Mar 18th 2023

What’s wrong with the banks

The world this week

Leaders

The financial system

What’s wrong with the banks

Rising interest rates have left banks exposed. Time to fix the system—again

Binyamin Netanyahu and a constitutional crisis

Will Bibi break Israel?

When Israel’s best and brightest are up in arms it is time to worry

Ron DeReckless

Ron DeSantis emboldens Vladimir Putin

Florida’s governor has blundered by saying Ukraine is not a vital American interest

Nuclear submarines

The AUKUS pact is a model for Western allies

Pooling talent and resources is the only way to match China’s heft

Lean, mean and surprisingly green

Why America is going to look more like Texas

Lessons from the surge of the Lone Star State

Britain’s economy

Jeremy Hunt’s budget is better at diagnosis than treatment

Stability but no cigar

Letters

On obesity, colonialism, YouTube and Alphabet, air pollution, the Chagos Islands, Zoomers

Letters to the editor

By Invitation

Russia and Ukraine

Alexei Navalny’s chief of staff says personal sanctions need rethinking

Bank runs

Tony Yates considers policy after Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse

Briefing

The lodestar state

Texas’s latest boom is its biggest yet

The state is sucking in people, companies and federal spending

United States

Some like it hot

In America climate hawks and Big Oil alike cheer geothermal energy

SNAP, crackle, pop

Theft from America’s anti-poverty programmes seems troublingly easy

Class half empty

Chicago’s public schools are emptying. Politics makes it hard to fix

Eggstortion

The price of eggs in America cannot be explained by inflation alone

Ahab in Brooklyn

Why are so many whales washing up dead on east-coast beaches?

Lexington

Why did America’s leaders stop caring about schools?

The Americas

Borrowing from Bukele

El Salvador’s authoritarian president is becoming a regional role model

Asia

Great AUKUS

The Anglophone military alliance in Asia is seriously ambitious

Transport infrastructure

India is getting an eye-wateringly big transport upgrade

Banyan

Micronesia takes on China

China

More than a yes-man?

China’s new head of government, Li Qiang, has Xi Jinping’s ear

New frontier

How life has changed along China’s border with South-East Asia

Chaguan

Why Chairman Mao’s victims are denied justice

Middle East & Africa

A house divided against itself

Binyamin Netanyahu is exploiting Israel’s divisions

Deal or no big deal?

China brokers an Iran-Saudi rapprochement

No flies on Kenya

How an east African country became an odd sort of global powerhouse

Europe

Crunch time

Germany is at last tackling its long-standing economic weaknesses

Austrian populists

The alarming comeback of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party

Uneasy minority

Ethnic Hungarians have been having a tricky time in Ukraine

Winning the electricity war

How Ukraine tamed Russian missile barrages and kept the lights on

Charlemagne

Europe has led the global charge against big tech. But does it need a new approach?

Britain

Steady as she goes

Will Jeremy Hunt’s “budget for growth” achieve its goal?

Not child’s play

The chancellor hopes more child care will get more parents working

A bridge too far

In the name of the planet, Wales curtails roadbuilding

What place in the world?

Britain takes a fresh look at its foreign policy

Hot trend

Britons warm up to saunas

Making the grade

State-school admissions are rising at Oxford and Cambridge

Bagehot

It is far too easy to run lawbreaking businesses in Britain

International

Potemkin diplomacy

Russia’s friends are a motley—and shrinking—crew

Business

The new-look global corporation

Are Western companies becoming less global?

An American in Leverkusen

Shareholders have high hopes for Bayer’s new boss

Aramco’s princely sums

Saudi Aramco makes an eye-popping $160bn in profit

Uncapsized

Can Gautam Adani ride out the storm?

Bartleby

From high-speed rail to the Olympics, why do big projects go wrong?

Schumpeter

A battle royal is brewing over copyright and AI

Finance & economics

The prop-up job

How deep is the rot in America’s banking industry?

Buttonwood

For markets Silicon Valley Bank’s demise signals a painful new phase

Duration dangers

The search for Silicon Valley Bank-style portfolios

The stages of grief

What the loss of Silicon Valley Bank means for Silicon Valley

Panic on Paradeplatz

Credit Suisse faces share-price turbulence, as fear sweeps the market

Fun while it lasted

Is the global investment boom turning to bust?

Free exchange

The Fed smothers capitalism in an attempt to save it

Science & technology

Brainslammed

Evidence is growing that playing contact sports can lead to long-term brain injuries

Give it a rest

To ensure vaccines work properly, men should get a good night’s sleep

Mind maps

A big advance in mapping the structure of the brain

Lunar living

Pressurised natural caves could offer a home from home on the Moon

Culture

American society

“Poverty, By America” is a fierce polemic on an enduring problem

Her cruel device

The story of the poisoners known as the “Angel Makers of Nagyrev”

Intellectual history

Are science and religion fated to be adversaries?

Johnson

“Omit needless words!” But not all of them

Economic & financial indicators

Indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets

Graphic detail

Punching above their weight

Upper legislative houses tend to be biased and malapportioned

The Economist explains

The Economist explains

What to make of a clash between a Russian jet and an American drone

The Economist explains

Why Russian women are flying to Argentina to give birth

Obituary

Father and son