Opinion

  France voted on Sunday in the first round of presidential election which has overturned the country’s traditional politics. The poll took place amid high security, with 50,000 police officers deployed throughout the country. France declared a state of emergency in 2015 following deadly terrorist attacks. It’s not the security concern that makes this year’s election so different from other ...

  One of the scariest questions in economics is whether human labor will someday be made obsolete by machines. Consultants and academics put out reports telling you how likely you are to lose your job to a robot. Economists argue back and forth about whether it’s possible for humanity to go the way of the horse. Technology industry leaders boldly ...

  It’s been nearly 10 years since the Great Recession zapped consumers’ jobs, 401(k)s and spending, sending retailers into a tailspin and megastores like Circuit City and Linens ‘n Things out of business. For retailers, the mantra became “only the strong will survive.” But here we are, a decade later, and another wave of retailers from The Sports Authority to ...

  The man who set up the most popular social network in Russia axed all of his online friends in one fell swoop on Monday. Having them, he wrote, was so 2010. That may be a sign of the times: Predictions from a few years ago that social networks would lose ground to messenger apps appear to be coming true. ...

  If I were teaching a college-level course on political economy, my midterm exam would ask students to spot the errors in an op-ed with the headline, “Do You Want Reagan’s Economy or Obama’s?” Why? Because this particular article, by former Republican Senator Phil Gramm and Michael Solon, a GOP policy adviser, provides a perfect opportunity to show how partisan ...

  It’s not often that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warns of a risk to global financial stability at its spring meeting in Washington, and almost immediately evidence jumps out of a bank earnings report in Mumbai. That’s what happened on Wednesday. The IMF released analysis showing an alarming buildup of vulnerable corporate debt — the kind where operating profit ...

  In the 21st century, human misery has become something of a growth industry. Conflicts have driven the number of displaced people to an all-time high; last December, the United Nations launched a record appeal for humanitarian aid; three months later, citing impending famines in several African countries, it said the world faced the “largest humanitarian crisis” since the UN’s ...

  Venezuela is teetering on the verge of total collapse. Anger is growing with President Nicolas Maduro who has utterly failed to meet people’s most basic needs. Hundreds of thousands in Venezuela cannot get access to food. Economic crisis is only getting worse. Inflation is out of control and government has no cash to import food and medicine. No wonder, ...

  A leaked European Union paper outlining the bloc’s initial negotiating position in Brexit talks hints at a clever zero-sum strategy. The EU’s main goal is to deter other potential exiters and offload all the anxiety about the truly important issues in the divorce on the UK alone. The paper (actually called a “non-paper” in EU parlance because it’s still ...

  Any good arson investigator can spot areas of higher concentration of an accelerant at the scene of a fire. In the conflagration sweeping bricks-and-mortar retail, it’s likely that history will designate the accelerant as the newly appointed head of the first major chain to start closing profitable stores in large numbers: Macy’s chief executive, Jeff Gennette. The future of ...