Markets have a short memory. It’s hardly surprising that when the price of Brent crude jumps 39% over the course of a month, people take fright. Russia is being touted as one of the world’s biggest oil producers after the US these days. The position of its exports on global markets looks highly uncertain, since sanctions that were designed to ...

French customs officials impounding a Russian billionaire Igor Sechin’s superyacht on the Cote D’Azur made for sensational headlines, but it was just one of the moves against a string of oligarchs by the US, Europe and UK. It is easy to mistake these actions simply as punishment. But hitting individual Russian billionaires with sanctions isn’t some mindless act of revenge ...

  Americans are understandably grumpy about 2022 amid buffeting by surging inflation, supply-chain disruptions, labor shortages and Covid-19. They might or might not feel relieved to learn that the country’s business leaders are more upbeat than ever. The Business Roundtable, the lobby of about 200 chief executives of major US companies, said its quarterly Economic Outlook Index reached an all-time ...