Opinion

Will Italy leave the EU? Follow the money

  Will Italy follow the U.K.’s example and leave the European Union? Far-fetched as it may seem, capital flows suggest that some people aren’t waiting to find out. To keep the euro area’s accounts in balance, Europe’s central banks track flows of money among the members of the currency union. If, for example, a depositor moves 100 euros from Italy ...

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For Democrats, Senate majority also is crucial

  If, as polls are indicating, Hillary Clinton is the next U.S. president — the election forecaster Nate Silver says there’s an 86 percent chance — her initial years in office will depend less on the size and shape of her victory than on which party controls the Senate. Although the battle for control of the chamber, where Republicans currently ...

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Campaign e-mails and the fine art of politics

  A Wall Street executive offered advice on how to deflect criticism for taking money from Wall Street. There was an invitation to spend a weekend at George Soros’s Southampton estate. These and many other tidbits are in the leaked e-mails of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. Guess what else? It turns out that politics influences the Democratic nominee’s ...

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Uber and Lyft are changing some American cities

  Uber now offers rides in more than 200 U.S. cities. Rival Lyft does too. But Uber gets an estimated 60 percent of its U.S. revenue from just five metropolitan areas (New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington), according to a new report from the research firm 7Park Data. There is a similar regional concentration in ride-business data ...

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Titans of law are worthy of a Nobel, too

  Now that this year’s Nobel Prizes have all been awarded, we can play the annual game of wondering what other fields should be included. Why should the great scientists, writers, peacemakers and economists have all the fun? (And get all the money?) Every year there’s a new suggestion: Why not visual art? Why not athletics? This time around, the ...

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Financial crisis 2.0?

  While everyone fixates on the U.S. election, developments in the world economy threaten to create problems for the next president and, possibly, trigger a major financial crisis. A little-noticed study by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) delivers the bad news. It finds that global debt — including the debts of governments, households and non-financial businesses — reached a record ...

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Twitter’s identity crisis gets in the way of a sale

The past few weeks of revelations about Donald Trump should convince you of the utility of Twitter’s platform. It is the new news ticker, the way information gets spread at the speed of light by the fastest typists. But that’s merely the networked and mobile technology. If you want to know how valuable the company is, you must ignore the ...

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A weak deal on cutting emissions from airplanes

  Cheers rose from prominent voices around the world this month when almost all countries agreed to reduce the climate costs of international air travel. The United Nations and the White House applauded the deal, as did the airline industry and even some environmentalists. Yet the agreement hardly qualifies for the praise. It stands to do little to reduce carbon ...

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Flexibility can iron out CETA, TTIP discord

  There were demonstrations and rallies on Sunday in France, Spain and Poland against the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). While TTIP is in limbo, CETA is to be signed on October 27. But it can only be struck when all 28 EU member states back it. Tuesday (October 18) ...

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Struggling to deal with the North Korean danger

  When South Korean officials talk about the growing nuclear challenge from the North, they use red-alert phrases like “existential threat,” “imminent danger” and “dagger at the throat.” They want Americans to understand that this long-running story of brinksmanship has entered a new phase. One senior South Korean official told me starkly: “A nuclear missile from the North can land ...

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