Many of Europe’s politicians are far from impressed with the European Commission’s recent ruling against the proposed rail merger of Alstom SA and Siemens AG. Some are now calling for the EU to change its whole approach to competition policy. What they want instead is “industrial policy” — a strategy that dethrones competition as a goal and promotes European economic ...

It was with a sense of déjà vu that I read that US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has asked the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee to cobble some together ideas on new sorts of debt securities the government could create and sell to finance the rapidly expanding budget deficit. The implication is clear: The US needs to attract new investors to ...

Must a safer banking system inevitably be less dynamic? Judging from the experience of the US and Europe since the 2008 financial crisis, not necessarily. Bank executives typically portray efforts to shore up the financial system as a trade-off, in which greater resilience means less of something good. They often warn, for example, that requirements to increase capital buffers will ...