Brazilian bank workers are in a funk. Inflation is eating away at their salaries, even as banks are still making pretty good money in the face of Brazil’s recession. So on Sept. 6, tellers, clerks and other bank employees did what union bosses told them to do: They walked off the job. On Oct. 4, employees rejected a 7 …

  “I’d like to buy a new boomerang please. Also, can you tell me how to throw the old one away?” Never mind whether you think that joke is funny. Do you think your best friend would like it? You might think you know the answer; after all, people like each other partly because they make each other laugh. At …

  Globalization is clearly under attack, whether we look at trade flows or foreign direct investment. Part of the backlash against free-market policies that followed the 2008 financial crisis, protectionism has been on the rise: The irony is that the very forces that are now attacking globalization were historically its fiercest advocates. And the early pioneers of free trade would …