My good friend Joel Havemann died the other day. No, he wasn’t a victim of the coronavirus. Since early 1990 at age 46, he had been battling Parkinson’s disease, a struggle that he was bound to lose. The more he succeeded in prolonging life, the weaker he would become at the end of life. As his strength dissipated, he would ...

Crises tend to widen fault lines that already exist. The Covid-19 pandemic has been no exception. Before the virus hit, the unbalanced nature of recent economic growth was already straining federal structures around the world, from the US to India to Europe. The current crisis threatens to open new disagreements and deepen old ones — and transform some political entities ...

You can have a good war and still be seriously wounded. South Korea has been relatively successful at controlling Covid-19 infections, and made good progress in reopening its economy. But it’s still suffering a serious downdraft, with consumers pulling back at home and demand collapsing in key trading partners. Some kind of recession for this trade-dependent economy looks assured; only ...