Opinion

Economists of all political views breathed a sigh of relief and celebrated when Kevin Hassett was confirmed last week as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Hassett, my former American Enterprise Institute colleague, is widely respected, as evidenced by a June letter of support for his nomination signed by 44 leading economists from both the left and right. The ...

Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s iconic leader, is sacrificing her moral authority for political expediency. By failing to speak out against repression—and, more broadly, by not doing enough to help her country grow and prosper—she risks losing both her power and her reputation. Suu Kyi, whose years leading the resistance to the Burmese junta earned her the Nobel Peace Prize, ...

President Donald Trump got elected on the strength of three words: Build the wall. He was more equivocal on Thursday, after cutting a loose deal with Democratic leaders to protect some undocumented immigrants: “We will build the wall later.” Trump’s deal-making has left Republicans unnerved, and some of his strongest backers worried that he’s backtracking on his most central campaign ...

If you only read the headlines—or, say, my columns—you might be pessimistic about China’s economy. Recent news has been dominated by a crackdown on capital outflows, worries about rapid debt growth, and efforts to rein in a risky overseas investment binge. Yet ordinary Chinese are highly optimistic: The China Consumer Confidence Index hit 114.6 in July, a level not seen ...

Byung-Yeon Kim, a professor at Seoul National University, began interviewing North Korean defectors seven years ago to learn more about their country’s economy. One wouldn’t have thought there was much to discover: Often described as “Stalinist,” the hermetic regime to the north seemed to preside over a crude, centrally planned system, with peasants toiling away for a pittance in collective ...

According to the Daily Beast’s latest scoop, “a Russian operative” used Facebook to organize an anti-Muslim event in Twin Falls, Idaho, that attracted a grand total of four people. Inside Russia, the Kremlin appears to have a similar inability to stoke crowds. Last Sunday, Russia held the last string of local elections before the 2018 presidential poll. Few people showed ...

India’s economy is not doing as well as many had hoped. Growth has been slowing for several quarters, and even if there’s a slight recovery in coming quarters, the signs for the medium term aren’t propitious. There appears to be no end in sight to a slow-moving banking crisis. And private investment has crashed, reflecting pessimism at Indian businesses about ...

In the worst possible way, the monumental data breach at Equifax—involving the names, addresses and social security numbers of some 143 million people—draws attention to a long-neglected gap in the US system of financial oversight. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) ought to take the lead in putting this right. The three big US credit reporting companies—Equifax, Experian and TransUnion—have ...

The Republicans’ failure to repeal Obamacare has created a political opening. The American public, threatened with the withdrawal of health insurance from millions of people, has largely come to embrace the idea of universal coverage. At such a moment, Democrats are right to advance ideas for building on the gains accomplished by the Affordable Care Act. Unfortunately, many of them ...

“We have taken every step man can devise,” said President Lyndon Johnson in 1964, “to insure that neither a madman nor a malfunction could trigger nuclear war.” Apparently lots of people are starting to doubt that this is true. The latest entrant is an op-ed article this week in the New York Times. The authors, Jeffrey Bader and Jonathan D. ...