Opinion

Soaring inflation doesn’t only affect what consumers buy; it also dictates where they shop. As gas prices spike, some habits learned during the pandemic, including limited trips to the grocery store, are set to make a comeback. This time it won’t be to protect health but to save money. The national average gas price hit $4.32 last week, the highest ...

  With April 5, the end of the UK tax year, fast approaching, and many investors nursing significant losses in volatile markets, now is a good time to consider what can be done to mitigate any capital gains tax (CGT) liabilities you might have. Gains in the stock market are especially amenable to careful tax planning. Unlike assets such as ...

  Let’s get ready for an opportunity to think less about bloodshed and suffering in Ukraine, and instead focus on the familiar confines of Wednesday’s decision on monetary policy from the Federal Open Markets Committee. For finance, it probably matters more. Anything other than a hike of 25 basis points in the fed funds rate would count as a major ...

One question I get repeatedly these days: What is wrong with the Russian military? Many in the West had a mistaken belief that the Russian war machine was a rough match for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato), and they are surprised at how much trouble the massive force is having subduing a much smaller and less-equipped neighbour, Ukraine. During ...

Singapore appears to be shutting its doors to foreign talent just as the exodus of expatriates from Hong Kong gathers pace. The government recently tightened visa rules for white-collar workers, adding hoops to a process that employers already complain is too onerous. Will the city-state miss its golden opportunity to scoop up Hong Kong’s disgruntled elites? Hardly. It’s a different ...

  At the dawn of the 20th century, Norman Angell famously (or infamously) predicted that the era of global commercial integration had made great power conflict so costly and destructive as to be unthinkable. A few years later, the outbreak of World War I proved him right about the cost and destruction, but wrong about being unthinkable. The Great War ...

  Corruption is “a cancer that eats away at a citizen’s faith in democracy,” said a certain vice president, back in 2014. Now commander in chief, Joe Biden must confront a corruption problem unfolding on his watch: the spiraling costs of misspent Covid funds. In recent court filings, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has described a “massive fraud scheme” in ...

Germany’s armed forces are “more or less bare,” the country’s most senior army officer, Alfons Mais, declared last month in reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “The options that we can offer the politicians to support the alliance are extremely limited. We all saw it coming and were not able to get through with our arguments … This does not ...

  Maybe port logjams and semiconductor shortages weren’t such bad problems to have after all. CEOs have talked of little else for the better part of the past year, but these issues feel rather beside the point compared with the tragic loss of life wrought by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and have largely dropped out of the headlines. For example, ...

  Long before the war in Ukraine, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided that international card networks could be used as instruments of statecraft — and that he should channel the rising economic power of his country’s 1.4 billion people to resist the dominance of Visa Inc, Mastercard Inc and American Express Co. “Everyone cannot go to the border for ...