Opinion

Equity markets haven’t yet managed to shake off their difficulties. If this selloff persists, credit looks like it could well be the next frontier for trouble. You can’t have falling stocks and tightening credit spreads — it doesn’t make sense to have risk-off sentiment prevail in an incredibly liquid market alongside a risk-on approach in an illiquid one. Arguably it ...

Rarely has a round of wage negotiations been watched so closely as the recent dispute involving Germany’s IG Metall labor union. The agreement reached in Baden-Wuerttemberg with the Suedwestmetall employer’s federation, including a 4.3 percent raise from April and the right to a 28-hour working week, is a further sign that wage pressures are finally returning to the euro zone. ...

Sometimes it feels like, wherever I go in the world, local businessmen have a story to tell me about one of their peers who has lost big money in India. This week, I have a story to tell them in return — one that may make everyone feel a bit better. These hard-luck stories are particularly common in the sort ...

The aerospace industry better be ready for Boeing Co. to become even more of a behemoth. The plane maker has reportedly held preliminary talks about acquiring Woodward Inc., a $5 billion maker of cockpit controls and fuel-metering units. No deal is imminent, and truth be told, Woodward is a weird choice (more on that later). But the fact that Boeing ...

Uber is trying to defeat the gender pay gap by relying on an algorithm that has no idea whether drivers are men or women. But is it working? A recent paper studying more than a million drivers reached a conclusion: not so much. Men earn about 7 percent more than women do, as it turns out. This could be taken ...

After bottoming out at $438 billion and 2.4 percent of gross domestic product in fiscal 2015, the US federal deficit has started growing again. It was $666 billion (3.5 percent of GDP) in the fiscal year that ended in September, and with the big tax cut passed by Congress and signed by the president in December, and the moderately generous ...

The next governor of the People’s Bank of China has a broader, more conceptual inbox than is typical of incoming central bankers. Zhou Xiaochuan has held the post since 2002 and has hinted that retirement is coming. Zhou helped transform the bank from a fairly obscure bureaucratic outpost in the economic world to a place with a growing international profile ...

Qualcomm Inc. is trying to call Broadcom Ltd.’s bluff, but the company may end up with its own credibility crisis. Qualcomm’s board rejected Broadcom’s latest $82 cash-and-stock bid, saying it materially undervalued the company. The chipmaker is, however, finally willing to meet with Broadcom to determine “the true highest price at which you would be prepared to acquire Qualcomm” and ...

By signaling hawkish policy intentions that went beyond the market consensus, the Bank of England did more than convey its updated views on the UK economy and the prospects for monetary policy tightening. It also highlighted the ongoing gradual shift by central banks in advanced countries towards less stimulative policies. This evolution makes sense, given domestic economic conditions. It is ...

Welcome, dear average American, to the lovely world of unregulated retail finance. Perhaps you’re young enough that you missed the tech-stock housing bubbles. Perhaps you didn’t have enough cash to “flip that house” back in 2006. Well, thanks to the invention of cryptocurrency, there’s a whole new way for you to lose your life’s savings. Plunges in the value of ...