fester

If doubts about private lenders continue to fester, pensions and other large institutional investors could become forced sellers of index funds to avoid realizing losses on their private-asset holdings.

Policymakers face a dilemma: cut production drastically, which risks a collapse in growth, or move too slowly and risk letting the problem fester.

The stories in this unmatched collection mercilessly tap into the horrors that can fester in the human heart, as well as taaqtumi—Inuktitut for “in the dark.”

And, as happens so often in a second presidential term, there is a quietly festering scandal—the mysterious Jeffrey Epstein files, which were going to be released until they weren’t.

“As a result, we’ve let problems fester, missed opportunities and neglected partners,” he wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal earlier this year.