Barclays Plc’s traders are helping Chief Executive Officer Jes Staley just when he needs them most. Buttressed by a surge in revenue that dwarfed even its bigger Wall Street peers, Barclays was able to take a big charge for the inevitable buildup of bad loans during the worst economic contraction in living memory, and still post a decent profit. Staley’s ...

The Federal Reserve has done much to support markets, stabilise financial conditions and backstop key areas of the US debt and credit markets. But challenges remain. One big one is to get its Main Street Lending Program up and working well. As the Fed describes it, this program “is intended to facilitate lending to small and medium sized businesses” by ...

It took a moment of carelessness for plague to strike the French port city of Marseilles in 1720, despite an edifice of strict health measures. A boat carrying silks from the Ottoman Empire was allowed to skip the usual 40 days’ quarantine to unload its cargo, unleashing an epidemic that wiped out almost half the city’s population and which didn’t ...