The vast majority of Americans have air conditioning but in Germany almost nobody does. At least not yet. So when temperatures in Berlin rose to an uncomfortable 37 Celsius (99 Fahrenheit) this week – a record for the month of June – I was uncommonly delighted to go to the Bloomberg office, where it’s artificially and blissfully cool. By letting ...

In a poor, underbanked country, there wouldn’t be anything unusual about imposing a $6.40–a-month penalty on depositors unable to keep at least $640 in their savings accounts. That’s just how financial exclusion works. But in rich Hong Kong, a city that gives banks more than $26 billion in annual earnings, it took a fintech revolution to make HSBC Holdings Plc ...

Among Facebook Inc.’s justifications for introducing a new digital currency, Libra, the company has offered one pious rationale: to connect the 1.7 billion adults who lack bank accounts to the global financial system. That’s certainly one way for the “unbanked” to enjoy the convenience of digital money. Or they could just use a DeathAdder Elite. The DeathAdder is, of course, ...