Opinion

People shouldn’t be as worried as they are about the risk of a US recession. That said, it wouldn’t take much to trigger one, which is why the Federal Reserve should take out some insurance by providing added stimulus. Market participants see all sorts of reasons to fret about an imminent slump. Global growth is slowing, trade wars are adding ...

As Christine Lagarde takes over as president of the European Central Bank (ECB), the job looks less daunting than what greeted her predecessor, Mario Draghi, in 2011. Don’t be misled. Thanks to his efforts, the euro system is no longer in imminent danger of breaking apart. But this certainly doesn’t mean all is well. Sooner rather than later, in fact, ...

Most environmental problems are concentrated in the area where the pollution is produced. This is good, because it’s a lot easier for a single city or country to deal with an environmental challenge than it is for the international community. There are two huge exceptions to this. The first is global warming, which (as the name implies) affects everyone. The ...

The finance industry is in turmoil. Tax collections have hit stall speed. India’s credit and fiscal crises are joined at the hip. Consider the $13 billion in past fees that the government is asking from telecom operators. It’s a desperate attempt to squeeze money from an industry in which most players have already vanished or gone bankrupt. The two old ...

Facebook Inc. is a superpower. Twitter Inc. is a relative nobody. Last week, though, Twitter won a round. Just as Mark Zuckerberg’s company reported quarterly earnings, Twitter Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey tweeted that his company would stop accepting advertisements from candidates for elected office. Starting next month, Twitter also won’t accept payments to promote tweets or other ads that ...

Demography does not dictate any nation’s destiny, but it shapes every nation’s trajectory, so attention must be paid to Nicholas Eberstadt. He knows things that should occasion some American worries, but also knows more important things that should assuage some worries regarding Russia and China. Writing in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs (“With Great Demographics Comes Great Power”), Eberstadt, ...

Bill Winters, the target of the biggest shareholder mutiny at a large British bank in five years, is taking the fight back to his detractors. The Standard Chartered Plc chief executive officer looks in no mood to throw in the towel on his promise to achieve a double-digit return on tangible equity by 2021. In a world that’s slipping back ...

The automotive M&A carousel is taking another turn, with Peugeot SA and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV hopping aboard this time. The two companies confirmed on October 30 that they are in talks about a potential merger that would create a $47 billion auto giant. This comes just a few months after Fiat abandoned talks to merge with Peugeot’s French rival ...

India, not long ago the world’s fastest-growing major economy, is struggling. Growth has plummeted to 5% — well below potential and not nearly enough to employ the millions of young Indians entering the workforce every year. Lending has slowed to a trickle, as has consumer demand. Voices across the political spectrum say the last thing the country can afford now ...

The Open Skies Treaty of 1992 isn’t a major arms-control agreement. But the Donald Trump administration’s reported intention to exit it is, in a way, a more troubling sign than its withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Treaty last year. If the US abandons the pact, it and Russia will be blind to each other’s military deployments, giving paranoid generals a ...