Opinion

A blockbuster year for securities trading in 2020 helped some of Europe’s investment banks gain market share as they compete against bigger Wall Street rivals. But the titans of US finance — led by JPMorgan Chase & Co, Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Morgan Stanley — also expanded, meaning the ...

Google and Facebook make a lot of noise about how their main services are free to use. And it’s true, they are. But what they don’t highlight is their role in making almost everything else we consume online more expensive. Consider all the paywalls and paid services that are rolling ...

New York is the place where more startups — from EV battery makers to flying cars — have gone public by way of the boom in SPACs, or special purpose acquisition companies. Once listed, SPACs are on the lookout to place their vast sums in promising enterprises (which then don’t ...

For a century, there’s been a key metric for judging the direction of the oil industry: The number of years it would take for wells to run dry. The reserves-to-production ratio or R/P — calculated as oil reserves, divided by annual production — has remained at eerily consistent levels since ...

A bruising battle for supremacy between two of the world’s richest men is hogging the limelight, but the silent changes in India’s retail landscape deserve equal attention. The ongoing digital transformation of the corner kirana stores, tens of millions of shops catering to 1.3 billion consumers, will matter for everyone ...

Why can’t China step in to fill the chip shortage? The vaunted factory floor of the world has flooded the global economy with goods, and has often had to deal with domestic oversupplies itself. Why then has it been largely on the sidelines of the debate over solving the worldwide ...

If populism on the political right corrupts democracies, populism on the left ruins economies. For the latest evidence take a closer look at the housing market of the German capital, Berlin. A year ago, a rent cap took effect in the city that was unprecedented in Germany. For all apartments ...

The volatility in government bond yields last week compelled several market participants to call on the Federal Reserve to say, or better, do something about it, though such calls have lacked specifics. At the same time, a handful of foreign central bank officials expressed concern that the financial conditions in ...

In the first two columns in this series, I asked what the pandemic meant for short-term fiscal policy and, looking farther ahead, for measures to accommodate structural shifts in our economies. This time I’ll ask what it means for monetary policy — and the starting point is to look back ...

A booming stock market at a time of pandemic recession and widening inequality is an unfortunate combination, so the tax raid on the Hong Kong exchange shouldn’t be a surprise. Soaking well-to-do finance types to help pay for consumption handouts sends a convenient populist message. It may also serve to ...