In 2006, as a Navy vice admiral, I was in Iraq traveling with Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld. At a town hall with US troops, he famously answered a question about the US Army’s lack of armored vehicles by saying, “You go to war with the army you have — not the army you might want or wish to have ...

Hong Kong has decided to live with the fear of the virus, instead of the virus itself. If the territory wants to survive in a post-pandemic world, then the false bubble of security it has created can’t last. Last week, a 38-year-old vaccinated woman tested positive with the L452R mutant strain, present in the Delta variant of the virus. She ...

The resignation of Muhyiddin Yassin as Malaysia’s prime minister closes one chapter in the country’s political travails. The exit is unlikely to end the parliamentary bloodletting or solve the economic and health crises rocking a nation that was once a bastion of stability in Southeast Asia. As long as the ethnic-Malay ruling class is split, questions of legitimacy that undermined ...

On August 15, the US marked the 50th anniversary of the birth of fiat currency, or a currency that depends on faith in the Federal Reserve and not in the gold standard. Like most 50th anniversaries, this one shows the celebrant worse for wear. The “almighty dollar” is facing a raft of challenges from other supra-national currency powerhouses such as ...

Bloomberg Wall Street has been predicting that the pandemic-fuelled boom in Americans fixing up their homes would fizzle as the economy reopened. But it hasn’t so far and could be entering a new phase that prolongs growth. Home Depot Inc and Lowe’s Cos have benefited from homeowners taking on do-it-yourself projects in droves, with the retail giants combining to add ...

Bloomberg Walmart Inc is looking to hire a cryptocurrency expert to develop a blockchain strategy, joining a growing number of major corporations exploring the viability of digital currencies such as Bitcoin. The position will be responsible for “developing the digital currency strategy and product roadmap” and identifying “crypto-related investment and partnerships,” according to a job posting on the retail giant’s ...

Bloomberg What’s left of Venezuela’s manufacturing sector has survived government expropriations, frequent blackouts, a currency collapse and equipment shortages. But now there’s another threat: competition from imported versions of the companies’ own products. Shops across Venezuela stock Mexican-made Oreo cookies right next to the locally produced version. Kraft Heinz Co’s mayonnaise is being imported from Brazil and the US, even ...

Bloomberg UK retailers reported their slowest sales growth in five months during July as consumers shifted toward spending on entertainment and social gatherings and away from in-store shopping. The volume of goods sold in shops and online grew 6.4% in July compared to last year, the British Retail Consortium and KPMG said. A separate survey from Barclaycard showed more money ...

Bloomberg European leaders struggled to mask their frustration with President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw the last US soldiers from Afghanistan and sought to distance themselves from the dramatic scenes unfolding across the war-torn country. German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters that the Nato mission in Afghanistan was “fundamentally dependent” on the US while French President Emmanuel Macron stressed that ...

Bloomberg China announced naval and aerial live-fire military exercises in areas south of Taiwan on Tuesday, without saying how close to the democratically ruled island the drills were. Combat ships, anti-submarine aircrafts and fighter jets were among the forces that joined the exercises “to test integrated operational capability” in territory southwest and southeast of Taiwan, Shi Yi, spokesperson of the ...