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…
The Year of the Fire Rooster My Chinese friends tell me that the auguries of the Chinese New Year are mixed. In Chinese astrology each zodiac year is associated with an animal plus one of the five elements. 2017 is the Year of the Rooster and its element is fire. This is the first such…
Amidst the furore over the prospects of a hard Brexit and President Trump’s immigration policies, the dry subject of our national finances has been overlooked. So may I have your attention please? Last year the United Kingdom’s national debt increased by £251 million every day. Sobering news The latest news on UK public finances is…
Suddenly everyone is talking trade deals – while TTP and probably TTIP bite the dust. Why does President Trump prefer bilateral trade deals to multilateral ones? What will the markets make of it all? And what happened when Theresa met Donald? Ciao TTP On 23 January President Trump signed an order to junk the Trans-Pacific…
On the day that the 45th President of the United States of America assumes office, during Davos week, I recall the observation of a great contemporary economist. Harvard’s Ken Rogoff (I have often mentioned his work in these pages, especially This Time it’s Different – Eight Centuries of Financial Folly) was at Davos last year.…
Try this thought experiment: Your small children are strapped into the child seats in the back of the car and you are driving down a country lane. Now you are approaching a bend in the lane, and a cat darts out into the road. If you swerve to avoid the cat you know that you…
Farming and food production, long-since a Cinderella business, has just become a cool investment space. This month we look at how to make decent returns from feeding the world. How a world of 9.6 billion people in 2050 is going to feed itself in an environmentally sustainable and humane way is one of the greatest…
