“We have taken every step man can devise,” said President Lyndon Johnson in 1964, “to insure that neither a madman nor a malfunction could trigger nuclear war.” Apparently lots of people are starting to doubt that this is true. The latest entrant is an op-ed article this week in the New York Times. The authors, Jeffrey Bader and Jonathan D. …

As the home stretch for the September 24 vote heaves into view, it’s hard not to conclude that a fourth term is Chancellor Angela Merkel’s for the taking. The polls have barely shifted over the past five weeks, with Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union-led bloc solidifying the lead it’s held since the spring and no relief for Social Democratic Party leader …

In late July, Oaktree Capital’s Howard Marks put out a memo describing current investment trends that could turn out to be mistakes. Marks urged caution on equity valuations, low volatility, FAANG stocks (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google), ETFs, interest rates, private equity, venture capital and even bitcoin. Caution alone is not an investment strategy, so Marks penned a follow-up …