Say this for Facebook Inc.: It doesn’t lack ambition. The company unveiled plans to issue a digital currency, called Libra, sometime next year. Using a blockchain-like data system, and anchored by a basket of low-risk financial assets, its ambition is to be bitcoin without the problems. Or, as Facebook modestly puts it, “a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that ...

On June 19, as most investors expected, the Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged for now, but said the case for cuts later in the year is stronger than before. That judgment looks reasonable, all things considered. Right now, the US economy is at or close to full employment, growing at a satisfactory rate, with inflation close to the Fed’s ...

A few days ago, when talking to an the assembled chief ministers of India’s states, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that he wanted India to be a “$5 trillion economy” by 2024, when he once again faces reelection. This would, he said, be “challenging, but achievable.” Modi could never be accused of lacking ambition, but the fact is that getting ...