Opinion

Hong Kong appears to have accepted defeat. Chief Executive Carrie Lam set out a blueprint for undoing the stringent social distancing measures and border curbs that severely curtailed residents’ daily lives for the past two years. Despite the government’s Covid-zero measures, 3.6 million of the city’s 7.3 million residents may have been infected. The statistic reflects badly on Hong Kong. ...

  Covid cases are on the rise in several European countries. Upticks are visible again in France, Italy and the UK. Infection rates in both Austria and Germany eclipse previous waves of the virus (based on cases per million). China is grappling with new highs in terms of case counts. The US may soon follow. This fifth wave of the ...

  Jerome Powell seemed to get the message across this time. After the most recent Federal Open Market Committee meeting, bond yields fell as he laid out an extremely hawkish agenda in his press conference. The conventional wisdom is that traders took Powell’s repeated insistence that the economy was strong enough to withstand repeated hikes as reason to be optimistic ...

Members of the US Congress rightly have been asking how countries that value security and freedom might remove Russia from the United Nations Security Council. In fact, it’s not impossible, as some have argued; or even unprecedented. In 1990, when Iraq’s Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and tried to wipe that country from the face of the earth, the Security Council ...

When Porsche tried in 2008 to take over (much larger) Volkswagen AG using opaque financial derivatives, analysts pejoratively dubbed it a “hedge fund” that also makes sports cars. The bid was unsuccessful. Now Porsche is part of Volkswagen, and the parent could almost be described as a “credit giant” with some car brands attached. This structure, though, is doing wonders ...

  You may not feel it yet, but if you’re an American homeowner you’re probably a good bit richer after the dizzying run-up in housing prices last year. But how do you tap into your newfound wealth? And should you? US homeowners gained an average $55,300 in their home’s value (minus their mortgage) in 2021. In some especially hot cities, ...

  Obamacare gave Americans a lot to argue about before it became law in 2010. One contentious question concerned its eventual economic effect, with supporters saying it would invigorate businesses by freeing them from burdensome healthcare costs and opponents warning of a drag produced by tax increases and government bureaucracy. A decade’s worth of data has now rendered a partial ...

In November 1939, soon after Hitler’s Germany invaded Poland, another massive European country likewise attacked a smaller neighbour: Russia invaded Finland. After vicious fighting through a long and bitter winter, the war ended with the Moscow Peace Treaty, in which Finnish concessions fell far short of what Stalin had hoped for in launching his invasion. Despite being heavily outgunned and ...

  Private equity firms feasted on the cheap UK stock market for as long as they could in 2021. Eventually, investors bid up the share prices of much of their potential prey. But one target — educational publisher Pearson Plc — just kept falling. Now buyout firm Apollo Global Management Inc. is circling. Pearson investors must be desperate to sell, ...

  The gender pay gap among the top ranks of US firms ought to be narrowing. Corporations have long been under pressure to increase the number of women on their boards. And yet the measure has widened. This should sound an alarm over the persistent lack of women in leadership roles — but it also underscores how stock-based compensation is ...