The best political slogans are simple and direct: Think “It’s the economy, stupid,” or former UK leader Tony Blair’s “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.” Japanese politicians don’t typically excel at these soundbites. That’s what made former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s “Three Arrows” of Abenomics such a standout — using a simple folk tale, it ...

  The corporate sector isn’t the economy. It’s possible that the economy can be brought into a “soft landing” of lower inflation and somewhat lower growth, and many are hoping for that. But it wouldn’t necessarily follow that companies and their investors would get away for free. What, to start with, would happen to corporate credit? There’s a lot of ...

Bloomberg Target Corp cut its profit outlook for the second time in three weeks as it rushes to ease an inventory surge by marking down items and cancelling orders. Soaring merchandise stockpiles and “unusually high transportation and fuel costs” prompted Target to cut its outlook for operating profit to about 2% of sales this quarter. The company had projected the ...