Opinion

  From 19th-century shop girls to 20th-century buyers, modern retailing has been a female-friendly work environment. Just look at the photos today’s department stores use to illustrate their commitments to diversity. Women typically outnumber men at least two-to-one, a ratio that reflects reality. At Nordstrom, for example, 70 percent of all employees and 69 percent of managers are women. So ...

  This is a busy time for major central banks. The Bank of Japan and European Central Bank met last week, the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Federal Reserve meet this week, and the Bank of England meets next week. Although most major central banks are deciding not to make big changes to monetary policies, global interest-rate expectations among ...

  Growing up isn’t what it used to be. There’s a yawning gap between the end of adolescence and the beginning of adulthood: a period when millions of 20-somethings and 30-somethings have many adult freedoms without all the responsibilities. Social scientists have tried — so far in vain — to name this new life-stage, but no one should question its ...

  I was one very lucky kid, wrote retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn in a 2016 memoir about his bumpy childhood in a working-class Rhode Island family. “I was one of those nasty tough kids, hell-bent on breaking rules for the adrenaline rush and hardwired just enough to not care about the consequences.” Flynn described how he was arrested but ...

  For all the ground that traditional socialist parties have lost, the European Union remains a profoundly socialist organization that believes in strong worker rights at the expense of corporations — at least judging from its latest mission statement. The European Commission has presented the final version of the European Pillar of Social Rights, a document in which Commission President ...

  Is imported steel a threat to national security? How about aluminum? The White House has its suspicions, and plans to invoke an arcane statute to investigate. If the probes turn up anything, President Donald Trump will have essentially unlimited power to restrict or limit imports in response. Despite the administration’s claims, this sounds like a pretext for imposing tariffs ...

  The US has sent aircraft carrier battle group and submarine in the Korean Peninsula; President Donald Trump warned a “major conflict” with North Korea was possible if diplomatic solutions fail; Senator John McCain said the US leader understood that military action was a last resort and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson mounted an effort at the United Nations to ...

  There still hasn’t been anything close to the kind of spectacular bust seen in the early 2000s. As of today, all of the smart people who called a bubble during the past six years are still waiting for their predictions to be borne out Calling bubbles is hard. For example, take tech startups. In 2011, billionaire Mark Cuban — ...

  Amazon.com Inc.’s Jeff Bezos has made a career of being first in e-commerce. But in one critical area, he’s falling behind — thanks to Washington. While Bezos has been eager to deliver orders to customers in the US with drones, Amazon’s efforts have so far been stymied by outdated regulations. Meanwhile, JD.com Inc., an Amazon-like Chinese retailer, is soaring ...

  Can Marine Le Pen still win the French election if her opponents don’t vote in the run-off vote on May 7? After many potential Hillary Clinton voters, certain of her victory, failed to turn out last year, Donald Trump won the US presidential election, so, by analogy, such an outcome seems somewhat possible. Yet there are strong reasons why ...