The biggest question facing the economy lately has been: How bad will the banking turmoil be? Though two U.S. banks failed a month ago, and a third is still struggling, emergency lending by the Federal Reserve seems to have prevented broader harm. The next question should be: Will it spread beyond the banks? That is because the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank a month ago, which touched off this bout of turmoil, was a symptom, not a cause, of broader forces at work in the financial system and...

In recent decades financial crises have tended to be fast-moving and violent. They usually revolve around a handful of companies or countries, and often climax over a weekend, before Asian markets open. That template is grounds for hope that the worst of the current turmoil may have passed with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank and the forced merger of Credit Suisse with UBS Group AG this month, as well as the federal backstops implemented in response to these...

As the World Trade Organization is increasingly sidelined, the future is going to look more like the past—and it won’t be a level playing field The globalization boom that began in the 1990s didn’t happen by itself: It was lubricated by the biggest economies’ willingness to write, enforce and obey shared rules of engagement. That consensus is now crumbling. The World Trade Organization, the embodiment of this rules-based order, has increasingly been sidelined as countries turn to export...

Around the world, governments in recent decades have sought to lighten the burden on capital by reducing taxes on dividends, capital gains, corporate profits and wealth. The motivation is straightforward: more capital means more investment, higher productivity and faster growing wages. Capital is also highly mobile: Tax it too much, and it will go elsewhere, undermining growth. Massachusetts senator and Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren has broken with that consensus by...