Opinion

The US Congress might have just set a record for shortness of memory: Just 10 years after a crisis that nearly brought down the global financial system, it’s loosening the safeguards designed to prevent a repeat. Now it’s up to regulators — and specifically the Federal Reserve — to ensure that the backsliding doesn’t go too far. Prodded by President ...

Italy’s populist dream team has a radical plan to revive the country’s economy. Successive drafts of the coalition agreement between the League and the Five Star Movement, seen over the past few days, show the two parties are keen to press ahead with their lavish tax cuts and spending pledges, in spite of Italy’s mammoth public debt. There’s a double ...

Whatever one might think about the US political situation, it’s hard to deny that the economy is doing just fine. In April, the unemployment rate dropped to 3.9 percent, a 17-year low. At this point, there’s a job opening for every unemployed person in the country. Not bad. In the spirit of seeing the glass as half empty, though, it’s ...

What do people think economic theorists do? The pundits who regularly criticize the profession, particularly in the pages of British magazines, seem to think that they spend all their time making abstruse, unrealistic theories about how free markets are the best of all possible worlds. And it’s true that there are still a few economists out there who are essentially ...

The new government finally taking shape in Italy is one of the weirdest coalitions you could imagine — and a pretty effective combination if your aim was to sabotage the European Union. Although predictions about where this Italian misadventure is heading are difficult, it could easily be worse than Brexit for the EU. The coalition partners — the left-populist Five ...

Walmart Inc. shook investors earlier this year with an e-commerce stumble. Last week, it took a step towards reclaiming the narrative that it has a handle on its digital strategy. As the big-box retailer reported first-quarter earnings, much of the focus was on one number: Its US e-commerce growth. Walmart’s digital business had been booming for a while under Jet.com ...

Archie Norman, the famed turnaround specialist who is now chairman of Marks & Spencer Group Plc, is hoping for a textbook turnaround of Britain’s biggest clothing store by value. He is certainly reading from the classic first page: on Wednesday the company announced 514 million pounds ($688 million) of one-time charges, more than halving pre-tax profit in the year to ...

President Donald Trump’s aggressive new trade policy isn’t going too well. His threats to impose tariffs on imports from China, Europe and other trade partners have so far yielded much less than he promised — and instead of retaliating, he shows signs of backing off. It’s right to criticize him for saying one thing and doing another, but bear in ...

First the good news: Homelessness in the US is down. In the mid-2000s, President George W. Bush’s ‘housing first’ program made substantial inroads against the problem. President Barack Obama continued the campaign with the Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program in 2009 and a follow-up program in 2010. As a result of these efforts, the nationwide homeless population has continued ...

The world doesn’t like its essential commodities being controlled by a small group of producers. Less than a year after BHP Billiton Ltd. announced plans to merge its iron ore operations with those of Rio Tinto Group in 2009, the proposal was dropped amid expectations that regulators in Europe and Asia would oppose the deal on antitrust grounds. So why ...