Opinion

Sweden is considering selling 100-year bonds to take advantage of the unprecedented decline in global yields. With almost half of the nation’s debt already owned by the central bank, though, there’s skepticism about how much demand the debt office can drum up in what is an already illiquid market. So the country should accelerate plans to issue its first green ...

Dan Loeb’s team is unlikely to be celebrating over Sony’s decision to sell its stake in Olympus Corp. Investors in Japan have reason to put a few crates of bubbly on ice, though. The sale was a mere side note on the laundry list of changes that Loeb’s Third Point LLC asked for at Sony, in an eight-page letter published ...

Even a trade truce could have its losers. The economic conflict between the US and China has been jarring, no doubt – decades-old commercial relationships have been torn up, supply chains are getting upended, global growth is slowing, and investors and businesses are rattled. On days when the standoff seems endless, you might find yourself asking: Can’t we just go ...

Asia’s biggest cities, from Shanghai to Dhaka, are struggling to manage the impact of decades of growth. Some are sinking. Most are traffic-choked. And almost all struggle with chronic air pollution. Worst of all, coastal cities face the threat of being inundated by rising seas. Indonesia’s capital Jakarta suffers these urban ills more acutely than most, which is why President ...

Strong and sustained global growth has enabled living standards throughout most of the world to converge on an upward course. Even throughout Africa, the world’s poorest continent, there have been drastic improvements in health, education and governance. Countries such as Ethiopia and Tanzania are seeing the start of industrialisation. Yet a few parts of the world remain mired in desperate ...

It was probably inevitable that we would have a “retirement crisis” as hordes of baby boomers (people born between 1946 and 1964) sprint and stumble into their “golden years.” But it’s a fake crisis, even though it’s already becoming a staple of journalism and politics. It presumes that most Americans can’t afford to retire comfortably. Not so. It’s important to ...

We’ve become so gloomy about the euro zone that it’s easy to neglect the bright spots. After a very tough 2018 for President Emmanuel Macron, France, the second-largest economy in the monetary union, is faring much better than most experts would have assumed. Its economic model — less reliant on exports than Germany — is proving mo-re resilient to dangers ...

Up to now, President Donald Trump’s largely ill-conceived effort to roll back financial regulation had one redeeming feature: a mostly sensible plan to improve the Volcker Rule, a piece of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act aimed at limiting banks’ ability to take undue risks with taxpayer backing. Not anymore. A new round of tweaks, which regulators are in the process of ...

Emerging-market currencies are having their worst month since May 2016. To confound matters, some of the usual rules of investing have broken down. When the global economic outlook is dimming, traders often sell currencies of small, open, trade-reliant economies — say, South Korea’s won — and cling to higher-yielding assets. This is driven by the so-called carry trade, when investors ...

US President Donald Trump’s trade war with China keeps undermining the confidence of businesses and consumers, worsening the economic outlook. This manufactured disaster-in-the-making presents the Federal Reserve with a dilemma: Should it mitigate the damage by providing offsetting stimulus, or refuse to play along? If the ultimate goal is a healthy economy, the Fed should seriously consider the latter approach. ...