Opinion

For more than two years, markets have priced in a lot less monetary tightening than was signalled by the Federal Reserve’s “blue dots,” which represent the expectations of individual members of the Open Market Committee for the future path of interest rates. The surprise election of Donald Trump is likely to affect this divergence for two distinct reasons, and the ...

  In the wake of the U.S. presidential election result, EU leaders are placing an even greater premium on solidarity. So in this topsy-turvy year, here’s another sobering thought to consider: Robust growth of the U.K. economy since the Brexit vote could be bad news for both the country and the continent. Let me explain. The economic picture in Britain ...

  First, the good news. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have stayed nearly the same for three years till 2015 at 36.3 billion tonnes. It will rise only by 0.2 percent by this year-end. Now, the bad news. Despite the levelling off of CO2 emission, it is not enough to check global warming and tackle climate change. The annual Global Carbon ...

  With globalization receding and China’s economy slowing down, there’s speculation that the Asia boom is over. It isn’t. The ascension of China and India continues to be the most important economic story in the world. To get a picture of how important these countries are, it helps to look at how much they’ve mattered in recent years. Here is ...

  Are U.S. authorities being overzealous in their efforts to extract money from corporate miscreants? Actually, the right question might be why, despite the advent of multi-billion-dollar penalties, companies keep breaking the law. A new batch of fines — most notably the Justice Department’s $14 billion opening bid to settle the mortgage-related transgressions of Germany’s Deutsche Bank AG — has ...

  Noah Smith Earlier this year, the U.S. Census Bureau delivered some good news. Finally, after years of what seemed like a sluggish and uncertain recovery, American incomes were rising strongly again. Median household income jumped by more than 5 percent in 2015, and the lion’s share of the gains went to middle-class and lower-income folks. Employment rose strongly, and ...

  Donald Trump, it seems, embraces the old dictum: Make no small plans. Already, he’s published an agenda for his first 100 days in office, recalling Franklin’s Roosevelt’s launching of the New Deal. Not surprisingly, near the top of Trump’s to-do list is a pledge to double economic growth from its recent desultory rate of 2 percent a year to ...

  For many people, Donald Trump’s surprise election victory was a jolt to very idea that humans are rational creatures. It tore away the comfort of believing that science has rendered our world predictable. The upset led two New York Times reporters to question whether data science could be trusted in medicine and business. A Guardian columnist declared that big ...

  China’s government isn’t shy about looking for ways to highlight democracy’s failings, and the U.S. presidential election provided plenty of raw material. Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, Donald Trump’s locker-room talk, the debates: Every low point was touted and cataloged on state media. On Election Day, the Communist Party’s official newspaper offered a closing argument: Trump versus Clinton was symptomatic of ...

  It is nothing short of a miracle that the members of Venezuela’s government and the opposition carried out a dialogue. Such a meeting would have been unimaginable two months back. The Vatican — which brokered the talks — needs to be lauded for making the impossible happen in a very conducive environment. Despite criticism from some quarters, the meeting ...