Opinion

For years, economists and policymakers have hailed the propensity of Chinese to save. Among other things, they’ve pointed to low household debt as reason not to fear a financial crash in the world’s second-biggest economy. Now, though, one of China’s greatest economic strengths is becoming a crucial weakness. Over the past two weeks, as they’ve held their annual work meetings, ...

Apple proclaims each new iPhone model is the best one it has ever made. The company says every software update is better than the last. In general, Apple believes everything it does is awesome. There’s a consequence to declaring victory no matter what: it becomes impossible to define success. One example is the Apple Watch. In April 2016, one year ...

People concerned about robots taking away jobs might want to consider where it’s already happened. Machines with varying levels of intelligence have quietly taken over the most glamorous, coveted and admirable job in the world — space exploration. It’s not that people can’t still be astronauts — it’s just there aren’t nearly enough jobs for all the people with the ...

Wedged between Brazil and Venezuela, Guyana could easily go unnoticed. It has fewer than 750,000 people and a per capita income of $4,300, half the regional average, qualifying it as the hemisphere’s third-poorest nation. At the moment, Guyana also might be its luckiest. Having struck big oil offshore starting in 2015, industry experts reckon total reserves at around 2 billion ...

Singaporeans have dodged the bullet of higher consumption taxes, at least for the next three years. They should thank their new BFF — the bond market. Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat left the goods and services tax, last raised to 7 percent in 2007, unchanged on Monday. Most commentators, including yours truly, had expected an increase after Prime Minister Lee ...

Lloyds Banking Group Plc and Standard Life Aberdeen Plc have fallen out after talks to merge their insurance businesses fell apart. But the two have left the door open to overcoming their differences and getting the deal back on track. News of the failed talks fills in some of the background to Lloyds’s announcement last week that it plans to ...

Almost two years after the UK voted to quit the European Union, and barely more than a year before the actual exit is scheduled to happen, an all but leaderless Britain is fumbling its way to disaster. The country needs to find a way to change course. There should be a second referendum as soon as possible. It was a ...

Fans of self-driving cars will have breathed a sigh of relief at the news that Uber and Google’s Waymo, two giants in the industry, have settled their intellectual-property lawsuit. This removes a huge distraction for companies, and freeing them up to focus on their own research. So that’s good. Driverless cars will be an incredible boon to society. They could ...

When Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe nominated Haruhiko Kuroda to a second term as governor of the Bank of Japan (BOJ), he gave the central banker a gift that might hold the key to policy over the next five years. Far from simply pushing the Bank of Japan towards further easing, Abe has provided Kuroda with room to maneuver should ...

How committed are you to a belief system? Answering that question has the potential to reveal flaws in our thought processes about many things, from politics to economics to cultural issues. Whether you are committed to one big idea, or are fascinated by a variety of things might also determine how successful you are as an investor. I was reminded ...