[Other view] Theresa May’s disastrous failure

UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s election gamble has failed disastrously. The consequences are dire for her party and government, and could be equally bad for her country’s relationship with Europe.May had hoped to increase her Conservative majority in Parliament, and instead has seen it wiped out. The Tories are the largest party in the House of Commons and with the support of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionists intend to form a government. Directing policy and passing legislation, however,

June 12, 2017

[Fabiola Santiago] Did Cuba issue play a role in Rubio’s questioning of Comey?

It may be hard to fathom outside of Miami, but the island of Cuba and Cuban-American politics could have played a role in Thursday’s historic hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.Did the influential Republican senator from Miami on the committee, Marco Rubio, trade the integrity of this country for the pledge of a US policy shift on Cuba from President Donald Trump? The optics -- and the timing of a yet unscheduled visit b

June 12, 2017

[Pankaj Mishra] India’s illiberal democracy

Remorselessly attacking the media, President Donald Trump advances a worldwide culture of impunity. Demagogues and despots flourish in his long shadow: Elected ones, Presidents Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Vladimir Putin of Russia, as well as the house of Saud, use the opportunity to expand their power and crush their critics. But nowhere is the ongoing global assault on democratic norms as multi-pronged, devastating and poorly scrutinized as in India, ruled by a Hindu supremacist party, t

June 12, 2017

[Mac Margolis] Rio’s fight against crime enters the 21st century

Whenever violent crime gets out of hand in Rio de Janeiro, as it frequently has, the public glare has fallen on the harried police force. The overtaxed lawmen’s familiar refrain: “Police are not omnipresent,” a disclaimer that doubled as a labor grievance. The only way to keep up with the city’s busy criminals, so the argument went, was for authorities to put more boots on the ground and allow cops to power up to keep pace with the bandits’ increasingly sophisticated arsenal.Now, thanks to long

June 12, 2017

[David Ignatius] The moralist versus the dealmaker

What does the FBI director do when he suspects the president is a manipulative liar? The answer in James Comey‘s case is that he writes memos, tries to evade demands for loyalty -- and anguishes about protecting himself and the FBI.But by Comey’s own admission, perhaps he should have done more.The big news had already surfaced before Comey’s appearance Thursday at the Senate Intelligence Committee, with the release of his prepared testimony. What we got at the hearing was the raw morality play,

June 11, 2017

[Barry Ritholtz] Trump’s economic agenda is almost dead

Today’s column veers dangerously into “I told you so” territory. I take neither pleasure nor credit for recognizing that a once-in-a-generation opportunity is slipping away.In February, I warned that President Donald Trump was repeating his predecessor’s rookie mistakes. In March, I noted that the odds of passing important economic legislation had fallen meaningfully. This missive offers the direst warning of all, with significant ramifications for equity markets.Let’s begin with the observation

June 11, 2017

[Virginia Heffernan] Stop playing the climate blame game

We don’t know if President Trump believes in climate change. He just won’t say. And although we desperately want him to admit (while weeping for mercy, ideally) that he was wrong in 2012 to tweet that “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese,” that’s not going to happen. The president will never say he was wrong. Reporters who continue to interrogate him and his spokespeople about the climate must give this catechism a rest.That said, it’s well worth confronting the broa

June 11, 2017

[Other view] Comey testifies, long process begins

During the Watergate hearings, Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee asked, “What did the president know and when did he know it?” At the outset of Senate hearings and an investigation by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III into the Trump campaign’s connection to Russian operatives and Russian interference in the 2016 president campaign, the question is: “What did the president mean when he said what he said to FBI Director James Comey?”That question was not conclusively answered by Comey in his test

June 11, 2017

[Mihir Sharma] Will India really go green?

As soon as Donald Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change, eyes turned eastward. Even as the US reneges on its promises, the argument now goes, China and India will show leadership instead; they at least are committed to low-carbon growth.I wouldn’t be so sure, at least where India is concerned. It is true that the Indian government has reiterated its Paris pledges. But Trump’s decision has nevertheless opened a door for India to revise its own very stringent commitments

June 9, 2017

[Other view] China makes bold move with Kenyan railway

Kenyan and Chinese officials on Wednesday inaugurated a 470-kilometer-long railway built and largely financed by the Chinese between Kenya’s and East Africa’s busiest port, Mombasa, and Kenya’s capital and financial and commercial center, Nairobi.The Chinese also recently opened another important railway line between Djibouti, further up the East African coast, a country with America’s only military base in Africa, and another key African country, Ethiopia. Ethiopia is landlocked and, thus, the

June 9, 2017

[Other view] Stand against terrorism, even in Iran

There is only one acceptable response to Wednesday’s deadly terrorist attacks in Iran: swift and unequivocal condemnation of the perpetrators, and condolences to the victims. By joining the other world leaders who have offered their sympathy, US President Donald Trump can reaffirm both America’s standing in the community of nations and its determination to defeat terrorism, whatever and wherever its source.Yes, there is an obvious irony here: The US has rightly condemned Iran’s long history of s

June 8, 2017

[The Baltimore Sun] Trump’s London attack

The firm and defiant yet calm and reasoned response of British leaders to Saturday night’s terrorist attack on London Bridge, which involved three men who steered a rented van into pedestrians and then got out and began stabbing people, was pitch perfect. The response by Donald Trump, on the other hand, has surely set a new low in statesmanship (or perhaps anti-statesmanship) by an American president as he lashed out at London’s mayor, used the death of seven Brits to promote his travel ban and

June 8, 2017

[Pittsburgh Post-Gazette] Cutting off Qatar: Sunni Arab states make a puzzling move

Two weeks ago, President Donald Trump signed the United States on with the Sunni Muslim states of the Persian Gulf in a meeting with their leaders in Saudi Arabia during his recent overseas tour. Monday morning, six of the states in the region broke off relations with Qatar, easily the most progressive of the Arab members of the group.Bahrain, Egypt, one of the governments in Libya, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the faction in the Yemen civil war backed by Saudi Arabia and the US br

June 8, 2017

[Mark Whitehouse] Why more jobs doesn’t mean more growth

How can the US economy keep creating jobs and still grow so slowly? One explanation can be found in the latest employment data: The sectors adding the most workers are among the less productive.The Labor Department’s monthly survey for May suggests that employers were still in a hiring mood. They added an estimated 138,000 jobs -- less than expected but still enough to push down the unemployment rate, which declined slightly to a 16-year low of 4.3 percent (albeit due to a drop in the number of

June 8, 2017