When all right-thinking people in the nation’s capital seem to agree on something—as has been the case recently with legislation imposing new sanctions on Russia—that may be a warning that the debate has veered into an unthinking herd mentality. Sanctions were already an overused tool of foreign policy before President Trump this week peevishly signed into law a measure imposing …

At their meeting recently, the makers of India’s monetary policy cut interest rates only marginally. They would seem to have had little choice—but also little confidence that a deeper cut would jumpstart the Indian economy. The preceding days and weeks had featured a deluge of worrisome data, all of it pointing in the same direction: the economy was slowing down, …

US economic data releases this week fell short of consensus expectations and markets have been lowering their expectations of a Federal Reserve hike. That means there will be even more attention on the employment report for July, which will be released Friday. What is most needed—for Main Street, for Wall Street and for an orderly normalization of Fed policy—is a …