“W hen you got a hundred voices singin’, who can hear a lousy whistle blow?” —Newsies. Instead of managing the Catalonia crisis well, Spain’s central government has inadvertently provided the world with an illustration of what not to do. The heavy-handed response to the region’s desire for greater self-determination has empowered, and not weakened, separatists and has contributed to regrettable ...

Besides default, perhaps the biggest risk to holders of euro-denominated bonds is currency convertibility. It isn’t talked about all that often, but it hangs over the market like a black cloud. The fear is that some geopolitical event causes a member of the euro zone to decide to exit the union and investors holding sovereign bonds denominated in euros are ...

Lost in the debate over how best to insure Americans against the high cost of health care has been the question of how to bring that cost down. That’s a shame, because keeping the cost of medical treatment from rising so fast is just as important as providing Americans access to it. Promising efforts to get a grip on medical ...