For the past 15 years, the mere mention of the word “China” has brought smiles to the faces of global business executives who gather annually for the World Economic Forum. This year, with Chinese stock and currency markets in turmoil, it brings a chill. 　China, so long described as an economic miracle, has become a contagion, setting off negative shocks in markets around the world. A correction in perceptions of China was overdue, but financial markets this month have probably been overreacting

What’s at stake this election year? Let me put as directly as I can.　America has succumbed to a vicious circle in which great wealth translates into political power, which generates even more wealth, and even more power.　This spiral is most apparent in declining tax rates on corporations and on top personal incomes (often in the form of wider tax loopholes), along with a profusion of government bailouts and subsidies (to Wall Street bankers, hedge-fund partners, oil companies, casino tycoons and

Before November’s terrorist attacks in Paris, it was legal to stage a demonstration in a public square in that city. Now it isn’t. In Uganda, although citizens campaigning against corruption or in favor of gay rights often faced a hostile public, they didn’t face jail time for demonstrating. But under a frighteningly vague new statute, now they do. In Egypt, government authorities recently raided and shut down prominent cultural institutions – an art gallery, a theater, and a publishing house –

Among Republicans, it has become politically correct to be politically incorrect. Actually that’s the most politically correct thing that you can possibly be. As soon as you announce that you’re politically incorrect, you’re guaranteed smiles and laughter, and probably thunderous applause. Proudly proclaiming your bravery, you’re pandering to the crowd.　A math-filled new paper, by economists Chia-Hui Chen at Kyoto University and Junichiro Ishida at Osaka University, helps to explain what’s going

For Japan, World War II is not resolved history. It is, incredibly, a recurring controversy.Several times in recent decades, Japan’s leaders have expressed remorse and apologized for the nation’s rampage through Asia in the 1930s and ’40s. But to the governments and the surviving civilian victims in South Korea and elsewhere, the words and actions have always come up short.　Japan has issued mea culpas, yes. But also from Japan: Revisionist textbooks in schools, a Tokyo shrine that memorializes c

In Europe, 2015 began with the far-left Syriza party’s election victory in Greece. It ended with another three elections that attested to increasing political polarization. In Portugal, the Socialist Party formed an alliance with its former archenemy, the Communists. In Poland, the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party won enough support to govern on its own. And in Spain, the emergence of Podemos, another new left-wing party, has ended the traditional hegemony of the Spanish Socialist Workers

Congress passed legislation lifting the 1970s-era ban on crude oil exports. While it is great that Congress ended this outdated policy, there is more work to do to realize America’s full energy potential.　Under current policies, the government continues to keep federal lands off limits to energy production. Earlier this year, the administration proposed a wilderness plan for Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to starve the Alaska pipeline, while others want to deny Americans their energy resources

Walking around downtown Moscow at Christmastime in the wake of a press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, I was struck by a distinct feeling of deja vu from my Canadian childhood. Not since then had I heard so much English-language Christmas music infusing the cold, crisp air, or seen so many decorations everywhere that include crosses and religious symbols as well as secular reminders of the season. There is no “war on Christmas” here.　Russia is moving in the opposite direction f

Nobody knows where Donald Trump will stand six months from now in this bizarre Republican presidential campaign. But you can predict with some confidence how his recent anti-Muslim diatribes will look in a decade or two, unless Trump manages to rewrite the Constitution itself. American politics, like most things, is a story of what statisticians describe as the reversion to the mean. Self-proclaimed saviors and other outliers come and go throughout our political history. Occasionally they’re suc

Just like that, Pfizer has decided it’s no longer American. It plans to link up with Ireland’s Allergan and move its corporate headquarters from New York to Ireland.That way it will pay less in taxes. Ireland’s tax rate is less than half that of United States. Ian Read, Pfizer’s chief executive, told the Wall Street Journal the higher tax rate in the United States caused Pfizer to compete “with one hand tied behind our back.”Read said he’d tried to lobby the U.S. Congress to reduce the corporate