Are U.S. authorities being overzealous in their efforts to extract money from corporate miscreants? Actually, the right question might be why, despite the advent of multi-billion-dollar penalties, companies keep breaking the law. A new batch of fines — most notably the Justice Department’s $14 billion opening bid to settle the mortgage-related transgressions of Germany’s Deutsche Bank AG — has ...

  Noah Smith Earlier this year, the U.S. Census Bureau delivered some good news. Finally, after years of what seemed like a sluggish and uncertain recovery, American incomes were rising strongly again. Median household income jumped by more than 5 percent in 2015, and the lion’s share of the gains went to middle-class and lower-income folks. Employment rose strongly, and ...

  Beijing / AFP China’s retail sales growth slowed last month, government data showed Monday, in a worrying sign for domestic demand in the world’s second-largest economy. Retail sales in October grew 10 percent from a year earlier, missing expectations for sales to match the previous month’s pace of 10.7 percent, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said. Other data ...