Opinion

Italy’s populist rulers are famous for their contradictory positions. They’re against bailing out banks, but also oppose bailing in investors. They want to cut taxes, increase spending, but also want to keep public debt in check. They are in favour of infrastructure projects, but cannot make up their mind on whether a high-speed train link to France should go ahead. ...

The dirty money scandal engulfing Europe’s post-crisis banking champions is leading to a lot of finger-pointing inside the bloc. The EU’s bank supervisors are investigating possible regulatory failures at the national level, but national supervisors are pushing back. The latest evidence of local muscle-flexing comes from the Italian central bank, which has asked ING Groep NV to stop taking on ...

The Trump administration says the US faces a “national security and humanitarian crisis” at its southwest border. The situation has indeed deteriorated — and President Trump’s approach to the issue is one reason why. His misguided policies have made a surge of asylum seekers from Central America harder to handle, and diverted attention and resources from a problem that has ...

At the fourth United Nations Environment Assembly in Kenya this past week, experts and officials from around the world debated how to come up with the investment and innovation needed for countries to grow without dooming the planet. National leaders, NGOs and others discussed, among other things, how to create more “sustainable patterns of consumption and production.” What really struck ...

Public pressure is not a good reason for government to pull an aircraft out of service. Have we learned nothing from past panics? After an Ethiopian Airlines crash killed 157 passengers on March 10, and a Lion Air crash killed 189 last fall, the Trump administration issued an executive order to ground the Boeing 737 Max 8 and Max 9 ...

You had to be there. To really see Tesla Inc.’s new Model Y, that is. Those catching the livestream of the unveiling of company’s compact SUV got a relatively brief look at the Y. Much of the event was taken up with something like a greatest-hits rundown of Tesla’s previous vehicles, both real and promised. CEO Elon Musk poked at ...

Sen. Mark Warner is all for defense modernisation. But just don’t touch those aircraft carriers, six of which are based in Norfolk. The Virginia Democrat had said a year ago year that rather than investing in 20th-century military technology, he wanted to discuss “a reallocation of some of those resources” to deal with the 21st-century challenge of cyber threats. But ...

It was a week that began in tragedy with the second fatal crash of Boeing Co.’s 737 Max jet in five months, and it ended with the first of what could be many short-term financial warnings as the aviation industry grapples with only the third fleet-wide grounding by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) since the 1970s. We still don’t know ...

When it comes to Facebook Inc., Chris Cox has been very, very important to the company. He was an executive from the social network’s early years, a friend and vacation buddy of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, a touchstone of the corporate culture and the person most responsible for the “news feed,” the stream of posts in Facebook that has become a ...

In a series of votes last week, Britain’s House of Commons decided to reject (again) Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit agreement with the European Union (EU); to rule out a no-deal Brexit; to delay the exit process; and to set aside, for now, calls for a second referendum. As you can see, the list of things Britain doesn’t want is ...