Opinion

The dollar has gained about 30 percent against a basket of other major currencies since the start of August 2011, which just happens to be the month that S&P stripped the US of its AAA credit rating. Putting aside the debate over whether credit ratings actually matter for the world’s primary reserve currency, the question at the moment is whether ...

If the European Commission’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, utters the words ‘decisive progress’ sometime in the next few days, take notice. It would be the signal that the UK and the European Union (EU) have agreed the terms of their divorce. A summit can be held and the white smoke sent up. That would be a watershed after 16 months ...

Remember we told you China’s stock-market rescuers needed rescuing? Now it looks as if the nation’s bad banks could use a bad bank. The four state-owned managers of troubled debt are in a bind, none more than China Huarong Asset Management Co., whose ex-chairman has just been accused of taking about $240 million in bribes, squandering state assets and maintaining ...

For all the disagreement in the industry about the future of aviation, there’s perfect accord on one point: There’s going to be a lot more of it. The world’s air passengers flew a combined 7.64 trillion kilometers (4.75 trillion miles) in 2017, according to Boeing Co.’s latest 20-year market outlook. By 2037, that will rise to 18.97 trillion kilometers, with ...

If you needed extra proof that Italy’s public debt is the main event in Europe, look no further than a document released last week by the so-called ‘New Hanseatic League’—a group of eight fiscally cautious eurozone countries named in homage to the group of northern European trading powers whose zenith was in the 14th century. The modern-day evocation of the ...

President Donald Trump and Congress face a mountain of unfinished business — and chances are that most of it will stay unfinished. Of course, no one knows what will happen, and the president and congressional leaders of both parties have made the usual noises about cooperation. “There are a lot of good things that we can do together,” the president ...

Paris, Frankfurt and other European cities are rolling out the red carpet to welcome financiers quitting London as Brexit puts the UK capital’s free access to business on the continent in jeopardy. Rival hubs have love-bombed firms with promises of tax breaks and sweeteners. But they need to be on guard against a regulatory race to the bottom — as ...

Recognising the passing of an era is key to understanding what the world economy will look like beyond the next couple of quarters. That big picture is what is lost in the current handicapping of specific yuan levels and the next tariffs. The larger point is that China is evolving into a different animal from the one that’s buoyed world ...

These days, cryptocurrencies are far from the rage. Many have lost 80 percent or more of their market value from their peak in January, and some have fallen off the map altogether. But perhaps that development is precisely what we need for crypto to take the next step forward. For context, railroad stocks collapsed after a bubble in the 19th ...

It’s the very definition of a first-world problem, but Norway’s $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund (SWF) is wrestling with whether to make its investment portfolio less diverse. It’s a subject that cuts to the heart of the “active manager versus passive index” debate. As part of a long-running review, which will lift the fund’s equity allocation to 70 percent, the ...