Opinion

If US President Donald Trump wanted to discredit the West, he could hardly be doing a more thorough job of it. The hostility he directed at ostensible allies in the G-7 was bad enough, especially when contrasted with the obsequious praise he lavished on North Korea’s murderous Kim Jong Un in Singapore. Worse perhaps was the visual contrast between the ...

When it comes to risky trading, Citigroup Inc. may have a reason to protest too much. At an analysts’ conference, Citigroup CFO John Gerspach was asked about a recent proposed change to the Volcker Rule — the Dodd-Frank regulation that limits banks’ ability to make market bets with their own capital. Gerspach said the change wouldn’t matter much to Citi, ...

No one can predict how bad the next financial crisis will be. What’s certain, though, is that a lack of liquidity will make the fallout much worse. Holders of securities, currencies and commodities need trading liquidity so they can adjust positions, raise cash to meet redemptions, reduce their risk, or limit losses. Yet they seem to anticipate more liquidity than ...

President Donald Trump’s unexpected call to remove all trade barriers didn’t gain much traction with other Group of Seven (G-7) leaders, perhaps because they were fuming about the US president’s behaviour during the summit in Canada this weekend. But a partial implementation of the idea would be a good way to defuse the brewing trade war without preventing nations from ...

China’s huge bet on new-energy vehicles has understandably gotten the world’s attention. But a less flashy phenomenon now underway may be at least as consequential for the environment in the near term: China is finally getting into used cars. A familiar ritual in most nations, buying vehicles secondhand had until recently been all but unknown in China. In most markets, ...

The cleverest corporate strategies can come unstuck when they meet reality. That may include the ambitious plan hatched by Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceuticals Co. to buy the British drugmaker Shire Plc. This deal has got off to a bad start, and bad starts are often inauspicious in M&A. Takeda’s stock fell 16 percent between its interest in Shire emerging and the ...

Theresa May survived a key Brexit showdown with rebels in her own Conservative Party in parliament. The apparent compromise frees the prime minister to negotiate a divorce agreement with the European Union. But her threat of walking away without a deal is no longer credible. If she fails in the negotiations, there’s now every chance parliament will force her back ...

Why would economists rather talk about efficiency than inequality? Having lived among them for a while, I don’t think the reason is what many people think. The common narrative on the political left is that economists are shilling for the rich, focusing on growth in order to draw attention away from how a few are gaining enormous wealth. But a ...

From overburdened tribunals to some bizarre judgments and costly delays, India’s new bankruptcy code has had its share of teething troubles. But the law, which will decide the fate of $210 billion in bad loans, has also broken new ground. Take the most recent tweak, for instance. Hapless homebuyers left without apartments by debt-stressed builders will have their status raised ...

When Amazon.com Inc. announced a year ago this week that it was buying the Whole Foods supermarket chain, investors braced for an industry shake-up. Stock prices of companies even remotely connected to groceries tumbled. Experts imagined supermarket price wars and stores transformed by Amazon robots. Some predicted Amazon would leverage Whole Foods stores as online delivery hubs, or as a ...