Opinion

Nine months after a scandal erupted over Facebook Inc.’s open borders of user information, those borders are in the news again. The New York Times reported that after Facebook tightened rules in 2015 to limit the account information that could be hooked into outside companies’ apps and websites, the social network made many exceptions and some previously made special deals ...

The Trump administration has pulled out all the stops to attack the European Union (EU). Realising its relative weakness, the EU hasn’t tried a muscular response. Instead, it has used the same tactic as it did with Britain’s Brexiters. On December 11, the US ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, accused Europe of disregarding all the goodwill built up since ...

Cracking down on immigration is how Theresa May has chosen to interpret the Brexit campaign’s promise to “take back control.” As a result, the UK prime minister has ruled out one of the more plausible alternatives to her own EU withdrawal deal: The so-called “Norway-Plus” idea, which would keep Britain in the European single market and force it to accept ...

President Trump really dislikes the 2015 Clean Water Rule. Barely a month after taking office he directed the Environmental Protection Agency to take steps towards killing it. The “horrible, horrible” rule, he said, was a “massive power grab” that burdens farmers and developers with restrictions on “every puddle” and “every ditch.” In fact, the rule simply clarifies the scope of ...

As far as ideas go, the notion that Beijing has bargaining power over Washington by virtue of being America’s largest creditor is an old chestnut. However, the current US-China trade conflict has revived interest in the drop in Chinese holdings of US Treasuries to their lowest level in a year and a half. The fifth straight decline took the stock ...

Nobody can know if, when Deng Xiaoping launched his strategy of “Reform and Opening Up” 40 years ago, even he could have predicted the near-miraculous transformation of the Chinese economy that would follow. In the years since then, hundreds of millions have been lifted out of abject poverty and into the ranks of the global middle class; China’s industrial heartland ...

Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, took two big blows in less than 24 hours. Investors should worry less about the bruises, and more about what he might do to recover from them before next year’s general elections. The first knock came when besieged Reserve Bank of India (RBI)  governor Urjit Patel abruptly resigned. Although he cited personal reasons, nobody ...

Traders and investors will be glad to see the back of 2018. It’s been the worst rout since 1901, by Deutsche Bank AG’s reckoning, with almost every asset class delivering losses. The figures illustrate the backdrop to what went wrong this year – and hint at what could go better in 2019. $14,889,930,106,680 That’s how much the total value of ...

This week was a vivid demonstration of the inability of conservatives to deliver results after the great populist revolts in 2016 in Britain and America. And it showed that there is a golden opportunity for liberals in both countries to tackle the public concerns that motivated the mistaken decisions to vote for Brexit and President Donald Trump. To put it ...

It took Emmanuel Macron just one speech to ditch his entire strategy for shaking up the euro zone. Upon his election, the French president pledged to respect the monetary union’s budget rules to regain credibility with Germany. Fiscal consolidation and structural reforms weren’t just a way to strengthen the French economy, they were also the key to unlocking significant reforms ...