Opinion

W.W. Grainger Inc.’s results weren’t stellar, but what exactly were investors expecting? The industrial-parts distributor has lost about a quarter of its market value over the past year amid worries that its efforts to combat Amazon.com Inc. with lower prices won’t work and will make it less profitable. We got further proof of that Wednesday when Grainger reported a further ...

It’s the silly season for financial predictions about Apple Inc. With history as our guide, it is folly to place much faith in them. Nearly every day brings deeply researched reports from stock analysts on their Apple sales forecasts. And this is not about the next quarter or two. The most pressing question analysts are trying to answer is how ...

The Chinese government, subtle masters of propaganda, seem to have discovered a Sun Tzu formula for taming dissent on the internet: The best strategy may not be to confront critics directly, but to lull or distract them with a tide of good news. This intriguing argument is suggested by a recent article in the American Political Science Review titled ‘How ...

Although Raghuram Rajan co-wrote the influential 2003 book, Saving Capitalism From the Capitalists, it has fallen upon his successor at the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to actually attempt such a thing. By the looks of it, Urjit Patel has a hard slog ahead. For now, the governor of India’s central bank can breathe a sigh of relief. His most ...

The failure of three banks in less than a month has led the European Central Bank to wonder whether it needs fresh powers to deal with struggling lenders. Some new tools might prove useful, but they aren’t the main thing. What the ECB needs most is the will to resist political pressure and act promptly when necessary. The recent crisis ...

After years of horrific fighting in Syria — including several failed cease-fires — it’s hard to get too excited about a limited agreement to stop hostilities in a tiny corner of the country. Yet the modest ‘de-escalation’ deal in Syria’s southwest is a promising sign. IS is not yet defeated. But the cease-fire, reached by Jordan, Russia and the US, ...

At this point, blanket critiques of the economics (or “econ”)discipline have been standardized to the point where it’s pretty easy to predict how they’ll proceed. Economists will be castigated for their failure to foresee the Great Recession. Some unrealistic assumptions in mainstream macroeconomic models will be mentioned. Economists will be cast as priests of free-market ideology, whose shortcomings will be ...

Britain’s commercial property market is at the epicenter of the Brexit tremor. One of the industry’s titans, British Land Co., is fed up with investors’ reluctance to buy its shares. The company plans to buy back as much as 300 million pounds ($390 million) of its own stock, about 5 percent of its equity value. It’s a bet that the ...

If it looks as though Europe is clutching at straws to stop hundreds, sometimes thousands, of migrants from crossing the Mediterranean into Italy every day, that’s exactly what’s happening. On Monday, the European Union’s foreign ministers approved restrictions on the supply of inflatable boats and outboard motors to Libya. The boats that bring the migrants, mostly Africans these days, have ...

The Great Recession, and the financial crisis that preceded it, were such enormous and terrible events that they occupied most of our economic thinking for a decade. But now that the smoke has cleared and the economy has returned to a semblance of normality, we’re starting to think more about long-term trends. And evidence is mounting that the Great Recession ...