Can Nikolai Kondratieff save us — or destroy us? You say: Nikolai who? Kondratieff was a young Russian economist who died in prison in 1938. He developed an economic theory that purportedly explains both the dynamism and the destructiveness of the capitalist economic systems. The source of this explanatory power, he contended, was the existence of “long waves” or “long ...

A familiar band of fixers may be coming to JC Penney’s rescue. Can they do it again? Major mall operators Simon Property Group Inc. and Brookfield Property Partners LP, along with Authentic Brands Group LLC, are in talks to buy the bankrupt department store chain, Bloomberg News reported. This coalition has taken similar action before, rescuing teen clothing retailer Aeropostale ...

Life isn’t about finding perfect solutions but making difficult trade-offs. So it is with the contact-tracing apps that are proliferating faster than I can keep up with. In Germany’s newly launched “Corona App”, it has got several trade-offs wrong, and should have learned from the experience of nimbler countries like Singapore. The goal, of course, is the same for all ...