Saudi Arabia Can Break the Houthis’ Grip on the Red Sea

The Strait of Hormuz isn’t the only Middle Eastern naval chokepoint under threat: In the Red Sea, vital shipping is being disrupted by an Iranian proxy, the Houthis of Yemen. Now Saudi Arabia, the nat...

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Florida Chooses Insurers and Their Profits Over Homeowners

US states are supposedly the laboratories of democracy, cooking up and testing local solutions to national problems. But some of those labs are more like Walter White’s RV methmobile: They’re not alwa...

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Keeping Your Bitcoin Riches Safe Has Never Been Harder

Finding a place to stash the keys to your cryptocurrency hoard has never been easier, thanks to options that run from putting them in a retired Swiss nuclear bunker to the humdrum use of digital-asset exchanges. It’s also never been harder to keep them safe from thieves.

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Anthropic Is Teaching CEOs Everywhere a Valuable Lesson

America’s artificial intelligence titans recently banded together to urge the government not to restrict so-called open-weight AI models, or those that are publicly available for users to freely download and run on their own platforms, so that they can better compete with the ones coming out of China. All the usual suspects - Nvidia Corp., OpenAI and Google-parent Alphabet Inc. - were on board with one exception: Anthropic PBC.

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Florida Chooses Insurers and Their Profits Over Homeowners

US states are supposedly the laboratories of democracy, cooking up and testing local solutions to national problems. But some of those labs are more like Walter White’s RV methmobile: They’re not always doing stuff you want to emulate.

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CEO Ubiquity Is No Substitute for Disclosure

Meta Platforms Inc.’s Mark Zuckerberg broke three years of silence on X to announce the launch of a new AI model. Nvidia Corp.’s Jensen Huang signed up for the platform to share an open letter in support of an open artificial intelligence ecosystem. LVMH’s Bernard Arnault also got himself an account to post an open letter — in his case to rebut a Le Monde investigation into succession at the luxury empire.

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Kevin Warsh Has Some Explaining to Do

Kevin Warsh’s second policy meeting as chairman of the Federal Reserve last week wasn’t a resounding success. Analysts were puzzled by his refusal to explain the central bank’s decision to leave its policy rate unchanged. Amid the confusion, long-term bond yields rose sharply. Next day came reports that he was planning to have fewer such meetings in the future.

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No One Who Works Full Time Should Be on Medicaid

There are a lot of jobs in the US economy that pay miserably low wages. And there are a lot that offer a reasonable hourly rate but still result in miserably low earnings because of unstable, fluctuating schedules. How many is hard to know, but it’s not a small number: According to the Government Accountability Office, there are about 9 million Medicaid recipients who are working full-time, and 7.5 million who receive SNAP benefits.

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This Stock Market Breakout Is Uniquely Promising

Richard Driehaus, the late Chicago money manager who helped popularize momentum investing, took exception to the mantra of buy low, sell high. “I believe that far more money is made buying high and selling at even higher prices,” he told Jack Schwager in his book The New Market Wizards. Driehaus, who died in 2021, has been vindicated over and over in recent decades, which is worth remembering after the S&P 500 Index broke out to its latest all-time high.

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‘Oil in Our Time’ May Be as Good as This Gets

The price of enabling the dictatorial Iranian regime is steep but payable.

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Saudi Arabia Can Break the Houthis’ Grip on the Red Sea

The Strait of Hormuz isn’t the only Middle Eastern naval chokepoint under threat: In the Red Sea, vital shipping is being disrupted by an Iranian proxy, the Houthis of Yemen. Now Saudi Arabia, the nation most affected by the Houthis’ threats to commercial traffic, is forming a naval coalition to restore order in the waterway.

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Britain Is Reversing the Victorian Age

Britain gets ever more difficult to understand. The familiar features of the place right now are the disappearance of political stability, emotional restraint, public order and its Rolls-Royce civil service. “The past is another country. They do things differently there,” was LP Hartley’s memorable opening sentence for his 1953 novel The Go-Between. In today’s UK that applies better to the present.

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What's Wrong With FIFA? Look Beyond Infantino

Gianni Infantino’s recent capitulation looks like a textbook case of overreach by a leader unaccustomed to restraints on their power. The FIFA president’s plan to sell a stake in a $20 billion commercial vehicle to private investors unraveled in four days as a global backlash mounted and even close colleagues disowned the project. His own position is now in question. Anyone hoping that replacing the head will bring an end to recurring scandals is likely to be disappointed: What world football’s

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BBQ Bans Are a Woeful Response to Wildfires

In response to this summer’s devastating wildfires, France has arrested more than 300 people in connection with suspected arson. French President Emmanuel Macron has pledged “zero tolerance” for anyone purposefully starting fires. Greece had a similar response after a series of shocking blazes in 2023, increasing the severity of penalties for intentional forest arson. Meanwhile, with half of England now officially in drought, there have been calls to ban the sale of temporary barbecues in UK sup

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Canada and the US Go Toe-to-Toe

Carney isn’t about to let Trump’s tariffs get in the way of his success.

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AI Didn’t Ruin These Films. It Made Them Possible

I went into an AI film festival in Tokyo last week expecting slop, and left surprised by how much humanity emanated from the screen.

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Leveraged ETF Crash Hedging ETF

Cliquets, tax-aware long-short, George Santos, poor crypto decisions and dentists.

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The Giant Sucking Sound of US Profits Is Leaving Asia Dry

For all the talk of a multipolar world, Asia’s export engines are discovering that they haven’t broken free from American hegemony; they’ve merely been repurposed to it.

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Washington State Throws a Lifeline to the Sandwich Generation

This summer, Washington state’s pioneering long-term care insurance program is facing a crucial test. In July, eligible residents began receiving benefits for the first time, marking a new stage in th...

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Trump’s Gaza Roadmap Needs Heroic Optimism to Succeed

If the world of international affairs had self-help books, this year’s bestseller might be titled How to Find Hope When It’s Hopeless. There are so many examples for it to include, from peace in Ukrai...

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A Cornered Trump Just Might Turn on Big Oil

While I wouldn’t necessarily rely on Truth Social for facts, it occasionally serves as a barometer of President Donald Trump’s anxieties. On Monday, the needle pointed to pump prices:

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Immigrant Kids Deserve to Keep Their Lawyers

The Trump administration has jettisoned the way thousands of immigrant children receive legal help. On Friday, the Department of Health and Human Services ended the contract with the Acacia Center for Justice after nearly two decades, leaving more than 20,000 unaccompanied kids in legal limbo.

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A 401(k) Is the Best Retirement Plan, Despite Its Inventor’s Doubts

One of my most controversial opinions is that the 401(k) is one of the great financial inventions of the 20th century. It is not a view shared by many people — including, apparently, the inventor himself, Ted Benna, who argues that the 401(k) has mainly benefited the wealthy.

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It’s the Worst Time to Be John Thune

As US Senate majority leader, John Thune enjoys some perks: There’s the salary bump, the security detail and an ornate suite of Capitol offices with a sweeping view of the Washington mall. As for authority over rank-and-file Republicans — that’s another matter.

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A Cornered Trump Just Might Turn on Big Oil

While I wouldn’t necessarily rely on Truth Social for facts, it occasionally serves as a barometer of President Donald Trump’s anxieties. On Monday, the needle pointed to pump prices:

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SpaceX Investors Should Focus on Starship, Not Earnings

SpaceX sorely needs a catalyst to turn around its sinking stock price since its historic June 12 share sale, which raised $86 billion.

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Yen Intervention Is Bessent’s Latest Band-Aid Fix for Bonds

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent characterized US support for Friday’s yen intervention as a sign that President Donald Trump’s government “delivers for America’s trusted partners.” Perhaps. The more plausible reading? The administration is growing increasingly uneasy with its own climbing borrowing costs and wants to avoid forced selling of Treasury securities by their biggest overseas holder.

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Follow the Money All the Way to Mark Carney's Canada

When wildfire smoke from Canada enveloped the northeastern US a few weeks ago, President Donald Trump seized on the extreme weather he claims is a climate change hoax to announce 50% tariffs on cheese, hockey sticks and some other 500 goods that America imports from its neighbor worth about $20 billion, or 2% of bilateral trade, last year.

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Keep It Simple and Look to the Earnings

There are plenty of explanations for the market’s movements. Try the basic one.

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