Those cheering the looming departure of Wolfgang Schaeuble from the German Ministry of Finance should not do much. His successor may not be as ornery, but southern Europeans—and above all Greeks—shouldn’t expect any better treatment. Schaeuble has held a wide range of positions since he was first elected to the German parliament in 1972; he’s been interior minister, chief of …

This past week, I gave a lecture to a Georgetown University graduate seminar. The instructor’s challenge to me was to talk about technology as integral to energy security. Here is the argument I laid out for these students. In wind and solar energy—which only significantly depend on hydrocarbons during manufacturing and transport—technology is a relatively simple lens on energy. For …

When discussing Japan’s debt, most people get caught up in the issue of fiscal solvency. As everyone by now knows, Japan has a very high level of debt versus gross domestic product: This attention-grabbing number—about twice the level of the US—often gets people asking whether Japan will default. Some believe a default is likely when the country runs out of …