Opinion

In operation for more than 40 years, this outfit has grown to $106 billion in assets with investments in more than a dozen countries. Most of that is in China. Its returns probably wouldn’t have you celebrating — 12.8 percent last year on a return-on-equity basis, 4.6 percent if you’re looking at return on assets. But it has never posted ...

Ewald Nowotny, the governor of Austria’s central bank and a member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank, said last week that “It’s no secret, we’re monitoring closely what the Fed did, and is doing.” Such sentiments are understandable, even desirable. After all, the Federal Reserve’s process of monetary policy normalization is unprecedented and, at least so far, ...

Not one to be outdone by any adversary, Donald Trump has upped the ante in a rapidly escalating trade war with China, threatening an additional $100 billion of tariffs on top of the initial round of $50 billion. In doing so, the Trump administration is failing to appreciate a crucial reality: The United States needs China more than China needs ...

Real estate is fast turning out to be the gift that keeps on giving for troubled conglomerate HNA Group Co. Under pressure to reverse a multibillion-dollar buying spree to pare its debt load, HNA is in the midst of a fire sale. It seems property is the answer. In February, HNA sold two parcels of land on the site of ...

When almost all the world’s governments agreed in Paris more than two years ago to address climate change, they sidestepped an important issue: carbon emissions from international shipping. Next week in London, they have a chance to put this right. Shipping is by far the most energy-efficient mode of transport, and it moves some 80 percent of world trade by ...

In the childhood tale, Goldilocks ate the porridge, sat in the chair and slept in the bed until the bears showed up to settle the score. And so it was in markets last year, as each downdraft was followed by a stronger updraft as investors responded to economic and financial conditions that were just right. But this year, the bears ...

A new idea has come into vogue — breaking up Big Tech. The list of people calling for antitrust action against Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, and other big tech companies is growing. New York University marketing professor Scott Galloway has lead the charge, arguing that these companies’ size and technological disruption have lead to a host of social ills, from ...

Self-driving cars keep killing people. Just in the past few weeks, one crashed into a highway barrier and another ran over a pedestrian. This will inevitably lead to much hand-wringing about the ethics of the algorithms that drive autonomous vehicles. Yet tragic as such accidents might be, I have a hard time caring. I don’t even see the issue as ...

The bumpy path of Desmond Meade’s life meandered to its current interesting point. He is a graduate of Florida International University law school but cannot vote in his home state because his path went through prison: He committed non-violent felonies concerning drugs and other matters during the 10 years when he was essentially homeless. And Florida is one of eleven ...

Fake News is a charge that US President Donald Trump routinely levels at mainstream news outlets reporting truths he prefers not to hear. So when economists cry foul—complaining about blasphemy and quackery among would-be practitioners—our first instinct should be a little scepticism about the charge of Fake Economics. Isn’t this just a famously insular and recently maligned profession simply closing ...