Opinion

Could the re-election campaign of France’s President Emmanuel Macron be any less inspiring? As French voters go to the polls on April 10 for the first of two voting rounds, gone is the enthusiasm or interest in the election of 2017, when Macron came to power as the youngest leader since Napoleon Bonaparte, with a new party promising to sweep ...

Hong Kong’s most unpopular leader since the city returned to Chinese rule stayed in character to the end. Carrie Lam paid tribute to her backers in Beijing, while eschewing any mention of the financial center’s people as she confirmed she won’t seek a second five-year term. The chief executive put the central authorities first, second and third on her list ...

The US Commerce Department announced that consumer spending fell 0.4% in February from January after adjusting for inflation. This may not seem like much, but real spending has dropped in three of the last four months. Without strength in household outlays, the economic expansion is doomed. Capital spending provided a minor boost to the economy but didn’t recover the losses ...

  Elon Musk bought a $3 billion stake in Twitter Inc, because when you’re the world’s richest human you can toss billions around just like that. This may be just another piece of performance art from Musk, who has alternately endorsed and pooh-poohed Bitcoin to great effect. He’s also taken to Twitter to hype altcoins such as Dogecoin and Shiba ...

  De-globalisation looks as though it’s happening. Calls for yet more sanctions on Russia after the horrifying images of dead bodies strewn across Ukrainian streets seem now to have every chance of success, with European nations possibly even prepared to inflict upon themselves the pain of an embargo on Russian energy imports. As the pandemic continues to disrupt supply chains, ...

As the war in Ukraine moves into a second month, its global economic reverberations are increasing. Energy markets, agriculture, bonds, precious metals — all are roiled as the fighting takes its uncertain path. But beyond economics, longer-term geopolitical themes are emerging, as countries are increasingly forced to pick sides for or against Russian President Vladimir Putin. For US strategic planners, ...

  It was the first evening of a new, relatively relaxed Covid regime in Singapore for many. Masks ceased to be compulsory outdoors and social gatherings could number 10 people. Singing was no longer outlawed. This was a moment worth toasting, cautiously. While the changes stop short of a revolution — the city-state isn’t known for spontaneous lurches — they ...

  For the financial world, it hit with much the same violence as Will Smith’s smack to Chris Rock’s face. And it’s dominated discussion to almost the same extent. The topic in question is the yield curve, and its inversion. The spread between two- and 10-year bond yields has long been regarded as a great indicator of an oncoming recession, ...

  In a war fought over Telegram as well as on Ukraine’s pummeled streets, the country’s actor-turned-president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has excelled. But for over-the-top showmanship, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and his men have been hard to beat. Kadyrov’s fighters, known as “kadyrovtsy,” have been waging an all-out propaganda war for the TikTok era, attempting to demonstrate their leader’s loyalty to ...

Just-in-time manufacturing has become a favourite punching bag during the pandemic supply chain crunch, with critics arguing manufacturers had become too obsessed with efficiency and left themselves too little slack to weather availability constraints or geopolitical disruptions. The terminology is handy because it’s easy for the casual observer to grasp in theory and conjures up images of parts magically appearing ...