To anyone who has followed the decade-long saga of Britain’s ambitious high-speed-rail project, known as HS2, the recent news that it’s at least five years behind schedule and 20 billion pounds ($25 billion) over budget shouldn’t come as a surprise. It should serve as a cautionary tale for policy makers dreaming of big projects at public expense. Understand at the ...

Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president-elect, has promised to run a “geopolitical Commission” in the next five years. A recent study by the European Council on Foreign Relations, the international think tank, shows that this is what Europeans want, too — but von der Leyen’s vision of the European Union’s global role isn’t necessarily aligned with theirs. Von ...

It’s debatable whether the Federal Reserve has sense, vision or “guts.” But one thing is certain: The US central bank has become a weakling. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC), on the other hand, is loaded with technocrats on steroids. The Fed’s prestige took a hit. Its most powerful regional reserve bank somehow botched a critical market rescue operation – ...