Opinion

Summer makes it easier for migrants to cross the Mediterranean, so Italy is struggling to cope with another influx of refugees. And like before, its European partners are doing too little to help. The Italian government is asking for a new approach, and it’s right: The EU should see this as a pan-European issue, requiring a pan-European response. More than ...

Checking out of a hotel in Kerala this week took so long that I almost missed my flight. It wasn’t the hotel staff’s fault; their work, temporarily, had been doubled. As a polite note in my room reminded me when I checked in, they would have to present two invoices to me when I left—one for the days prior to ...

The global bond and stock selloff has revived unhappy memories of the 2013 taper tantrum, when the Federal Reserve’s rumblings about removing stimulus shaved 17 percent off the value of emerging market stocks in less than two months. For the current difficulties you can partly blame risk-parity funds, which buy benchmark government bonds to hedge against stock portfolios. When bond ...

We sometimes take for granted that which is right before our collective noses. Creative destruction caused by technology is so rampant that it is practically a cliche. It is easy to ignore not only the speed at which disruption caused by technology is affecting society, but the acceleration in the pace of change. This acceleration and its effect on markets, ...

Donald Trump’s foreign policy, such as it is, rests on a massive and apparently indestructible contradiction. Trump wants the United States to remain the ‘essential’ nation, the best embodiment of Western ideals of freedom and democracy, while at the same time deliberately alienating many of our traditional ‘allies,’ whose support the United States desperately needs. American leadership becomes difficult, if ...

It’s hard to catch a breath in Brazil. Just the other day President Michel Temer dodged a brick, surviving potentially job-ending charges in electoral court that he’d won his mandate with dirty campaign money. Political bulls promptly declared Temer a survivor who would not only salvage vital political and economic reforms but also tough out his beleaguered presidency. But in ...

For leaders as well as friends, spouses and colleagues, grace is a precious characteristic. Whatever one thinks of Donald Trump’s policy choices, our nation has never had a president more lacking in grace. Whether or not Abraham Lincoln was the greatest American president, he was certainly its most gracious. On the eve of victory, Lincoln avoided triumphalism or crowing. Instead ...

North Korea’s test of an intercontinental ballistic missile changes the strategic landscape in Asia — yet the options for dealing with Pyongyang are as ugly as ever. The overriding need is to exploit these limited possibilities more thoroughly and creatively. The Hwasong-14 ballistic missile launched earlier this week could be capable of reaching Alaska, and a missile that can hit ...

Ever since Britain voted to leave the European Union, analysts have debated the City’s fate. In 2016, the British financial services sector employed more than 1 million people (3.1 percent of all UK jobs) and contributed around 7.2 percent of the UK’s total gross value added, just over half of it from London. Any threat to the sector — and ...

Something is stirring in the world’s iron ore markets. As of last Friday, benchmark ore delivered to China’s Qinhuangdao port was down 28 percent since the start of the year to $56.75 a metric ton. Then, suddenly, things changed: In just four days this week, it’s recovered more than a third of those losses to $64.71. Barring a major crash ...