Opinion

Not long ago, an explanation developed about Facebook Inc.’s two-plus years of crises. The theory went that Facebook’s failures to spot foreign propaganda on the social network, to weed out viral misinformation, and to protect people’s digital information all had a common cause: Facebook’s leaders were too trusting and too optimistic to predict how the social network could be twisted ...

Brexit is turning into a national humiliation. To see just how desperate the situation is, look at how some Britons are trying to make light of it. Two videos went viral this week. In the first, BBC political commentator Chris Mason simply threw up his hands and admitted he simply hadn’t the foggiest idea what could happen next. “You might ...

The International Energy Agency (IEA) published its World Energy Outlook, its annual effort at revising assessments of future demand for and supply of fuels and electricity. There’s a familiar theme within it: The IEA expects more renewable-energy use in the future than it did in last year’s outlook, which was more than it forecast in the 2016 outlook. There’s also ...

Google’s new cloud boss is used to being the underdog, and that’s fitting for the role he’s stepping into at one of the world’s most powerful corporations. The Alphabet Inc. unit has been trying for years — halfheartedly, at least until recently — to leverage its technical expertise in web search into areas such as renting computer power and data-crunching ...

With China posting its weakest growth in a decade, officials have blamed a “challenging external environment” – polite language for the trade war. It makes for a good sound bite with an obvious villain. But in reality, responsibility for the slowdown rests squarely with Beijing’s policies and cracks in the economy. For all the headlines and hand-wringing, the macro-level impact ...

In the hierarchy of pleasures, schadenfreude comes second, so conservatives are enjoying Harvard’s entanglement with two things it has not sufficiently questioned — regulatory government and progressive sentiment. The trial that recently ended in Boston — the judge’s ruling might be months away, and reach the US Supreme Court — concerns whether Harvard’s admissions policy regarding Asian-Americans is unjust, and ...

Dell Technologies Inc.’s raised bid for its tracking-stock stepchild is so complicated it just might work. The technology giant is now offering $120 per share, or $23.9 billion, to buy out holders of the DVMT stock that was created to fund Dell’s 2016 buyout of EMC Corp. and was meant to reflect the value of that company’s stake in VMware ...

An institution with money-printing powers should have no difficulty keeping the lights on. But could it continue to act effectively after depleting its net worth? Former Bank of England policymaker Willem Buiter posed that question in early 2008, and it’s currently the biggest challenge facing his long-time research collaborator Urjit Patel, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor. Under pressure ...

One of the assumptions that economists sometimes use to frame their models is to specify that some variables will be held constant, a concept that’s expressed with the Latin phrase ceteris paribus. We often make the same mistake in politics and foreign policy. We concentrate on our own domestic issues and assume that the rest of the world will remain ...

Whichever way you slice it, the draft Brexit deal unveiled by British Prime Minister Theresa May is no big win for financial services, despite being lauded as such in some quarters. If she gets it past parliament, still a huge if, the accompanying transition period – which may well be extended – will give banks and other finance firms more ...