump seemed to be nearing a preliminary truce in his trade war with China. But the deeper danger that still lies ahead is a Sino-America technology war, as the two countries race to develop artificial intelligence. Beijing and Washington seemed to be clearing a path for a limited tariff-reduction deal with the announcement by China’s Commerce Ministry of a ...

When he walked out of jail in Curitiba in southern Brazil after 580 days, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was not an entirely free man. He is merely the highest-profile beneficiary of the November 7 Supreme Court decision to allow convicted criminals to remain at liberty until they exhaust all possible appeals. Yet for loyalists of the practically ...

The mooted record-breaking leveraged buyout of Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. is a reminder of the powerful role of private capital in modern finance. But the fact that a private equity owner has a chance at making decent returns even after paying a premium for the US pharmacist raises difficult questions. Might the public markets be missing something yet again? A ...

Investors and institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are fretting over the risk of a potential global recession caused by the US-China trade war. Their concern is misplaced. The true danger to global growth is the weakness of China’s domestic economy. Total US trade isn’t declining. On the contrary, it’s growing at or just beneath its decade-long rate. ...

Germany’s dismal coalition politics may help unlock progress in talks on the European banking union. Finance Minister Olaf Scholz’s apparent mandate to negotiate a common deposit reinsurance scheme for Europe could help him win the leadership of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and keep the shaky government, in which the SPD is the junior partner, going for another two years. ...

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell virtually promised last week to hold off on raising interest rates until faster inflation is not just a forecast, but a reality. With this dovish assurance, the Fed becomes less of a threat to the economic outlook – assuming he is able to keep that promise. With the Fed looking to stop cutting rates, the ...

In what universe can a tiring, $8.8 billion maker of photocopiers even think about acquiring a $27 billion, moderately sexier maker of printers and PCs? This one, apparently. Xerox Holdings Corp. is contemplating a cash-and-stock bid for HP Inc., the Wall Street Journal reported. While the size of the discrepancy in market values makes a deal seem hard to digest, ...