The US budget deficit is now almost $740 billion, the Treasury Department reported last week, prompting a new round of familiar criticism of 2017’s Tax Cut and Jobs Act: The law’s huge tax cuts were irresponsible, as were Republicans’ sloppy and at times deliberately misleading assertions that the law would pay for itself. That criticism is understandable, but it elides ...

For the past six years, there’s been no number more filled with dread for gold bulls than $1,350 an ounce. Barring a few brief spikes, the metal has struggled to break through that level ever since it came off its run-up to $1,900 between 2011 and 2013. This matters, because an asset that has few fundamental factors driving its performance ...

Say this for Facebook Inc.: It doesn’t lack ambition. The company unveiled plans to issue a digital currency, called Libra, sometime next year. Using a blockchain-like data system, and anchored by a basket of low-risk financial assets, its ambition is to be bitcoin without the problems. Or, as Facebook modestly puts it, “a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that ...