“The language people speak in the corridors of power,” former Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter once observed, “is not economics or politics. It is history.” In a recent academic article, I showed how true this was after both the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001 and the “9/15” bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008. Policy makers used all kinds of historical ...

Hong Kong appears to have accepted defeat. Chief Executive Carrie Lam set out a blueprint for undoing the stringent social distancing measures and border curbs that severely curtailed residents’ daily lives for the past two years. Despite the government’s Covid-zero measures, 3.6 million of the city’s 7.3 million residents may have been infected. The statistic reflects badly on Hong Kong. ...

  Covid cases are on the rise in several European countries. Upticks are visible again in France, Italy and the UK. Infection rates in both Austria and Germany eclipse previous waves of the virus (based on cases per million). China is grappling with new highs in terms of case counts. The US may soon follow. This fifth wave of the ...