Barack Obama was recently on the stump, defending the latest set of lackluster jobs figures. Obama blamed ‘serious headwinds’ including higher gas prices and, more recently, the developing crisis in the Eurozone. Having handed much of the blame to foreign oilfields and European crises, he returned to more familiar ground, bashing a Republican-controlled House for blocking some of the proposals in […]

At yet another select committee recently – they’ve been doing a good job – Vince Cable was grilled about the huge leap in the Royal Mail’s stock market value. As you’ll remember, the firm was floated at 330p a share and traded as high as 600p in November, a rise of 82% in a few […]

At the last election, during a TV debate between the three putative chancellors (Messrs Darling, Osborne and Cable), Krishna Guru-Murthy, asked, ‘Do you agree that cuts we are going to be facing will be deeper than the cuts that Mrs. Thatcher had to put through Britain?’ Alastair Darling answered, ‘Well, … they’re going to have […]

Here’s a piece of recent news that you almost certainly missed: A large consumer products company, Johnson & Johnson, announced a one-off loss owing to a 32 percent currency devaluation in Venezuela. The reason I expect you missed that less-than-seismic piece of news is that, unless you happen to be particularly fascinated in Johnson & […]

Obama’s an accomplished individual. Smart, cool, in control. But his standout quality is probably his ability to create euphoria. Create it, sustain it, ride it. Watch the people celebrating with him at his victory rally in Chicago and you could easily believe that the USA had just won a war or beaten a recession. Unfortunately for […]

  Last week, the Bank of England declared its intention to print another £50 billion. Hardly anyone noticed. That £50 billion will bring the Bank’s total money printing to around £425 billion, or about one quarter of British GDP. No one cares. This evening, the U.S. Federal Reserve will announce its own plans for another […]

One of the permanent problems in writing about financial matters is that the issues at stake seem so technical, so arcane. It’s hard for any ordinary reader to get interested in these things. Hard not to think, Why does any of this matter to me? The trouble is you probably thought the same about the […]