The Bank of England (BOE) delivered an unusually apocalyptic economic outlook at last week’s quarterly economic review, overshadowing the biggest interest-rate hike in more than a quarter of a century. Yet UK markets have barely moved, and their skepticism is entirely understandable and completely justified. Like a bad pianist playing the right notes but not in the correct order, the ...

  When it comes to a comfortable retirement, women in the US have the cards stacked against them. New efforts to start changing this are laudable, and yet they’re still missing the mark because they’re being shaped by decades of misperceptions. The inequities a woman faces throughout her working life — from earning less to shouldering the lion’s share of ...

  Italian politics bears a striking resemblance to South American telenovelas: filled with episodes of unrequited love, bizarre couplings and multiple breakups. Narrative lines reach a fever pitch of crisis before an unexpected turn of events makes everything right — the deus-ex-machina moment. That’s the climax in ancient dramas when a god is swung on stage by a machine to ...