WALL STREET

Michael Lewis: "How can a guy working from his parents' house in suburban England whose only actionable orders were to BUY stock market futures cause such a sensational collapse in U.S. stocks?" Read more...

Matt Levine: "There are many messages between Deutsche Bank manipulators and their buddies at other banks that suggest not a war of high-Libor banks against low-Libor banks, but rather a market that was easily manipulated by a plurality of banks acting together as a team." Read more...

EUROPE

The Editors: "On Friday, President Barack Obama will issue his seventh annual statement about the genocide of at least 1 million Ottoman Armenians 100 years ago. And, for the seventh consecutive year, he reportedly will fail to call it genocide." Read more...

Mark Gilbert: "Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that trying to discuss private sensations such as pain is impossible because 'it is not a something, but not a nothing either.' That enigmatic statement is a useful way to reflect on whether a bad outcome for Greece will have a contagious effect on other members of the euro zone." Read more...

DECLASSIFIED

Josh Rogin: "The U.S. government and intelligence community had lost the trail of kidnapped aid contractor Warren Weinstein long before his death in a counterterrorism strike in January, according to several top administration officials who were deeply involved in the search." The accident "now has the administration and Congress rethinking how the U.S. will conduct its secret war." Read more...

TERRORISM

Stephen L. Carter: "There is an eerie Orwellian cost to the Obama administration's refusal to use the term 'War on Terror' to describe its ... war on terror." Read more...

FOREIGN POLICY

James Gibney: "National security issues are likely to figure prominently in the 2016 election, and Republican candidates are already stepping up their attacks on the 'Obama-Clinton foreign policy,' which they claim has led to an alarming decline in U.S. global influence." Read more...

WAR

The Editors: "In his admirably direct statement Thursday about the U.S. drone strike three months ago that killed two Westerners held by al-Qaeda, President Barack Obama said: 'I take full responsibility.' He shouldn't. The Central Intelligence Agency, Pentagon and especially Congress all have some accountability for America's drone war and the innocents who have died in it." Read more...

ENTERTAINMENT

Justin Fox: "The idea of steering more music revenue to musicians may well have wide appeal, but the musician-owners of Tidal don't seem to know how to sell it. ... By repeatedly declaring that the tech companies are the new music icons, Team Tidal may simply have reinforced in consumers' minds the idea that tech companies are the new music icons." Read more...

2016 ELECTIONS

Jonathan Bernstein: "It is unlikely but not impossible that the scandals involving the Clinton Foundation will move votes in 2016. We'll have to see what the evidence says. But Benghazi?" Read more...

Bernstein: "Carly Fiorina, the former chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard, ran for office once and lost badly. Yet as the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, she is planning to formally declare her candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination on May 4. Bottom line: No candidate with similar (lack of) conventional credentials has come remotely close to a nomination during the modern era." Read more...

ASIAN ECONOMY

William Pesek: "As Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe heads to the United States this weekend, the Nikkei stock exchange has provided him with a triumphant talking point. When he visited the New York Stock Exchange in 2013, he urged traders to 'buy my Abenomics' -- and buy they have. ... The question now is whether Japanese corporations can produce the profits to sustain the rally." Read more...

COMPANIES

Carter: "It's often asserted that 'business' has a particular moral duty to hire, a proposition that would successfully distinguish the corporation from the family. But the proposition is unpersuasive. The fact that the private sector might create jobs does not mean that the private sector exists in order to create jobs." Read more...