Opinion

  Though roller-coaster elections have recently become the norm in established democracies (witness France’s whirlwind campaign that ended recently), Germany appears determined to be an exception. As her party clinched yet another key regional election, Chancellor Angela Merkel is close to establishing her dominance in the September general election well ahead of time. Former European Parliament President Martin Schulz created ...

  Although the Federal Reserve refrained from raising interest rates last week, it emphasized that policy makers still believe a gradual adjustment is warranted. On the surface, that’s a market-friendly policy because it means a slower pace of dollar appreciation, which would benefit emerging markets and commodities. Then there’s China, where a gradual adjustment higher in US rates could mean ...

  Europe’s leaders are thrilled that Emmanuel Macron beat Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election — and they should be. Yet they ought to keep their celebrations brief, because they need to start thinking now about how to help Macron make a success of his presidency. Le Pen’s angry nationalism gave voice to widespread dissatisfaction with the European ...

  Democratic Party’s candidate Moon Jae-in has been declared the winner in South Korean presidential election. With 100% of the votes counted, Moon won with 41.08%, according to the country’s National Election Commission. As many as 13,423,800 voters chose Moon Jae-in as their preference for president. Moon, a liberal, was sworn in as South Korea’s new president on Wednesday and ...

  It’s always worth re-evaluating one’s views, and my latest revision is that the euro currency is better and less vulnerable than I had thought. I still believe its creation and later expansion were mistakes, but I now see them as much smaller mistakes than before. Many of the biggest costs lie in the past, so the euro might be ...

  There’s certainly no shortage of cash lying around at Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Even so, Warren Buffett’s struggle to find the $407 billion company’s next meaningful acquisition shows that his relative buying power has diminished. If you attended or streamed the shareholder meeting on Saturday, you heard a lot about Berkshire’s soaring cash pile, which stood at $96.5 billion as ...

  In his new book “The Complacent Class,” my Bloomberg View colleague Tyler Cowen mentions that more Americans may be slacking off at work. He offers this as one more measure of the comfortable malaise into which American culture has settled. But it also occurs to me that if leisure is replacing effort at work, it means that the country ...

  In his heroically doomed 48-year campaign to promote The Washington Monthly, Charles Peters hit upon one especially apt (if un-catchy) slogan: “If you’re not afraid of being right too soon.” Peters founded his little magazine in 1969. From the start, he needled mainstream liberals about issues that weren’t getting enough attention at the time: income inequality, entrepreneurship, Wall Street’s ...

  A victory for liberal candidate Moon Jae-in, the favourite in Tuesday’s presidential elections in South Korea, would end nine years of conservative rule, and may energize what Mirae Asset Daewoo Co.’s investment strategist Peter Kim calls the “Occupy chaebol” movement. For shareholders of Samsung Electronics Co., the shifting political winds could mean more dividends and share buybacks. Popular angst ...

  Energy Secretary Rick Perry is right to say the U.S. needs a long-term solution to its massive nuclear waste problem. It also makes sense for Perry and some members of Congress to see Yucca Mountain as part of that solution — though many Nevadans promise to make sure it won’t be. But even if Yucca can survive the political ...