The dual mandate of the Federal Reserve is a good one. It is charged with ensuring stable prices and maximum employment. That’s a good basic recipe, one which served the country well. And notice what isn’t there. The Fed is not charged with distorting natural market pricing mechanisms to the point of perverting risk. It [...]

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 [...]

A hundred years ago, a generation of men – many of them volunteers – fought an unprecedently bloody war for almost invisible gains. The men were heroes, but the generals commanding them were too often blunderers, too little conscious of the ever-mounting casualties. David Cameron is right to demand that our schoolchildren are reminded of [...]

  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 [...]

Another day, another banking scandal. Barclays’ LIBOR cheats exploited an arcane and out-dated rate-setting mechanism to fix rates in their favour – which means to your detriment. But just ripping off ordinary people and ordinary investors doesn’t win many points in the Bankster’s Cheat Olympics. If you really want to shoot for those medal places, [...]

Barclays bankers fiddle the LIBOR markets – a multi-trillion market – on a heroic scale. Other banks and bankers are being investigated too. Barclays will not be alone in its wrong-doing, and other banks may even have exceeded Barclays’ brazen contempt for truth and right-dealing. So what happens? So far, we’ve seen all the standard [...]

There’s a lot of talk about Europe at the moment, but it’s kind of the way you talk about flooding when the waters don’t reach your house. Sure, it must be real tough for the poor saps whose couches are bobbing around in their living rooms — but meantime, what’s for dinner? Unfortunately, that European [...]

Just as things were looking bleak, time ticking away, and tension rising … Cesc Fabregas scored for Spain. The tournament favorites hardly daunted their major rivals in their one-all draw against Italy, but they lived to play another day. Meantime, over the same weekend, another rescue act took place. This ‘rescue’ involved €100 billion of [...]

It’s a strange world we’re living in. This newspaper reported yesterday that, ‘Britain and the US joined forces to urge Germany to create a central Brussels body that could assume sovereignty over individual countries’ budgets and fiscal policies.’ Under pressure: German Chancellor Angela Merkel doesn’t want a Euro superstate – and can’t afford to finance one anyway [...]

‘Failing dismally’: Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman says austerity isn’t working Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and writer for the New York Times, is in London at the moment telling us that we’ve got things wrong. On Tuesday, he gave a lecture at the London School of Economics entitled, ‘Austerity Thy Name is Vanity’. [...]