Opinion

For some time, tighter monetary policy by the U.S. Federal Reserve was perceived as the largest external economic threat to emerging countries, especially by those countries themselves. Judging from discussions with officials from those nations, as well as private-sector participants, this may no longer be the case. Another concern — the anti-globalization and anti-trade rhetoric of the U.S. presidential election ...

  Donald Trump gave a well-timed speech on Thursday, laying out his policies on energy. That day, for the first time in six months, oil hit $50 a barrel, and he was in North Dakota, which produces more oil than any other state but Texas. The audience there welcomed his calls for greater production of fossil fuels, an end to ...

  Many questions have yet to be answered regarding the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea. It has been widely reported that discussions regarding deployment have been underway since early March 2016 but after initial hopes of a quick resolution, no end to the discussions seems to be in sight. What will South ...

WASHINGTON Maybe the middle class isn’t quite so stressed any more. We in the media are rightly criticized for a pessimistic bias. We cover the unfortunate, the grim and the tragic. News is what people don’t know and, as often as not, is sad or shocking. Our prism on the world distorts reality, because reality is often predictable and reassuring ...

  Rising oil prices may give the European Central Bank (ECB) a rare opportunity to revise upwards its price growth forecasts when it meets on Thursday. Brent and WTI crude oil topped $50 per barrel on Thursday and remained above $49 on Friday. However, overall inflation remains very low and the euro area slipped back into deflation in April, with ...

  Mark Whitehouse Greece and its creditors may have averted a crisis by agreeing on the release of another dose of bailout money, but the deal does little to address a deeper problem: Europeans still don’t want to put their money there. The flow of capital between the rest of the euro area and Greece offers a useful indicator of ...

One of the major issues within New Zealand over the past few months has been the rapidly increasing cost of housing, particularly in the country’s largest city and commercial hub, Auckland. High prices combined with moderate incomes have pushed the city into becoming one of the most expensive places in the world to buy a house. The press have been ...

  Whether through signals from the Group of Seven meeting this week or in the outcome of the latest round of European negotiations on Greece, officials of advanced countries increasingly are acknowledging that the problems facing their economies require a new response to take over from the overlong use of narrow short-term tools. This recognition has been too long in ...

In formally lifting Washington’s embargo on the sale of weapons to Vietnam, U.S. President Barack Obama has affirmed that this action should not be seen as being aimed at any other state. Yet the subtext of Obama’s visit is clear: it is an implicit signaling of U.S. willingness to form a regional balance of power against the People’s Republic of ...

INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey Here’s a positive move by Turkey, a country that often seems to be heading in the wrong direction: Despite Ankara’s severe misgivings, it is allowing the US military to fly daily bombing missions from here against the IS — in support of a Syrian Kurdish militia called the YPG that Turkey regards as a terrorist threat. ...