Opinion

For those looking to buy a second home as an investment, take a pass on Hong Kong. Maintenance costs are rising. Your tenant is probably working from home, cooking, washing and cleaning a lot more than before Covid. Appliances break. And good luck finding a plumber or electrician. Repair men are hard to schedule these days, as many catch the ...

  The rise in sea levels is on track to increase highly destructive flooding fivefold in the US by 2050, but a new study of home prices in coastal Florida suggests buyers are oblivious or indifferent to the risk. Governments need to take action to ensure that everyone has the right information about this critical threat. Freddie Mac researchers led ...

  There are many ways a Chinese company might sidestep US sanctions and provide technology products to Russia. It could hide American imports behind third-party suppliers, implement layers of shell companies to obfuscate source and destination, or create elaborate schemes to hide data from forensic accountants. They’d be foolish for trying, and Beijing itself would likely step in to stop ...

  It’s not especially fun for a plane lessor to tell shareholders that more than 100 aircraft formerly on lease to Russian airlines may be gone for good, especially when the aerospace industry is only just recovering from a global pandemic. Still, AerCap NV did a decent job explaining why its remaining $2.5 billion exposure to Russia shouldn’t cause investors ...

When I am trying to understand the macroeconomy, I often find myself resorting to one of my favorite sayings: All propositions about real interest rates are wrong. For starters, let’s define the real interest rate, or more properly a term series of real interest rates. If the long rate is published at say 6%, that is the nominal long rate. ...

The fastest growing niche of the global smartphone business isn’t the latest, greatest upgrade. It’s used phones, and American companies are leaders in supplying them to consumers at home and abroad. It’s a commercial success story with environmental and social benefits. But thanks to a provision hidden in a sprawling legislative trade- and industrial-policy package recently passed by the US ...

  Much of the commentary about the Ukraine war’s implications for the investment-management industry has tended to be both immediate and narrow, particularly in discussions about the spillovers for different segments. By zooming out, however, some longer-term ramifications become more apparent for both public and private markets. The war is amplifying and accelerating six important secular evolutions that were already ...

The diplomatic courting of New Delhi these past two weeks has been intense. India was one of only a handful of countries — and the only democracy — to abstain from a US-sponsored resolution in the United Nations Security Council condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Now, it is under intense pressure to shift its stance. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has ...

Europe’s governments are arguing over how to tighten their economic sanctions on Russia. The main gap in their punitive system is their continuing payments for Russian gas. Germany, especially, has been reluctant to impose a ban because its economy would struggle to cope with the consequences. Economics suggest a much better approach: Instead of making Russian gas illegal, Europe should ...

  Who would be a central banker in these febrile times, trying to navigate a path between soaring prices and a gloomy growth outlook? While policy makers everywhere face similar challenges, the ECB task is particularly tricky given its deeply negative interest rates. With the money market pricing in a rapid climb in borrowing costs that would threaten to tip ...