Opinion

The Federal Reserve has prepared investors for a small increase in interest rates this week, part of its effort to get monetary policy back to normal. The central bank should deliver the quarter-point rise the markets expect — but that isn’t all it ought to do. Investors’ attention is turning to a new question: What does the Fed intend to ...

Last week, as the shocking results of the British elections arrived, the most over-used sentence in Britain seemed to be: “I was wrong.” Another insurgent mass movement following Syriza in Greece, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in the United States, and the Five Star Movement in Italy had caused a political earthquake. In one of the biggest political upsets in ...

Akio Morita, the legendary founder of Japanese electronics giant Sony Corp., once declared that “America looks 10 minutes ahead; Japan looks 10 years.” In an influential 1991 book called “The Japan That Can Say No,” Morita and his co-author, conservative politician Shintaro Ishihara, alleged that the short-term thinking of U.S. companies would be their downfall. Constrained by shareholders more obsessed ...

There are now four times as many cryptocurrencies in circulation as fiat currencies. That’s amazing. And encouraging. According to the Swiss Association for Standardization, which maintains the International Standards Organization database, there are 177 national currencies currently in use. That list generously includes four precious-metals and four bond-market units (codes XBA to XBD, for the curious). The CoinMarketCap website lists ...

In most countries, insurers are among the most staid and conservative companies in financial markets. In China, they’re becoming some of the riskiest. On the surface, China’s insurers seem to be enjoying a golden age. Over the past two years, premium revenue has risen by 88 percent and total assets by 49 percent, while claims are up only 43 percent. ...

Forewarned is forearmed. So perhaps the country is lucky that President Trump’s allies have floated the possibility that he might fire special counsel Robert Mueller. This speculation allows citizens to reflect on the consequences of such an action. Trump has already taken the country to a darker place than even his sharpest critics would have imagined six months ago. He ...

At more than 2,000 feet, Shanghai Tower is the world’s second-tallest building. It looms over its neighbors — the world’s ninth and 19th tallest buildings — in a supercluster of supertall structures unlike any other in the world. The only problem? Finding people to work there: Only 60 percent of Shanghai Tower is rented out, and only a third of ...

The Trump administration’s latest plan to reform financial regulation starts in a very good place: It attacks the ridiculous complexity of the current system. But it fails to follow through with new rules that promote safety as well as simplicity. Put into practice, it could be a big step backwards. The Treasury Department’s new report is right to complain that ...

For OPEC, Russia and others that have lived off oil (and little else) for decades, the worst-case scenario is about to become the present-tense scenario. America has discovered the magic beanstalk, and it is named “shale oil production.” The US now has the ability to not only be energy self-dependent but to become a major exporter of oil and natural ...

During the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) press conference last week, one exchange stood out. Asked about a meeting scheduled by the finance ministry in New Delhi to discuss the RBI’s policy, the governor of India’s central bank, Urjit Patel, replied: “The meeting did not take place. All the MPC members declined the request of the finance ministry for that ...