STANFORD — A year from now, the United States will elect its next president. The stakes are high, and the outcome will reverberate across the world in a number of spheres, not least the economy.

STANFORD — Recession fears are gripping Europe and spreading globally. Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union now seems imminent, and Italy’s government has just imploded.

STANFORD — With the first debate between Democratic candidates just four months away, the 2020 US presidential campaign is off to an early start.

STANFORD — For many of the world’s economies, financial markets, heads of government and carbon policies, 2018 did not end well.

STANFORD — The US economy is growing, inflation has finally hit the US Federal Reserve’s 2 per cent target, and unemployment is quite low, and at an all-time low for African Americans and Hispanics.

STANFORD — Italy’s new minister of economy and finance, Giovanni Tria, has sought to reassure financial markets that the new Five Star Movement/League coalition government will neither abandon the euro nor blow up the budget deficit in violation of EU fiscal rules.

STANFORD — Technology and the largest tech firms are becoming increasingly controversial.

STANFORD — If one looks past the headlines of the media’s full-time Donald Trump coverage, one can discern a global shift in political, economic and cultural forces that might prove far more consequential for America and the world than the actual Trump presidency.

What do the leaks of unflattering e-mail from the Democratic National Committee’s hacked servers during the 2016 US presidential election campaign and the deafening hour-long emergency-warning siren in Dallas, Texas, have in common?It is the same thing that links the North Korean