When Joe Biden arrived in the White House, he promised a new dawn of unity and bipartisanship. But when he began to pursue a COVID-19 relief bill, he met with Republican senators for only about two hours before deciding to push the measure through the US Congress without further negotiations. Biden had two goals at the outset: to go big and to make the process bipartisan. They turned out to be incompatible. “We got a chance to do something big here,” the president said Friday in a

Viewpoints Feb. 10, 2021

Anyone paying attention for the last three years should not be surprised that President Joe Biden on Thursday announced the end to US support for Saudi offensive operations in Yemen, calling the war a “humanitarian and strategic catastrophe.” Most of Biden’s party has given up on the Saudi regime, particularly after its agents murdered and then dismembered Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018. But it would be a mistake to read too much into the Biden admin

Viewpoints Feb. 9, 2021

The new transatlantic honeymoon isn’t over yet. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, like most European leaders, is still basking in the afterglow of Joe Biden’s inauguration as the 46th president of the US. After Number 45, of course, she’d have warm feelings for anybody. And yet, it’s just a matter of time -- days or weeks -- before they’ll need to have an awkward talk. The topic will be Russia. The US and Germany have long been at odds about an almost finished pipel

Viewpoints Feb. 8, 2021

Last year made it feel as if the US was a nation in steep decline. And in some worrying ways it is. But looking back on 2020, and looking ahead to 2021, there are signs that the country has robust reservoirs of strength and effectiveness that will cause it to outperform the gloomiest expectations. It may not be morning in America yet, but it’s past midnight. The clearest example is the vaccination race. Despite problems with the initial rollout, the US public health system has now found i

Viewpoints Feb. 5, 2021

The Democratic Party has before it a choice between two economic policies: a big increase in the federal minimum wage, to $15 an hour from $7.25; and a per-child cash benefit of several thousand dollars a year. The decision will have major implications, for the future of both the party and the US economy. The cash benefit is clearly the better option. One problem with the minimum wage hike is that it is not clear how many people are harmed and how many low-skilled workers will lose their jobs,

Viewpoints Feb. 2, 2021

Nearly lost in the tumult of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and the excitement of Joe Biden‘s inauguration is the continuing fallout from the massive data breach of SolarWinds Corp. by suspected Russian hackers. As the new team settles into office, what can it do to keep the nation safe in cyberspace? Let’s begin with the scale of the hack. SolarWinds was a prime vendor to tens of thousands of clients, including hundreds of Fortune 500 enterprises and nearly the entire US go

Viewpoints Feb. 1, 2021

Retail investors hell-bent on watching stocks go up have made life miserable for short sellers around the world. In South Korea, the government is piling on too. Lawmakers who oversee the country’s $2 trillion stock market are discussing plans to extend one of the world’s longest bans on short selling, amid pressure from mom-and-pop punters who drive more than two thirds of daily trading. Calls to make the 10-month ban permanent are mounting. More than 203,000 people have signed a

Market Jan. 30, 2021

The storming of the US Capitol on Jan. 6 was a real lowlight for Congress. At least during the sacking of Washington in the war of 1812, the White House burned alongside the Capitol. But on Jan. 6, 2021 the head of the executive branch urged his followers to interfere with the operation of the legislative branch. The entire sequence of events is a reminder that congressional power has been receding relative to the executive branch for almost a century. Now is the time for Congress to stand up f

Viewpoints Jan. 27, 2021

Hand it to human beings. We have repeatedly defied predictions that we will buckle under the extreme pressure of adverse events. Time and again, whether it was during the eight-month blitz in World War II, or after 9/11, people have proved remarkably resilient in the face of adversity. Will it be the same with this pandemic? On aggregate, probably yes. Most people have experienced, or know someone who has experienced, mental stress as a result of pandemic-related circumstances. But once they a

Viewpoints Jan. 25, 2021

The US never fully recovered from the Great Recession. One of the benefits of the $1.9 trillion COVID relief package unveiled Thursday night by President-elect Joe Biden is that -- in addition to helping Americans hurt by the pandemic -- it could help America accomplish that goal. At that point, US politics can safely return to arguments about whether tax increases or spending cuts are the best way to reduce the deficit. It may be a tired debate, but if it means the US has finally healed from t

Viewpoints Jan. 18, 2021

US government bond yields have registered some notable moves in the first few days of 2021. Should they continue on their current pace, they risk causing headaches for both policymakers and stock investors because of their underlying drivers. In less than two weeks, the Treasury yield curve has experienced a significant increase in yields in longer-dated bonds, or what is known in financial markets as a “bear steepening.” The yields on 10- and 30-year bonds have risen 20 basis point

Viewpoints Jan. 13, 2021

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Wednesday’s rioting at the Capitol “the biggest gift to Putin” from President Donald Trump. Glee from pro-Putin commentators in Moscow would seem to bear out that opinion, echoed by many US Democrats. But what exactly has Putin been gifted? Certainly not a political advantage. With Trump, considered a Putin admirer by the Democrats, about to vacate the White House, the Russian ruler has every reason to expect a compensatory show of strength

Viewpoints Jan. 12, 2021

With the debacle of Ant Group’s initial public offering, we’ve witnessed a flurry of legislative and enforcement activities aimed at tightening antitrust regulation within the Chinese tech sector. This massive campaign, however, is hardly a new phenomenon in Chinese law. The roots of campaign-style law enforcement can be traced back to the revolutionary period of the Chinese Communist Party, which often needed to rely on mass movements in the absence of state institutions. Contempor

Viewpoints Jan. 11, 2021

The bigamy conviction got a lot of the attention but Lai Xiaomin received a death sentence on Tuesday over a much more serious issue troubling China. Lai oversaw China Huarong Asset Management from 2012 until he ran into trouble in 2018. He was found guilty of receiving 1.79 billion yuan ($277.3 million) in bribes, with bigamy thrown in for good measure. Still, capital punishment for this kind of white-collar crime is unusual, legal experts say. Wu Xiaohui, former chairman of Anbang Insurance G

Viewpoints Jan. 8, 2021

South Korea greeted the new year by recording its first annual population decline. Unfortunately, the go-to solutions are meeting some practical challenges in the COVID-19 era. Headcount dwindled slightly to 51.8 million last year, the Ministry of Interior and Safety said Sunday. The retreat was the product of a 10.6 percent slide in births, coupled with a 3.1 percent increase in deaths. South Korea now joins neighboring Japan in suffering an actual fall in population, as opposed to the diminis

Viewpoints Jan. 7, 2021