Boris Johnson is running a People versus Parliament campaign for the UK’s Dec. 12 election. Opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is also running a “people versus” campaign. Only in Corbyn’s narrative, the other corner of the ring isn’t occupied by obstreperous lawmakers, but rather that muscled colossus he sums up as “billionaires and bankers.”Corbyn’s strategy for defeating the titan was laid out in an election manifesto and accompanying funding

Viewpoints Nov. 24, 2019

A crown jewel of President Xi Jinping’s Made in China 2025 plan is faltering.Tsinghua Unigroup is the business arm of the prestigious Tsinghua University, Xi’s alma mater. The company has been trying to establish itself as a leader in China’s nascent memory-chip industry since 2015, when it famously tried to acquire stakes in US rivals Micron Technology and Western Digital. Both advances were rejected amid concerns that US regulators wouldn’t approve the deals on national

Viewpoints Nov. 17, 2019

In finance, as in comedy, timing is everything. Get it right and you have investors (or the audience) in the palm of your hand. Get it wrong and the ensuing silence is painful.Saudi Arabia has stepped on stage finally to launch the initial public offering of its oil monopoly Saudi Aramco. By a strange quirk of the calendar, the price of the shares will be set on the same day OPEC meets to decide the next step in its strategy of propping up the price of crude.It’s hard to see this coinciden

World Business Nov. 12, 2019

Sunday’s victory in Argentina’s presidential elections was both impressive and underwhelming. True, Peronist challenger Alberto Fernandez soundly beat President Mauricio Macri. But not only did Fernandez fail to match his running mate Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s record 54 percent of the vote when she won the presidency in 2011; Macri also bounced back from his disastrous August primary performance, his party scored wins in important cities and provinces and he retained his

Viewpoints Nov. 3, 2019

America continues to innovate wonderfully in cyberspace, but when it comes to solving actual, physical-world problems, its record is deteriorating. The fires in Northern California -- and the resulting power blackouts, affecting millions and running for days on end -- show just how many nodes of failure Americans are willing to tolerate or even encourage.　The practical and moral failings in this matter are so numerous it is hard to know where to start.　How about this: Systemic blackouts are comm

Viewpoints Oct. 30, 2019

When a study released earlier this month showed the wealthiest Americans paying a lower tax rate than any other group, Democratic presidential candidates embraced it as a proof that they were on the right track. While their tax-the-rich proposals vow to create a better economic balance, the candidates often pivot to what they would do with the proceeds: Medicare for All, student loan relief, infrastructure repair, and other expensive programs. Those equations have raised serious doubts, and for

Viewpoints Oct. 29, 2019

I suspect that the group of people who didn’t favor impeaching and removing Donald Trump until they read the transcript of his July 25 phone conversation with Ukraine’s president is a very small group indeed.　If that’s so, why is the formal impeachment process happening now -- and why are some Republicans, such as Francis Rooney in the House and Mitt Romney in the Senate, apparently open to it?　Political scientist Matt Glassman floats one theory: that “recent events have

Viewpoints Oct. 28, 2019

The Spanish government on Thursday exhumed the remains of the dictator Francisco Franco, who died in 1975, from a mausoleum in the Valley of the Fallen near Madrid and took them to a city cemetery where Franco’s wife is buried. It may give Spain’s caretaker Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who is fighting for re-election, a boost in the polls, but it won’t really put anything right.Franco’s old resting place was probably the most ostentatious of any 20th century tyrant&rsquo

Viewpoints Oct. 28, 2019

SoftBank Group Corp. offered to take a majority stake in WeWork, one of two rescue packages that the board of the troubled company is weighing, according to people familiar with the matter.The deal from SoftBank is currently in the lead among some directors, according to a person familiar with the board’s thinking. A decision is likely to be made Monday night, though the process is fluid, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations. JPMorgan Chase &

World Business Oct. 22, 2019

There was very nearly a bedtime Brexit tale that went something like this: And so, finally, the porridge was just right, Parliament ate up Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal and then, satisfied, went to bed. The end.Of course, lawmakers didn’t eat up and this interminable story isn’t over. Saturday’s parliamentary session instead served up another helping of thin gruel to those British voters who just want the whole thing resolved. Rather than the prime minister getting a vote o

Viewpoints Oct. 21, 2019

This year’s economics Nobel prize went to three worthy economists: Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Michael Kremer of Harvard University. The prize, awarded “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty,” shows several important ways that the economics discipline is changing. A popular conception of economists is that they’re the high priests of the free market, downplaying the role of government and givin

Viewpoints Oct. 16, 2019

A small $1.5 billion company is attracting the biggest movers in finance in what’s shaping up as the first high-profile foreign hostile takeover in Japan. If successful, it could wake up the sleepy $228 billion market of publicly listed real-estate companies.　The attention is on Unizo Holdings, until recently an obscure developer and hotel operator. The company has a big chunk of its office rental business, which accounts for about 90 percent of operating income, in Tokyo, where the vacanc

Viewpoints Oct. 15, 2019

Not every good policy is going to be popular. Sometimes either the public, activists or the commentariat -- or all three -- just get something wrong. This can happen for ideological reasons, or simply because of a lack of information. I’m more optimistic than most pundits, in that I think the public usually gets at least the outlines broadly right. But there are a few issues where the tide of opinion simply seems to be against me. Here are a few:No. 1. The Trans-Pacific PartnershipThe TPP

Viewpoints Oct. 14, 2019

Once again, Alan Dershowitz, a former Harvard Law School professor, is mounting a defense of US President Donald Trump against the threat of impeachment.In the past, Dershowitz has been willing to get creative in his legal arguments. After Trump said that he would appeal any impeachment attempt to the Supreme Court, Dershowitz claimed that it was “certainly possible” that the court would stop the Senate from holding a trial. Former Justice David Souter had, he explained, once written

Viewpoints Oct. 13, 2019

These are fraught times for Asia-Pacific nations caught in the crossfire of the US-China rivalry. I recently wrote about how one longtime US ally, the Philippines, is repositioning itself between Washington and Beijing. But Manila is hardly alone in trying to protect itself as the geopolitical giants clash. Singapore confronts a similar challenge, which was thrown into relief by an interview its Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong gave last week. Lee’s remarks highlight the dilemmas faced by we

Viewpoints Oct. 3, 2019