Sixteen years ago American stockmarkets reached their modern nadir. During the early 2000s European and emerging-market equities went on a bull run. By March 2008 America had entered recession and its financial crisis was under way. The country’s stocks accounted for less than 40% of the world’s total stockmarket capitalisation.…

Queues of idle trucks trying to enter America are standard fare at Mexico’s border. Recently, however, vehicles at the Otay Mesa crossing, which separates California and the city of Tijuana, have been lining up to get into Mexico. The trucks do not travel far—they offload their shipping containers in newly…

From some angles it seems as if thermal coal, the world’s dirtiest fuel, is having a tough year. Prices are down a bit. China, which gobbles up over half the world’s supply, is in economic trouble; a surge in hydropower generation there is squeezing out the fuel. In May G7…

Which is the greatest rivalry in tennis? Older players might reminisce about the “fire and ice” contests between the cool-headed Bjorn Borg and the tempestuous John McEnroe; those a generation younger might rave about the all-American duels between Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras. After a two-decade-long era dominated by rivalries…

In the cartoon “SpongeBob SquarePants”, Mr Krabs, purveyor of krabby patty hamburgers, is a frequent and ruthless price-gouger. He can get away with it since he has no competition, save for the unappetising Chum Bucket. McDonald’s, a fast-food chain that flips real-world hamburgers, can only dream of Mr Krabs’s pricing…

In April a New York fried-chicken shop went viral. It was not the food at Sansan Chicken East Village that captured the world’s imagination, but the service. Diners found an assistant from the Philippines running the till via video link. The service is provided by Happy Cashier, which connects American…

It was a French politician, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who coined the term “exorbitant privilege” in the 1960s. He was referring to benefits received by America as issuer of the world’s reserve currency—namely, the ability to run high deficits comfortably. These days France is reminded it has no such privilege. Ahead…

Owing to the rapid spread of solar power, Spanish energy is increasingly cheap. Between 11am and 7pm, the sunniest hours in a sunny country, prices often loiter near zero on wholesale markets (see chart). Even in Germany, which by no reasonable definition is a sunny country, but which has plenty…

India’s stockmarket swooned upon the news that Narendra Modi, the country’s business-friendly prime minister, would return to power diminished and in a coalition after a recent general election. One benchmark, though, fell especially sharply and has yet to recover: the Bombay Stock Exchange’s index for Public Sector Undertakings (BSE PSU).…

Editor’s note (June 20th 2024): The Supreme Court has ruled in Moore v United States, upholding the tax at issue (the “mandatory repatriation tax”). The court declined to weigh in on the constitutionality of a tax on unrealised gains. What is income, really? Ask an economist and they might describe…