A great mystery of our time — one that should frame the campaign debate — is why the economic recovery has been so sluggish. Consider this comparison. After the brutal recession of the early 1980s (peak unemployment: 10.8 percent), it took only 11 months for employment to regain its pre-recession level. By contrast, it required 51 months after the …

  These are the world’s five largest technology companies, ranked by revenue: How about that Hon Hai!?! The full name is Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., but you probably know it as Foxconn, the main name it does business under. It’s the Taiwan-based contract manufacturer with hundreds of thousands of employees in mainland China, several of whom probably put your …

  Rules are there to be broken — and that’s official. Spain and Portugal have just escaped punishment for breaking the European Union’s budget-deficit limits. In the EU, such lapses without consequences are not exactly uncommon. In the case of the budget rules, that’s a good thing, because the rules are widely acknowledged to be no good. But here’s a …