Opinion

Some of China’s zombie firms may finally die. The State Administration for Industry and Commerce and the State Administration of Taxation jointly issued a statement Monday that requires dormant companies that have not submitted annual reports or tax declarations for at least two years to begin business operations once again or file for liquidation. Of the zombie firms, dormant firms ...

  U.S. President Barack Obama’s call for a “moral revolution” in humanity’s approach to nuclear weapons was the highlight of his poignant recent visit to Hiroshima, while Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump similarly agree on the pressing need to secure loose nuclear material. However, speeches aspiring to a higher morality are only a beginning; morality is made truly meaningful though ...

  Matthew Winkler A week before Britain votes on whether to leave the European Union, polls show that the public’s preference is too close to call. Financial markets provide a different view: a persistent expectation that the U.K. will remain. When markets and polls point in different directions, markets tend to be superior prognosticators. Will Britain Leave the EU? That’s ...

  A growing number of economists seem convinced that the U.S., European Union and China are all headed for a prolonged period of sluggish growth — secular stagnation, in the words of former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. A close parallel would seem to be 1990s Japan. There, too, the bursting of debt-funded asset price bubbles gave way to multiple rounds ...

WASHINGTON Even by Donald Trump’s standards, his comments about the Orlando shooting have been reckless and self-serving. They are also dangerous for the country. Trump’s response to Sunday morning’s terrorist attack by Omar Mateen was initially an opportunistic tweet; then a boasting statement on his website: “I said this was going to happen”; followed by a renewed call to temporarily ...

  The projections of the International Energy Agency (IEA) that the global oil market will be almost balanced next year as demand continues to rise faster than production, while the current oversupply is much smaller than previously thought, echo the UAE’s position that current prices were not sustainable. The surplus in the first half of this year is about 40 ...

  Mohamed A. El-Erian As central banks in advanced economies — including the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the Swiss National Bank and the U.S. Federal Reserve — hold policy their meetings this week, they will all confront tricky questions about the management of national liquidity and cross-border influences. The most fascinating discussion, however, will take place at ...

Top diplomats from the U.S. State Department and USAID appeared before a congressional subcommittee last week to make the case for the department’s FY 2017 budget, which requests $164.1 million for Central Asia. Speaking before the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats, Daniel Rosenblum of the U.S. State Department detailed the justification behind across-the-board increases ...

Microsoft’s acquisition of the social network LinkedIn is not easy to understand. Both companies’ chief executives, Satya Nadella of Microsoft and Jeff Weiner, have described the $26.2 billion all-cash deal — one of the largest in tech history — in the blandest corporate-speak, with memos that sounded as if they were part of LinkedIn’s megaboring attempt to create a commentary ...

  When he promised a referendum on the U.K.’s membership in the EU, Prime Minister David Cameron was surely not picturing the white-knuckle ride his “remain” campaign is experiencing right now. What was intended as a campaign promise to get his Conservatives elected must seem in retrospect like a reckless gamble. The consequences will be felt long after the ballots ...