2026-03-17 13:00:04
Friedrich Merz is a remarkably unpopular chancellor of Germany. According to recent polling, less than a quarter of Germans have a positive opinion of him, and those numbers are dwindling fast. That shouldn’t surprise anyone, least of all Merz. He came to power less than a year ago on a manifesto promising “Political Change for Germany.” Since then, he’s avoided tackling crucial reforms. If he thinks that’s playing it safe, he’s mistaken. Germans voted for change and expect him to deliver.
2026-03-17 13:00:02
The Federal Reserve is about to give America’s biggest lenders an extra $200 billion of capital to play with. Later this week, US regulators will launch fresh proposals to update and, in some ways, loosen US capital rules that will fuel stock buybacks, lending and trading. But there’s a danger here: Too much haste in deploying all this spare cash risks overheating the economy and housing markets in unhealthy ways.
2026-03-17 12:12:23
The 18 central banks meeting this week didn’t initially have a war on their agendas.
2026-03-17 08:00:02
For more than a decade now, India has sought to build its “strategic autonomy.” New Delhi has booked a place at every high table — the Quad with Washington, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization with Beijing, BRICS with Moscow, and the I2U2 Group with Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi. The national interest, we were told, required us to be close to everyone, but not too close to anyone. Officials cultivated the art of the rhetorical win, and crafted exquisite put-downs for neighbors and superpowers alike.
2026-03-17 05:25:03
As the Strait of Hormuz remains closed to most traffic, the White House has embraced bro humor to distract voters from the real crisis: fuel oil and “slowflation.”
2026-03-17 03:00:02
For years, artificial intelligence has been governed by a simple creed: Bigger is better. Feed a model more data, more chips and more electricity, and it will become smarter.
