Opinion

Must a safer banking system inevitably be less dynamic? Judging from the experience of the US and Europe since the 2008 financial crisis, not necessarily. Bank executives typically portray efforts to shore up the financial system as a trade-off, in which greater resilience means less of something good. They often warn, for example, that requirements to increase capital buffers will ...

It’s time India’s policy makers acknowledged the real problem facing the country’s shadow banks. What they are experiencing is no longer a vanilla liquidity shortage; the entire industry has crashed against a wall of mistrust. On the other side of that wall are a clutch of wealthy property developers and their middle-class customers, as well as teeming multitudes of poor. ...

With little public fanfare, US Cyber Command, the military’s new center for combating electronic attacks against the United States, has launched operations to deter and disrupt Russians who have been meddling with the US political system. Like other US cyberwar activities, this effort against Russia is cloaked in secrecy. But it appears to involve, in part, a warning to suspected ...

Emmanuel Macron has followed the old adage: Never waste a good crisis. As relations with Italy go from bad to toxic, the French president has taken the unprecedented step of recalling his ambassador from Italy — the kind of diplomatic spat that doesn’t usually happen between big EU member states. It’s calculated to embarrass Luigi Di Maio, Italy’s deputy prime ...

As if Amazon.com Inc.’s search for a second headquarters didn’t have enough reality-show-esque plot twists brought yet more. The e-commerce behemoth is reevaluating its decision to set up an office in New York that was to bring 25,000 jobs to Long Island City, according to a report in The Washington Post. Amazon is reportedly considering the turnabout amid backlash from ...

The Trump administration’s decision to pull out of the 1987 treaty with Russia on intermediate-range nuclear forces is a mistake. For all its faults, the pact was one of the West’s great Cold War triumphs, and it continued to serve US interests. Fortunately, if the administration is willing to think again, there’s a way to correct the error. The White ...

When data showed China’s industrial production and retail sales slowed significantly in the final months of 2018, US President Donald Trump took credit, telling Fox News that “China’s economy, if it’s in trouble, it’s only in trouble because of me.” The implication is that global trade is a zero-sum game, and losses in China resulting from US tariffs translate to ...

When J. Sainsbury Plc announced its 7.3 billion-pound ($9.5 billion) acquisition of rival Asda in April, it looked like the British grocer had beaten the mighty Walmart Inc. But if the takeover falls apart, it is the US retailer that will emerge from the wreckage the least damaged. The Competition and Markets Authority is expected to rule on the transaction ...

Even in the ever-changing technology industry, there are some constants. One of those is matchmakers suggesting Apple Inc. buy Netflix Inc. or (insert hot internet/media company of the moment). I have tended to dismiss these ideas, including the Netflix (and other) acquisition suggestions this week from a JPMorgan Chase & Co. stock analyst. Apple typically builds everything on its own, ...

Soon, in a federal court that few Americans know exists, there will come a ruling on a constitutional principle that today barely exists but that could, if the judicial branch will resuscitate it, begin to rectify the imbalance between the legislative and executive branches. It is the “nondelegation doctrine,” which expresses John Locke’s justly famous but largely ignored admonition that ...