Opinion

What has been missing in Washington for the past two or three decades is a serious debate about the role of the federal government. What programs are effective and justified? Who deserves government benefits and how much? The issue is not whether we’ll have big government or small government. To paraphrase President Clinton: The era of small government is over. ...

Moody’s Investor’s Service released a very interesting report on Amazon.com Inc. this week. It was distinctly different from the usual Wall Street research, which tends to be glowing about anything related to the company’s founder and chief executive officer, Jeff Bezos. I am a fan of his work and company, so in order to check myself, I seek out opposite ...

European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi is discovering that exiting quantitative easing is harder than introducing it. The more the euro rises, the more downward pressure it puts on inflation, making it harder for the central bank to taper its bond-buying program, which in turn boosts the euro. It’s a vicious circle, driven largely by the improved economic outlook ...

The absurdist political theater surrounding the US government debt ceiling is having another revival. With debt default looming next month, President Donald Trump has agreed to a deal that will grant emergency relief for Hurricane Harvey and raise the ceiling — until December, when another phony fiscal crisis is scheduled. Given the impressive dysfunction of Congress, compounded these days by ...

The recently held Brexit talks between the UK and the European Union didn’t go well. The March 2019 deadline for concluding an agreement is approaching, and progress has been much too slow. Prime Minister Theresa May needs to get a grip on this process. Britain’s government faces two crucial obstacles. It’s in May’s power to break through both. The first ...

China’s ban on initial coin offerings has provided a much-needed pause in the booming market, where people ranging from legitimate entrepreneurs to outright thieves attract money by selling digital tokens. But the move also raises a question: How can any government control a phenomenon that transcends national borders and rules? The Chinese central bank’s decision to outlaw token sales is ...

Debates over immigration are fraught with misconceptions. One of the most common is that the integration of Muslims into Western Europe societies has gone very badly, in large part because terror attacks loom so large in the news. Those attacks are a very real problem, yet they do not reflect the typical reality. A new study from the Bertelsmann Stiftung ...

On Labor Day, the American middle class survives. Indeed, it’s expanding. That’s not the conclusion of some arcane scholarly study. It’s the judgment of Americans themselves, though it hasn’t received much attention from politicians or the media. Most Americans have moved beyond the fears bred by the Great Recession. The middle-class comeback may be the year’s most underreported story. Public ...

In Southeast Asia, mobile banking is taking on a whole new meaning. Last week, Grab, one of the region’s top ride-hailing companies, announced that users of its app can start sending credits—used to pay for rides—to each other. By the end of the year, they’ll be able to use those credits at more than 1,000 restaurants and retailers. If all ...

In the weeks since the now-infamous Google memo first stirred global controversy, too little light has been shed on the underlying issue — the large and undeniable gender gap in computer science, engineering and the technology business in general. Let’s begin with the proposition that this gap is a bad thing. At least three times as many men as women ...