“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 …