Secession, of all things, is back in the news. Residents of San Bernardino County, the largest in California, are debating whether to try to break off and form a state of their own. And there’s more: Last month, a New Hampshire electoral commission refused to bar from the ballot legislators who want their state to leave the US entirely. ...

The bonfire of the inanities. UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng isn’t pulling any punches with his first moves in office. First, he unceremoniously fired the most senior civil servant in the Treasury. Now he is contemplating taking an axe to European Union regulations on financial services. But he is starting on the latter in a very odd way ...

  We’re living through arguably the most truly global attempt to tighten financial conditions in memory. This is shifting the tectonic plates beneath the world economy, and threatens dangerous developments in society and in politics as we all try to adapt. And yet what strikes the eye after a week of market landmarks and aggressive interventions by central banks is ...