The record of economists, including those at the Federal Reserve, over the past half century has been discouraging. The two greatest blunders are well-known: policies that fed double-digit inflation in the 1970s, reaching a peak of 13.5 percent in 1980; and the more recent failure to prevent the 2008-09 financial crisis and Great Recession, sending unemployment to 10 percent. Unfortunately, ...

It’s been almost a month since Wall Street took a step towards adopting Bitcoin as its own with the launch of cash-settled futures contracts. The results haven’t been stellar. Promoted as ‘Gold 2.0,’ Bitcoin hasn’t quite worked out that way: Its price in dollars has fallen by about 20% from a mid-December high, while its volatility climbed to its highest ...

JPMorgan Chase & Co., it appears, is outgrowing its bank. The nation’s largest bank by assets reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter results. It also crossed a big annual revenue milestone — re-entering the 12-figure club for the first time since 2010. It reported $104 billion for 2017 on an adjusted basis. However, at the same time that JPMorgan is more behemoth than ...