Every year in late summer the secretive priestly caste that is the world’s central bankers meets in conclave at the Wyoming mountain resort of Jackson Hole. It’s an inconsequential place really – just an upscale mountain cum fishing resort set in a verdant valley between the jagged peaks of the Teton Mountains and the Ventre…
It is five days now since the world’s Olympians filed out of the stadium in Rio heading home in a blaze of samba. But for the glorious lasses and lads of Team GB their homecoming on golden-nosed flight BA2016 on Tuesday – which we were told was groaning with Champagne – was triumphant. Of course,…
If you thought mining was about digging holes in dry ground, and that the technology required to do that was mature, think again. There are new kinds of extreme miners emerging who are taking mining to undreamed-of places. There are miners who are extracting resources from below the ocean waves. There are miners operating in…
If you have any exposure to the major (or indeed minor) European bourses, prepare for turbulence. 2016 (with an epilogue in 2017) could turn out to be another 1848. That was the year that virtually every major European state succumbed to revolution, and the continent, as Karl Marx observed, passed into a new era. Storm…
A dialogue between the Master and his trusty sidekick, Dr Watson, at 221B Baker Street, unpacks the most intriguing paradox in contemporary economics. Rising government debt levels should drive interest rates higher. Instead, interest rates are plunging to zero and below. As Holmes explains, our ultimate fate might be in the hands of an evil…
The greatest technological leap forward for humanity in the second quarter of the 21st Century will be Quantum Computing (QC). It will accelerate computer processing speeds beyond our imagination. It’s a weird world; and yet the first QC inspired computers are already working on problems of mind-boggling complexity. Quantum Theory was formulated in Europe in…
Letter to my American friends. The Donald will reach an accommodation with Russia. The alternative could be too awful to contemplate. This thought has momentous importance for investors – and indeed anyone who cares about the future. Now I know many readers may not like Donald Trump, and that he has offended people – women,…
Get ready for a world of negative interest rates and helicopter money. The lunatics have taken over the asylum. In May I wrote about how the world of the Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) was one of Alice in Wonderland economics with all kinds of unforeseen consequences over the long term. And last week I…
July 15. St. Swithin’s Day[i]. An ancient British folk-tale holds that if it rains today, that will set the weather for another 40 days. As I have argued before, meteorology and economics have much in common. Perhaps economists would be better forecasters if they just ignored the central bankers. Dear old George is gone. (I…
Release the Buffers The Brexit backlash shows that the UK banks have better prospects than their European counterparts. A buying opportunity, perhaps? Now gather up the wee bairns and tell Grandad to put his ear trumpet in. I have some weighty news to impart. I don’t know how to put this in a way that…
