Vaclav Havel, the Czech dissident-turned-president, wrote a famous essay about the life of the mind under a system of totalitarian control. He invoked the example of a greengrocer who puts a sign in his window saying, “Workers of the world, unite!”— not believing in it and perhaps not even knowing what it meant, but ritually accepting it as the officially ...

Facts are facts, but their interpretation is often subject to preconceived notions that can be easily misunderstood. Households have been net sellers of stocks for some time, which is a fact. The interpretation of this fact, however, can go badly awry. The dangerous implicit assumption is that households are selling because they want to reduce their exposure to equities. That ...

Merck chief executive Kenneth Frazier deserves congratulations for resigning from a White House business council to protest President Donald Trump’s shameful response to last weekend’s white supremacist riot in Charlottesville, Virginia. So do two other CEOs who followed his example. More corporate leaders should do the same. It’s in their interest to do so. Corporate leaders lend credibility to a ...