Opinion

The past four months have demonstrated just how volatile oil markets can be. In March, Brent crude climbed above $100 a barrel for the first time in four years, reaching $119 on March 9—its highest level since the 2022 energy crisis—as Iran's closure of the...

Melvin Durai Among the many commendable ways to conserve energy during hot weather, I’d like to applaud Japan’s latest initiative: allowing government workers to wear shorts in the office. I love shorts. Just ask my wife, and she’ll tell you that shorts are my preferred...

Kelly Stonelake When I joined Facebook in 2009, I believed in the mission that founder Mark Zuckerberg espoused: to connect and empower people around the world. We all know how that turned out. Meta, now the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is focused...

Ajit Ranade The Reserve Bank of India’s latest Financial Stability Report is reassuring about the health of banks and non-banking finance companies. It is less reassuring about the financial health of their retail customers. India’s household debt reached 45.5% of GDP by September 2025, close...

Kai Guo Chinese firms have achieved global leadership in industries once assumed to be the preserve of advanced economies: electric vehicles, batteries, industrial robots, solar panels, and AI—to name just a few. The standard explanation for this success is that the Chinese state subsidizes production,...

In the long sweep of history, China’s economic performance over the past 50 years will obviously stand out for the sheer scale and pace of quality-of-life improvements within that country. But China's impact on the rest of the world has still been underappreciated. True, if...

The mysterious Mother Goose’s "Hickory, Dickory, Dock" is a meaningless but catchy English nursery rhyme with ancient Celtic origins. It has entertained children for more than the last three centuries and helps shepherds count their herd. Various historical and linguistic interpretations of the rhyme exist...

By Dhurjati Mukherjee The truce between the US and Iran as well as the reduced oil prices in the global market has brought hopes to the Indian economy, but the latest stance of President Trump still causes concern. The world, including India, is worried over...

By Lekha Rattanani Sonam Wangchuk’s indefinite fast has entered its 20th day. He remains steadfast in his demand for the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan following the leak of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET)—the examination that determines admission to medical colleges across India....

The on-again, off-again US-Israeli war against Iran has underscored the growing disconnect between financial markets and real economic activity. It has also exposed how differently such shocks play out across the global economy. Consider oil markets. While they have been extremely volatile since the war began, their...