Opinion

What’s so scary about climate change? The term is not scary — at last not in a visceral, skin-crawling sense. Scientists have shown that the likely 2 degrees of global warming to come this century will be extremely dangerous, but, you know, “2 degrees” is hardly a phrase from nightmares and horror films. How about “rat explosion”? As the climate ...

Exxon Mobil Corp. needed a good quarter, and it got a good quarter. It beat the consensus earnings estimate in the third quarter, having missed in the previous three. Sure, the margin of victory owed a bit to disposals and favorable tax treatment, but there were big underlying gains in both the upstream and downstream businesses. In particular, Exxon notched ...

Those who are awash in cash lack capital. Those who have adequate capital are thirsty for liquidity. That, in a nutshell, is the story of India’s financial crunch, and the surest way to ease it will require tapping Indians living overseas. In the past, New Delhi has resorted to such special hard-currency deposit programs to tide over balance-of-payment difficulties. A ...

Is central bank independence the next casualty of the age of populism? In the US, President Donald Trump has declared that the Federal Reserve is “going loco.” He blames Fed Chairman Jerome Powell for threatening “his” recovery and for market volatility caused in part by uncertainty over the trade war Trump himself started. In India, reports emerged this week that ...

Nomura Holdings Inc. will have to sharpen its focus and develop a more pronounced Japanese flavour overseas to move ahead. That means bulking up at home and cutting costs elsewhere. The 2016 profit recorded by Nomura’s international business is a distant memory after the securities firm shuttered much of its European stock trading. The company posted a rare quarterly loss ...

Facebook has faced so much criticism lately that it’s tempting to see its unexciting earnings release as another sign of trouble. More likely, however, the company is merely turning into an Apple lookalike, profiting from network effects rather than from disruptive innovation or any kind of residual positive vibe from its brand. It’s no accident that on the earnings call, ...

China-US relations have deteriorated faster than almost anyone could have expected. The question looms: Are the two countries leaping with their eyes closed into a so-called Thucydides Trap, with war possible between the rising and the established power? The US is driving this process and should reflect carefully whether it’s in Americans’ best interests to continue down this path. China ...

It wasn’t a dream or an exaggeration by cautious Facebook Inc. executives. The company’s financial results are weakening, just as executives warned they would a few months ago. Everyone knew that at some point Facebook wouldn’t be able to continue posting eye-popping revenue growth and profit margins. What was surprising was how quickly the brakes came on. Early in 2018, ...

Italy may have dodged one blow, but its fight is far from over. After escaping a ratings downgrade from S&P Global Ratings last week, the government bond auction was the next test of investor appetite. October 30 saw 2 billion euros ($2.3 billion) of five-year and 2.5 billion euros of 10-year bonds offered. With the country enmeshed in a budget ...

As it does each year, the European Commission is digging into the budgets of euro-zone member states to see if they comply with the bloc’s fiscal rules. The recent slowing of the European economy complicates this work — or ought to. It suggests that Brussels should not be overly strict. The commission needs to sanction serious violations, but it can ...