Opinion

  Each episode of the true-crime drama currently airing from Room 390 of the Cannon House Office Building in Washington has offered variations on a theme: Former President Donald Trump used the powers of his office, and blunt force, to foment a coup after losing the 2020 presidential election. The plot twists have largely involved how individuals or institutions responded ...

There’s a UK mega-deal just waiting to happen. The difficult question for investors is how long that wait will be. The consumer-healthcare business of GSK Plc will be a takeover target when it’s spun out of the drugmaker in July. Haleon, as the manufacturer of Sensodyne toothpaste and Panadol painkillers is called, attracted a failed £50 billion ($62 billion) offer ...

To look at the way richer countries are spending money on the energy transition, you might think we’re within reach of bringing climate change under control. Investment in clean energy has only accelerated in the years since Covid-19 struck. In the second half of the last decade, it grew at a 2% annual rate. Since 2020, that’s risen to 12% ...

  “Turtles all the way down” is a handy phrase for describing how the human mind creatively fills in holes of logic. It allegedly springs from one person’s attempt to justify to the philosopher Bertrand Russell her belief that the world was floating on a giant turtle by imagining another turtle underneath it, and then another, to infinity. The image ...

  Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell believes that monetary policy is carried out through financial conditions, and for the time being he seems to like where they stand. As he told lawmakers, “the market has been reading our reaction function reasonably well.” That markets and the Fed are on the same page is good news for near-term volatility, but Powell’s ...

“Beware the nested game.” It is one of the least-known but most useful adages to keep in mind when following international affairs, and it is especially relevant now that Lithuania has announced a blockade of sanctioned Russian goods. A nested game is what it sounds like — a game within a game. It recognises that the actors in most real-world ...

Kellogg Co announced plans to split into three separately listed businesses. The aim is to turbocharge sales and profit growth. But the maker of Pop-Tarts and Pringles is also providing something for potential bidders to snack on. Kellogg will spin off its North American cereals arm and plant-based food unit from its global snacking operation. The shares rose as much ...

  Italian family wealth — illiquid assets, mostly property, and financial instruments, held by the country’s households across all classes — has long been a pillar of economic strength in the heavily indebted nation. It’s in focus again as the war in Ukraine, energy price shocks and inflation weaken the country’s outlook. At 10 trillion euros ($10.55 trillion), such wealth ...

  For central banks, the pandemic may have been the easy part. To buttress economies and markets during the early days of Covid-19, authorities pumped huge sums into the financial system. They could worry about the hangover later, or so the thinking went. And judging by the previous decade, stimulus-driven inflation was a nonissue. Nobody wanted to be accused of ...

That the World Trade Organization (WTO) was able to come to any kind of deal at its 12th ministerial meeting last week was something of a miracle. The organisation has been dead for years as a location for trade governance — and even longer as a place for successful negotiations. In fact, reports of the WTO’s continued existence are greatly ...