Like many of you, I’m sure, I read Ross Douthat’s essay on “The Age of Decadence” in Sunday’s New York Times while sprawled on a chaise, picking at my smashed avo and laudanum. Stirring from the languor, I wondered: How does energy fit with this thesis? Our energy system is decadent at a fundamental level. Roughly four fifths of what ...

The decision to exclude shares of China’s biggest e-commerce company from a cross-border trading link is a blow to Hong Kong. Is it a punishment, or simple self-interest at work? The answer matters, both for the city’s exchange and for Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Alibaba can’t be included in the stock connect program linking Hong Kong with the Shanghai and ...

When bankers fret about contagion, it’s usually the financial kind. DBS Group Holdings Ltd. is battling a different outbreak. The full-year results of Singapore’s largest lender are pre-coronavirus. Still, they offer clues to what investors in banks with pan-Asian heft — including HSBC Holdings Plc, Standard Chartered Plc and Citigroup Inc. — should be watching. A day before its earnings ...