Opinion

  The US-China relationship is ending 2016 on its most ominous note in years. President-elect Donald Trump has questioned the one-China policy that has been the default American position and angered mainland China by taking a congratulatory call from Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-Wen. China has reciprocated with barely veiled aggression, adding visible anti-aircraft systems to the artificial islands it has ...

  Time for some extra cash for investors, Superman. People the world over like to build up their nest eggs as they age. Li Ka-shing, the 88-year-old Hong Kong billionaire who earned that superhero moniker for his canny investing, is no different. Thanks to strategies every retiree will appreciate — from buying income-producing investments like utilities to adopting a geographically ...

  Apologists for a despot will invariably mention his ability to maintain stability. Congo’s President Joseph Kabila is falling short of even this dismal standard, which may be the most compelling reason for him to give up his unconstitutional effort to stay in power. Neighboring Burundi, where President Pierre Nkurunziza’s bloody bid for an illegal third term has created more ...

  US Secretary of State John Kerry warned Israel that building settlements on Palestinian land is a major roadblock to peace. In the most scathing remark, Kerry accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being most right-wing in country’s history. He blamed Netanyahu’s government of perpetual occupation of Palestinian territories. There is an ambiguity as to what would be Washington’s ...

  Spend much time with economists around this time of year, and you will, eventually, get around to hearing about the dreadful inefficiency of exchanging gifts. You desperately wrack your brains for something, and then buy a supply of scented bath oil for someone who has only got a shower; they return the favor by giving you three books you ...

  Plenty of M&A deals have destroyed value for the acquirer’s investors but few have done so quite as quickly, or egregiously, as Westinghouse Electric’s purchase of CB&I Stone & Webster Inc., a U.S. nuclear construction business. On Tuesday, Westinghouse’s parent company Toshiba Corp. said a reassessment of the $229 million deal, announced barely a year ago, might oblige it ...

  The notion that we’re getting worse at generating big, world-changing ideas has been gaining currency. As the Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip wrote earlier this month: Outside of personal technology, improvements in everyday life have been incremental, not revolutionary. Houses, appliances and cars look much like they did a generation ago. Airplanes fly no faster than in the 1960s. ...

  It is axiomatic that if someone is sufficiently eager to disbelieve something, there is no Everest of evidence too large to be ignored. This explains today’s revival of protectionism, which is a plan to make America great again by making it 1953 again. This was when manufacturing’s postwar share of the labor force peaked at about 30 percent. The ...

  If you applied for a mortgage in the past few years, you probably noticed that the record-low rates during much of that period were only available to a lucky few. Lending standards tightened a lot after the subprime fiasco. The torturous process — supplying the lender with triplicate tax returns, W-2s, character references and so on — was a ...

  Risk is back on, so who needs chocolate? Nestle SA needs to roll with the times, and investors have a lot of optimism that its brand-new Chief Executive Officer, Ulf Mark Schneider, can produce a quick change of gear. He’s certainly got the right background, but the tactics Nestle needs aren’t in his DNA. Investors should tread cautiously. The ...