Opinion

  While ATMs in India are still waiting to get refilled, analysts’ spreadsheets are finally getting populated. The high-frequency statistics they need to weigh the impact of the country’s bizarre currency ban are slowly trickling in. By the looks of things, some earnings forecasts may escape with just a trim; others may need the slash-and-burn treatment. Sample two pieces of ...

  James Mattis, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, has called Russia the “most dangerous” short-term threat to US interests and raised the question of whether President Vladimir Putin is “delusional.” Trump, meanwhile, has praised Putin’s savvy and talked of repairing US-Russia relations. This isn’t the only issue on which Mattis is at odds with his prospective boss, and ...

  Donald Trump did it again. He called John Lewis, civil rights icon and Democratic congressman ‘all talk and no action.’ The Republican billionaire response came a day after John Lewis described Trump as an illegitimate president. Lewis, like many other Democratic lawmakers, vowed to give Trump’s swearing-in a miss. Trump blasted Lewis saying that he should instead clean his ...

  China’s leaders are hardly disguising their fears about money leaving the country. They’ve imposed new disclosure rules limiting how Chinese — who are allowed to convert up to $50,000 worth of yuan into foreign currency each year — can spend that money overseas. Simultaneously, they’re striving to tamp down worries about the tumbling yuan, which has fallen to an ...

  Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund, has been portrayed as a bizarre, Moneyball-type machine in which employees’ every move is monitored and assessed, increasingly by computer algorithms. Awful as that may sound, what if it’s actually a step toward a happier and more prosperous world? Granted, descriptions of the place — including a recent Wall Street Journal article to ...

  Howard Marks, co-founder of Oaktree Capital Group, is one of the smartest guys I know. Each quarter, he sends out a letter to investors filled with sharp insights and observations. I find all of his letters to be worthwhile, but this quarter he played right to my confirmation bias in his discussion about experts. Here are the key concepts: ...

  It is far too early to render final judgment on the Obama presidency. All the chatter about his ‘legacy’ overlooks two obvious realities. The significance of Obama will depend heavily on events that have not yet happened (for starters, the fate of the Iranian nuclear deal) and comparisons, for better or worse, with his successor. Still, it’s possible to ...

  For the UK economy, the good news is that following the Brexit vote, the sky hasn’t fallen as many predicted; on the contrary, it’s been a period of unexpected fair weather. The bad news is that the benign outlook is encouraging a surge in borrowing, leaving households vulnerable if the Bank of England decides to tighten monetary policy. Andy ...

  India’s controversial decision to ban 500- and 1,000-rupee notes has backfired. The idea was to root out “black money” — the profits of political corruption, tax evasion and ordinary crime. But efforts to get around the ban have been so effective that those problems may now be harder to solve than before. Prime Minister Narendra Modi deserves credit for ...

  Once again Cyprus reunification talks failed to reach any conclusion. The diplomats from Turkey, Greece and Britain suspended the talks after failing to iron out differences on security guarantee for its ethnic Greek and Turkish communities. The reunifications talks have failed multiple times in the past also. This gives rise to skepticism. Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when ...