Opinion

Say this for Facebook Inc.: It doesn’t lack ambition. The company unveiled plans to issue a digital currency, called Libra, sometime next year. Using a blockchain-like data system, and anchored by a basket of low-risk financial assets, its ambition is to be bitcoin without the problems. Or, as Facebook modestly puts it, “a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that ...

On June 19, as most investors expected, the Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged for now, but said the case for cuts later in the year is stronger than before. That judgment looks reasonable, all things considered. Right now, the US economy is at or close to full employment, growing at a satisfactory rate, with inflation close to the Fed’s ...

A few days ago, when talking to an the assembled chief ministers of India’s states, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that he wanted India to be a “$5 trillion economy” by 2024, when he once again faces reelection. This would, he said, be “challenging, but achievable.” Modi could never be accused of lacking ambition, but the fact is that getting ...

On June 11, for the first time in history, Foxconn Technology Group held an investor relations conference for its flagship company. That’s the good news. The bad news is what the moment portends: The world’s largest electronics manufacturer is about to be left without a CEO. It took founder Terry Gou’s pending departure from Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. to ...

Germany’s famed autobahns have lost an important source of funding. Their new management hoped the money would help them to ease congestion and restore the roads to their former glory. Historically free of charge, the highways are widely viewed as a symbol of freedom. The absence of speed limits on much of the country’s 13,000-kilometer network is part of the ...

President Trump has a credibility problem at a time when his confrontation with Iran is moving towards a dangerous test. “There is no capital in the bank” in terms of trust with major European and Asian allies, said one former senior defense official. “We’ve managed to isolate ourselves, rather than Iran. This is a strategy-free zone.” Adding to the sense ...

Mario Draghi has spent much of his time as president of the European Central Bank (ECB) fighting crises. So he hasn’t had much time to consider his legacy, even now that he’s less than five months away from retirement. Yet in his last appearance as president at the ECB’s yearly shindig in Portugal, Draghi was in reflective mood about what’s ...

Huawei Technologies Co. is braced for a fall. China’s premier telecommunications equipment and smartphone maker is preparing for a drop of 40% to 60% in overseas handset sales, Bloomberg News reported, citing people familiar with the situation. That’s quite a blow to the business, considering that consumer devices (mostly smartphones) accounted for 45% of the company’s revenue last year. But ...

President Donald Trump called CNBC to offer grudging praise to the European Union (EU) – not something that happens every day. He suggested the US should follow the example of Brussels’s “fantastic” bureaucrats in hitting the likes of Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc. with antitrust investigations and fines. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t the details of competition law that were uppermost ...

The idea that automation will drive up unemployment or drive down wages — in other words, that robots will take people’s jobs — has become almost an article of faith for many Americans. Everyone can point to instances of automation reducing demand for certain workers. And with so-called artificial intelligence technology improving rapidly, there’s widespread worry that many humans will ...