There’s a new bad idea doing the rounds in Europe. Many governments are convinced that a reduction in value-added tax will help relaunch their economies. Some, including Germany, have already wielded the ax. Others, such as Italy and the UK, are taking this option seriously. But the benefits of cutting VAT are limited, and the costs are large. As with ...

Is the global monetary order ready for another reboot? In the 1960s, Japan and Europe exported their way to post-World War II prosperity under the fixed exchange rates of the Bretton Woods agreement. The US went off the gold standard in 1971, but the established way of doing things didn’t collapse. Thirty years later, China essayed the role of being ...

Bloomberg Ryanair Holdings Plc dismissed the UK’s plan to relax quarantine requirements for people arriving from France, Greece and Spain as “more idiotic rubbish” and called for the restrictions to be scrapped entirely. The government plans next week to publish a full list of the countries with which it will establish so-called air bridges — exempting incoming travelers from self-isolating ...