Opinion

“A triumph of peace and democracy.” That’s how Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro described his government’s implausible victory in last weekend’s gubernatorial elections. In fact, it is a further hardening of the soft autocracy that used to be South America’s richest democracy. Maduro’s government entered the polls with an approval rate of about 24 percent in a collapsed economy with inflation ...

What would America’s abortion policy be if the number of months in the gestation of a human infant were a prime number — say, seven or eleven? This thought experiment is germane to why the abortion issue has been politically toxic, and points to a path toward a less bitter debate. The House of Representatives has for a third time ...

Axis Bank Ltd. has been caught lying again. On October 17, the Indian lender reported that the central bank wasn’t happy with its classification of nine large corporate accounts as standard assets. As a result, the non-state-owned bank, the country’s sixth-largest by market value, has decided to rebrand the entire $750 million as nonperforming (NPAs). It’s the second time this ...

Australia’s record of 26 years without a recession flatters to deceive. The gaudy numbers mask serious flaws in the country’s economic model. First and most obviously, the Australian economy is still far too dependent on “houses and holes.” During part of the typical business cycle, national income and prosperity are driven by exports of commodities — primarily iron ore, liquefied ...

It turns out that North Korea isn’t just a nuclear threat. It’s also a cyberthreat, and in some ways, this may be more frightening. Launched largely anonymously, cyberattacks can cripple essential infrastructure — power grids, financial networks, transportation systems — and inflict social disorder and political anarchy. Immediate retaliation is difficult. All this now seems plausible. Until recently, cybersecurity experts ...

The big lesson for emerging markets from the taper crisis of 2013 was this: Don’t go into a US tightening cycle without your exporters bringing home truckloads of dollars. That’s why the most recent trade figures from India are both important and encouraging. Clubbed together with Indonesia, Turkey, Russia and South Africa on Morgan Stanley’s “Fragile Five” list four summers ...

As part of its plan to complete the euro zone’s so-called banking union, the European Commission has presented a new proposal for collectively insuring bank deposits. Such a scheme is badly needed — but the new idea falls short. By leaving too much risk with national governments, it fails to address a critical weakness of the system. The commission is ...

President Donald Trump has been attacking trade for months, but believers in the value of international competition have drawn comfort from his reputation for empty talk and record of non-accomplishment. That record, along with a trade pact that has served the US economy well for decades, may be about to end. Talks on revising the North American Free Trade Agreement ...

What would America’s abortion policy be if the number of months in the gestation of a human infant were a prime number — say, seven or eleven? This thought experiment is germane to why the abortion issue has been politically toxic, and points to a path toward a less bitter debate. The House of Representatives has for a third time ...

So what if there’s a lot of China debt out there, and the pile just keeps getting bigger? Investors, at least, appear not to care. As President Xi Jinping prepares for a second five-year term, he’s already managed to convince markets that China’s deleveraging train has left the station — never mind that there’s no evidence state-owned enterprises have even ...