Opinion

  Bitcoin investors can thank China for popping a bubble in the digital currency. The 10-day volatility of bitcoin dropped 50 percent in a matter of days after authorities stopped leveraged bets and, on Monday, nudged exchanges to start charging transaction fees. The squeeze began in the first two weeks of January when a spike that took the currency’s price ...

  Even as he puts a stake through Barack Obama’s ambitious, 12-nation trade pact with Asia, President Donald Trump has signaled he’s willing to strike narrower bilateral deals in the region. His first one should be with Japan. To be clear, any bilateral deal would be far inferior to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would have not only lowered barriers to ...

  With a stroke of a pen, US president Donald Trump withdrew America from the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Trump argues it will benefit US companies and workers. In fact, the decision will have adverse effect. And he made is clear that he is not going to deviate from his protectionists promises. Trump pat his back after signing an executive ...

  The European Central Bank has spent the last few years battling the threat of deflation with a combination of negative interest rates and a bond-buying splurge. There’s now enough evidence to suggest ECB President Mario Draghi should at last acknowledge that inflation has returned. But even if he does, the fissures underlying the euro zone economy will prevent the ...

  One of the reasons for Line Corp. to list its shares in both Tokyo and New York was to broaden its international scope. It’s not working. The social-networking company’s fourth-quarter operating profit missed analysts’ estimates by 70 percent, with many pointing to declines in gaming and digital content revenue. But there’s an even deeper reason for the disappointment. Investors ...

  The planet has broken global heat records for three years in a row — a finding that, paradoxically, may raise public concern about global warming, but won’t change long-term climate forecasts. First, the good news: Scientists say the run of record-breaking temperatures doesn’t mean that we should expect every year to be relentlessly hotter than the last. From year ...

  Separate comments last week from European Central Bank President Mario Draghi and Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen confirmed an ongoing change in the policy configuration facing their two systemically important central banks: The recognition of a transition in both economic conditions and prospects, along with questions about robustness and durability. For now, their response is to maintain a stimulative ...

  After Paris hosted the 2015 Climate Change Accord, it’s fitting that France is pioneering one way in which it might be paid for: green bonds. The country is making its debut appearance in the market this week — the first big sovereign issuer to do so. If all goes well, it could be a sign of green bonds really ...

  The ideas of France’s Benoit Hamon, the surprise front-runner in the presidential primaries of the Socialist Party, are far to the left of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and even the U.K. Labour Party’s Jeremy Corbyn. This, of course, is the era of the expanding Overton Window, with radical ideas bursting into the mainstream. One Hamon proposal in particular, however, ...

  Without question, the most exciting economic story of the past half century has been the dramatic, and probably unprecedented, decline in global poverty. In a recent study, the World Bank estimated that in 2015, just over 700 million people remained trapped in desperate poverty, or 9.6 percent of the world’s population. Those sound like big numbers until you compare ...