If you had decided to double up your exposure to the London stock market at the beginning of last year then you would have done well in 2016. The FTSE-100 was up by 14.4 percent on the year, confounding the economic realists (like me) and the Brexit doomsayers (not like me). Though, if you were…
If you ever wondered what that Christmas song really means, look no further. It’s the moment to look back over the momentous year gone by and to prepare for the even more tumultuous one about to dawn. Some amuses bouches for hungry investors, accompanied by a glass of effervescent speculation. A partridge in a pear-shaped…
In the January edition of the MI magazine I’m going to be talking about food. Specifically: why global agribusiness is likely to step centre-stage in the next decade. Basically there are two main reasons. Firstly, the world’s population is growing faster than crop yields are rising. Secondly, we are running out of new agricultural land…
2016 will go down in the annals of history as the year that the world changed course. Hitherto, since the 1970s, the main theme of global economic development was globalisation – the idea that international borders were inimical to economic development; that tariff-free trade went hand in hand with the free flows of goods, capital…
Another vote, another shock Yesterday, Italy became the most recent domino to fall in the global populist revolution about which I wrote in this month’s MI magazine. If Mr Cameron (score: 48 percent) resigned at half past eight in the morning, Signor Renzi, the Italian Prime Minister (score: 40 percent) resigned at midnight. He had…
Every school kid now knows that if the British government wants to fulfil the will of the British people expressed last June they have “to trigger” or, “to invoke” Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon (2007). Prime Minister May has stated that she intends to do this before the end of March 2017. Sadly,…
UK public finances are way off course. But, despite the unsympathetic forces of a cynical state ranged against him, one well-meaning bean-counter is trying to survive in extreme adversity. It makes for a harrowing Ken Loach movie… I’m appointed to make an assessment, Mr Hammond When Philip Hammond MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer, stood up…
Financial Armageddon? At least you reacted… Readers’ reactions to my piece in this month’s MI magazine on the theme of Financial Armageddon were, as usual, intelligent and interesting. In case you missed it, I was arguing that risks in the global financial system have been rising inexorably to a point where another systemic financial crisis…
It’s déjà vu – all over again The great American people have spoken. And the opinion polls were wrong. Again. Those beautiful bellwether states of Ohio, Florida and Georgia called for Mr Trump who is, this morning, the President-Elect of the United States. All over the world “experts”, liberals and lefties are swooning in disbelief,…
Risks in the international financial system have been rising for a while. In recent months bank valuations and some credit default swaps (CDSs – the rates at which banks insure each other) for European banks have reached levels not even seen during the Credit Crunch of 2008. Brexit has created a climate of uncertainty –…
