Bloomberg Australian Senator Sam Dastyari resigned from parliament amid mounting criticism of his links with a Chinese businessman who had ties to the Communist Party. Dastyari, a member of the main opposition Labor Party, last month came under pressure amid media reports that he warned the businessman that his phones were being tapped by Australian intelligence agencies. He had previously …

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 …