Of all the follies of 2017, the most tawdry may be the GOP’s headlong rush to pass a tax bill that even its proponents don’t understand. What’s especially sad is that otherwise sensible Republicans seem to be capitulating to the tax-cut frenzy. Political desperation is the mother of this legislation. Despite Republican control of both houses of Congress, the Trump ...

The seminal financial event of this year, the current decade, and possibly our generation is here: Futures trading in bitcoin has begun. But the derivative that would really damp the current crypto frenzy and make digital tokens a speculator-friendly—if not investment-worthy—commodity, currency, tulip, or whatever, isn’t futures. It’s options. It’s hard to see how even existing futures trading rules can ...

The great clearance sale of Australia’s bancassurance industry is almost complete. With Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. offloading its life unit OnePath to Zurich Insurance Group AG for A$2.85 billion ($2.1 billion) on Tuesday, the country’s big banks have all but sold out of life insurance, an industry they dominated as recently as 2015. Only Westpac Banking Corp. ...