India’s COVID-19 economic gloom turned into despair last week, on news that its per capita gross domestic product may be lower for 2020 than in neighboring Bangladesh. “Any emerging economy doing well is good news,” Kaushik Basu, a former World Bank chief economist, tweeted after the International Monetary Fund updated its World Economic Outlook. “But it’s shocking that India, which had a lead of 25 percent five years ago, is now trailing.” Ever since it beg

Shares of Big Hit Entertainment, the company behind South Korean boy band BTS, begin trading this week. A top-of-the-range IPO valuation of $4.2 billion implies rock-star earnings multiples. Institutional investors have piled in anyway, displaying impressive confidence in the staying power of ultra-groomed youths and their obsessive followers. To live up to the hype, billionaire founder Bang Si-hyuk needs to turn a one-band wonder into something closer to Universal Music Group, adding artists a

Losses in the main US stock indexes on Friday will go down in history simply as small ones in an otherwise choppy week. But assessed in more detail, they provide a remarkable example of the intense tug-of-war that now grips markets and will most likely persist, if not intensify, in the weeks ahead. Two news developments dominated the runup to the US market opening Friday. First and foremost was the middle-of-the-night tweet from President Donald Trump confirming that he and his wife had tested

When Boris Johnson announced on March 27 that he’d tested positive for COVID-19, Brits were in shock, much as Americans were Friday morning when they heard President Donald Trump was infected. The UK prime minister was the first leader of a major country to be hospitalized with the virus, an event that was characterized as “routine” at first before the illness took a more serious turn. Nobody knows how this will play out for Trump, just as they didn’t for Johnson. But th

More by carelessness than design, the European Union has conflated two of its biggest problems into what last week became one hot mess. To get out of it, the bloc may have to make the Brussels equivalent of Sophie’s choice: It could sacrifice the principle that all member states must respect the rule of law. Or it could ditch its plans for economic recovery and fiscal cohesion. This trap was laid in July. Under the moderation of Germany, which holds the rotating EU presidency, the 27 nati

One feature of the COVID-19 era is how much the standard ways of seeing and doing things have been remixed and turned upside down. The obvious question is then whether people will decide to make these new arrangements permanent or return to the old. For example: I used to enjoy going to nouvelle-style slightly fancy restaurants, ordering 10 appetizers (and no main courses) and sharing them with a table of four. Many of those appetizers were composed of disparate ingredients, carefully placed on

There are potential catastrophes so dire, only an approach that blurs the realist and the utopian seems appropriate. Take for example the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Adopted by the United Nations in 2017, it seeks to completely get rid of the most satanic arms ever created. The treaty’s already been signed by 84 states and ratified by 45. To take effect -- that is, to be binding on its signatories -- it needs only another handful of ratifications. And last week a group

When the World Trade Organization was created in the mid-1990s, the US Senate voted 76-24 to establish it. But it is now facing more opposition than ever, and from both parties. “The World Trade Organization has been not good for the United States,” President Donald Trump said in a mid-September press conference. “It’s been good for everybody else, but it’s not been good. It was a method, in my opinion, of taking advantage of the United States.” Bob Woodward

It was 1985, I think. The Federalist Society was hosting a conference in Washington on equality. I was a young professor, the token liberal on a panel, and its least distinguished member. The experience was brutal. Professor Paul Bator, a famous scholar who had been my teacher not long before, was on the panel, and at one point he whispered in my ear. “Just stop talking,” he said. “No one in the room wants to hear you.” Humiliated, I retreated to my hotel room. At about

The end of the summer holidays and the reopening of schools have sparked a lively debate over the future of remote working. From the US to the UK, politicians and employers are nudging workers to return to the office even though the pandemic is not over. But these requests put employees in a very awkward place -- caught between fearing for their health and fearing for their job. Following two key principles may resolve some of the tension. First, the government should have no say in this decisi

Wall Street isn’t always too fussed about whether a startup is profitable before listing on the stock exchange. A decent track record of sales growth is usually pretty essential, though. That quaint idea has been turned on its head this year by the fad for special purpose acquisition companies. Called SPACs for short, they raise cash from investors in an initial public offering and then go find a company to buy. By merging with one of these cash boxes, the target gets a dollop of capital

With the US presidential campaign heading into the home stretch, President Donald Trump will surely try to tout his record on economic issues. But the numbers don’t speak well of his policies. Unfortunately, the approach of his rival, Joe Biden, threatens to make some of the same mistakes. Trump was elected in 2016 on a promise to restore American competitiveness, revitalize the flagging manufacturing sector, and reduce gaping trade deficits. But even before the pandemic, his trade war lo

Japan’s likely next prime minister is a huge fan of Shinzo Abe. That doesn’t mean Yoshihide Suga is a carbon copy. Indeed, the shades of difference between the two men on some key issues are important, particularly when the economy in question is the world’s third-largest, a critical part of global manufacturing and trade, and a pioneer of ultra-low interest rates and quantitative easing. The first issue to consider is Japan’s consumption tax. Increases have been blamed

Anyone observing President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic in the US would have good reason to wonder if his administration ever had much of a strategy for handling it. Last week the press accused one of his medical advisers, Scott Atlas, of promoting a “herd immunity strategy” amounting to letting COVID-19 run rampant. Atlas denies this, but a more important issue is what our strategy is, or should be, and what Joe Biden’s strategy would be if he&rsqu

After years of slow deterioration, diplomatic relations between China and Australia have taken a sharp turn for the worse. The disputes range from pressure on journalists, to spying allegations, to an investigation of Australia’s wine exports. Beijing holds most of the cards, but Australia does have one doomsday weapon at its disposal. It’s better not used. The conflict echoes China’s widening disputes with other countries. Two journalists working for Australian Broadcasting C

In politics, language is a reliable indicator of the direction of travel. Today, rhetoric from the Republican Party convention in the US to India, and from Poland to Brazil, points away from liberal democracy. The change has rarely been swifter than in Hong Kong. The markers of autocratic speech are globally apparent. There’s the divisive “us versus them” rhetoric, the ad hominem attacks, the inflammatory comments on dissenters and the fetishization of law and order, feeding o

The European Central Bank’s governing council meets this week amid a less optimistic mood than before the summer break. The recovery in Europe is losing speed and there are early signs of divergence, with some euro-zone countries rebounding faster than others. ECB President Christine Lagarde still has several tricks up her sleeve to help the monetary union respond to the pandemic’s economic shock. But, unlike previous crises in Europe, governments will have to take the lead this tim

President Donald Trump poses an unusual problem for his opposition. He’s “a target-rich environment,” said Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress. “He has befuddled his opponents by giving them too much to react to. It keeps the Democrats from having a disciplined message about why Trump sucks.” Depending on the news cycle, the anti-Trump message may be that he is a tool of Russian President Vladimir Putin, or a racist, or a threa

The US 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, released this week, predict that the deficit will be over $3.3 trillion this year, or 16 percent of annual economic output. Measured as a share of GDP, the annual US budget deficit hasn’t hit double digits since 1945. The CBO forecasts that the 20

A month before he ended his first stint as Japan’s prime minister in 2007, Shinzo Abe addressed the Indian Parliament in New Delhi. Quoting the Mughal scholar-prince Dara Shikoh, Abe spoke of the “confluence of the two seas” -- the Indian and Pacific Oceans -- that were undergoing a “dynamic coupling as seas of freedom and of prosperity.” India and Japan, said Abe, shared an interest in and responsibility for securing these seas “by joining forces with like-mi