Opinion

It looks as if Vladimir Putin wants to be recalled as something besides being an aggressive autocrat. He yearns, it seems, to be seen as a leading political thinker, respected for his analysis as well as feared for his actions. This is a reasonable reading of Putin’s recent interview with the Financial Times, which included his remarkable declaration that the ...

Desperation is creeping into India’s economic policy-making. Having lost the fiscal plot, bureaucrats are trying to marshal resources by squeezing taxpayers, foreign investors, firms planning buybacks and even the central bank. Such overreach never ends well. Tax collections last year were a full 1 percentage point of GDP lower than the 7.9 percent the government had hoped to obtain. Rathin ...

For the bond market’s “tale of two cities,” look at Rome and Vienna. Both Italy and Austria have come to the market recently with ultra-long duration debt sales. It’s remarkable that the latter managed to get a 98-year issue away with a 1.17 percent interest rate, but Italy’s 48-year offer this week at a near 3 percent yield is pretty ...

It’s getting harder and harder to imagine the new Nafta successfully ratified during this Congress. And Donald Trump has only himself to blame for that. For one thing, the White House strategy on getting the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement ratified is still incoherent at best. As Bloomberg’s Jenny Leonard reports, there are at least two factions, surrounding Vice President Mike Pence ...

Market participants will know soon enough whether the US Federal Reserve has led them into another “dove trap” and will need to reel in expectations for interest-rate cuts. The next 48 hours will be critical in markets, with Fed Chairman Jerome Powell appearing twice before Congress for his semi-annual testimony and the release of the minutes from the central bank’s ...

Deutsche Bank AG has given up waiting. After years spent adrift hoping that its ambitions to compete with Wall Street would come good again, Germany’s biggest bank has sounded the retreat. Chief Executive Officer Christian Sewing’s overhaul may not be particularly imaginative — but it is what the lender needs if it is to do more than just survive. After ...

Argentina’s foreign minister fought back tears. President Maurico Macri called it “the most important agreement ever signed in our history.” Latin America’s big-gest economy would soon be “reborn,” predicted a top aide to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who likewise heralded the “great day.” The June 28 deal between the European Union and Mercosur was a breakthrough. Who knew that even ...

The most obscure part of President Trump’s economic agenda is deregulation. This is not because anyone is deliberately hiding it. The real reason is more mundane: Deregulation is obscure, because it’s genuinely complicated and confusing. The issues are highly technical, and they vary by industry. Only those who have a need to know are likely to take the time to ...

In most democracies, a politician who has just led his or her party to a crushing defeat steps aside. In the world’s largest democracy, however, parties are often structured around individuals or families. If they go, so does the party. That’s one reason why it is so surprising that Rahul Gandhi quit as president of the Indian National Congress party ...

Two years after Hong Kong’s securities regulator vowed to nip irregularities in the bud, flash crashes are still plaguing the world’s fourth-largest stock market. This year’s wave rivals the notorious “Enigma Network” that prompted the last bout of regulatory hand-wringing in 2017. In mid-January, Chinese real estate developer Jiayuan International Group Ltd. plunged without warning, triggering a $4.8 billion selloff ...