Taihei Kobayashi has gone from sleeping on the streets of Tokyo to heading a technology startup whose market value topped $1 billion. His rags-to-riches story is among the most remarkable to emerge from a small-cap stock boom that’s minting fortunes in Japan. Kobayashi’s company, which helps startups and other firms […]
Ole Peters, a theoretical physicist in the U.K., claims to have the solution. All it would do is upend three centuries of economic thought. The proposition is about as outlandish as it sounds: Everything we know about modern economics is wrong. And the man who says he can prove it doesn’t […]
The euro was the most used currency for global payments last month, the first time it has outpaced the dollar since February 2013. Data from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, which handles cross-border payment messages for more than 11,000 financial institutions in 200 countries, showed the European Union’s […]
Don’t cut badly needed coronavirus spending now. (But pare Social Security and Medicare later.) Government programs to blunt the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic will make the federal budget deficit much wider in 2020 than at any point in the last 75 years. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s new forecasts, […]
President Donald Trump’s expansive new eviction ban will help some tenants delay the inevitable. But it’s missing a key ingredient that only lawmakers can supply: money. “Ultimately, it creates new urgent pressure on Congress to get back to work and pass a final Covid 19 relief bill,” said Diane Yentel, […]
It’s hard being an American stateside right now. It’s hard in a different way being an American abroad. The swearing in of new citizens often makes news in the U.S., especially if it happens in unusual circumstances such as one party’s national convention. Much less reported are the many citizenship renunciations […]
Justin Trudeau’s selection of Chrystia Freeland to be Canada’s new finance minister cements her place as his most trusted lieutenant, hinting the 52-year-old former journalist isn’t done with her political rise. But its real significance is that it signals the most decisive lurch to the left in economic policy in […]
History doesn’t support the idea that countries “stumble” into major conflict. U.S.-China relations are deteriorating by the day, and the bad news is that the two countries could end up fighting in the coming decade. The good news is that such a war won’t start by accident. There is a […]
Travel curbs and border restrictions are upending lives around the globe, with some people resorting to chartering planes or paying many times the regular ticket price to get back to their jobs and homes. Eight months into the pandemic, the push to normalize is seeing some try to travel internationally […]
Gold’s unrelenting march higher shows no signs of slowing after a plunge in the dollar swept prices past the previous high set in 2011 and put the metal on track for even bigger gains. Bullion’s surge came as a gauge of the U.S. currency sank to the lowest in more […]