Exxon Mobil Corp. needed a good quarter, and it got a good quarter. It beat the consensus earnings estimate in the third quarter, having missed in the previous three. Sure, the margin of victory owed a bit to disposals and favorable tax treatment, but there were big underlying gains in both the upstream and downstream businesses. In particular, Exxon notched ...

Those who are awash in cash lack capital. Those who have adequate capital are thirsty for liquidity. That, in a nutshell, is the story of India’s financial crunch, and the surest way to ease it will require tapping Indians living overseas. In the past, New Delhi has resorted to such special hard-currency deposit programs to tide over balance-of-payment difficulties. A ...

Is central bank independence the next casualty of the age of populism? In the US, President Donald Trump has declared that the Federal Reserve is “going loco.” He blames Fed Chairman Jerome Powell for threatening “his” recovery and for market volatility caused in part by uncertainty over the trade war Trump himself started. In India, reports emerged this week that ...