Opinion

  Of all of the scary economic data that routinely streams out of Japan, this statistic should terrify you: $800 million. That’s the total value of venture capital deals completed in Japan in 2015, according to accounting firm Ernst & Young. Compare that to $72 billion in the U.S. and $49 billion in China. Even tiny Israel managed $2.6 billion ...

  World leaders have started to generate some real optimism with their efforts to address global climate change. What’s troubling, though, is how far we remain from getting carbon emissions under control — and how much wishful thinking is still required to believe we can do so. The Paris agreement on climate change has garnered the national signatories needed to ...

  The anonymity of bitcoin gained it myriad adherents among anarchists and drug dealers around the world. Now, though, it’s looking like the digital currency isn’t quite anonymous enough. Consider the sudden popularity of Zcash and Monero, two new cryptocurrencies that offer confidential transactions. When Zcash first became available last week, demand was so strong that its founders temporarily became ...

  With most election forecasts pointing towards a victory for Hillary Clinton, her top advisers are beginning to think about how to stabilize a world that has been rocked by the U.S presidential campaign and by recent reversals for American power. The paradox for the Clinton team, if it wins, will be how to signal continuity with an Obama administration ...

  The central banks of Japan, the U.K., and the U.S. will hold policy meetings this week. These three systemically important institutions are inclined to implement new policy measures, albeit different ones. Yet all three may end up keeping their policy stance as is. Their individual and collective dilemmas illustrate the current policy funk facing the global economy, as well ...

  FBI Director James Comey is an institution man. So it must be especially painful to him that he is single-handedly undermining faith not only in the institution he leads, but in the propriety of a presidential election. Comey has been balancing the interests of those institutions, the FBI and the election, for months. In July, when he held a ...

  After winning the parliamentary confidence vote on Saturday, Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy tweeted, “We have a lot of work to do.” The premier realizes that the road ahead for him is fraught with formidable challenges. Rajoy was sworn in on Monday. He will name a new Cabinet on Thursday. The first thing that Rajoy has to do is ...

  Leave it to a couple of Mexican cement and metals companies to expose Donald Trump’s calumnies about the relatively buoyant American economy, its resurgent workers and the advantages of free trade. Trump overwhelmed 16 rivals in the Republican presidential primaries by vowing to build a wall across the southern border and scored his best debating points against Hillary Clinton ...

  Airbnb Inc. is all about progress and efficiency and win-win economic outcomes, right? Underused real estate is transformed into lodging for visitors. The owners of the real estate gain, the visitors gain, the local economy gains and Airbnb’s shareholders gain. Sure, hotel owners and employees have some reason to gripe as they lose business to largely unregulated competitors. But ...

  To understand this nasty and nutty campaign, you have to go back to 1973, which is before roughly 60 percent of today’s Americans were alive. The backward trip in time illuminates how the United States and, indeed, most advanced nations, became addicted to rapid economic growth and how this, in turn, polluted our politics. It bred disillusion and disappointment. ...