Mr Hammond’s first and last spring budget was a cosh delivered to the growing army of the self-employed (white van drivers to barristers) and micro-company directors (interior designers to marketing consultants), concealed in a velvet glove of fiscal reassurance. The good news is that the British economy is still relatively dynamic relative to its peers;…
The global oil and gas industry is experiencing one of the most severe downturns in 30 years. A perfect storm of overproduction, geopolitical tensions and the long-term move towards alternative energy sources (renewables) has caused oil prices to fall to levels that are often below the long-term break-even cost of production. Although the oil price…
Governments in future will be obliged to move from taxing income to taxing assets, not least in the UK. Readers with net worth equal to the value of a nice South London semi should prepare themselves for stiff wealth taxes – particularly on property – within the next five years. Especially if the Tories regain…
SpaceX hopes to take paying passengers into deep space next year. Is this a real business or an ego trip? An awfully big adventure Elon Musk announced on Monday (27 February) that his space company SpaceX has been contracted by two private citizens to circumnavigate the moon and return to Earth late in 2018. The…
In his final days as ruthless EU dictator, the Leader made a series of cataclysmic blunders, based largely on a misreading of the strategic situation. These led to his inevitable downfall[i]. “Mein Führer. The Russian delicatessen chain, Azbuka Vkusa, has breached the gates of Berlin. They are bearing down on our Aldi and Lidl divisions.…
The future of politics This week I want to talk politics without getting (party) political. Like many others, as an analyst and investor, post-Brexit and Trump, and with Marine Le Pen likely to win the first round in the French presidential election on 23 April, I have been trying to figure out what it all…
A vertebra in the spinal column of the world economy is causing pain. As I write the price of Brent Crude is at US$59.99. According to the Knoema[i] website, the break-even oil price ranges from US$149.90 in Venezuela to US$60.50 in Qatar. So, on that basis, almost no one is making money in oil right…
They nearly blew up the world with crazy exotic instruments called derivatives, conceived in an orgy of greed. They were bailed out by panicked governments who thought they were “too big to fail”. They were subjected to new rules because everyone knew that their much vaunted “risk models” didn’t work. And then they were challenged…
The Illuminati are plotting… One of the themes I have returned to again and again over the last eighteen months has been how the priestly caste of the world’s central bankers, disproportionately drawn from the upper echelons of Goldman Sachs – a kind of mysterious, self-perpetuating, secretive elite which I (only half-jokingly) call the “Illuminati”…
Suddenly, the idea that all citizens should be paid a basic income by the state is becoming topical across the world. While we associate this idea with the political left – the French Socialist Party candidate in the forthcoming presidential elections, Benoît Hamon, has made it the cornerstone of his programme – it also has…
