Summer’s coming. An election campaign’s pending. Obama’s in favor of gay marriage. Mitt Romney’s trying to figure out his vice presidential pick. The mainstream media is trying to second-guess his choices even before they’re even made. But, guys, there are some big issues out here. You know, real ones that affect real things in the […]

You know those summer thunderstorms we used to have? You’d be sitting out in a warm garden somewhere, sipping something cold and white, looking at lightning flashing on the horizon and counting the seconds until you could hear the thunder. Well, it’s like that now, only the gap between the flash and the rumble is […]

I don’t want to crow, but I’ve been predicting this for years: the writedowns of Greek debt, accompanied by swingeing austerity conditions, popular unrest, and (shortly) Greek exit from the Euro. You don’t have to take my word for that: my book, Planet Ponzi, pretty much mapped out the course we’re now taking. But although […]

              A day at Wimbledon This week, Mervyn King, the long-standing Governor of the Bank of England, said about the 2008 financial crisis, ‘We should have shouted from the rooftops that a system had been built in which banks were too important to fail, that banks had grown too […]

Yesterday mortgage rates rose. In normal times, that wouldn’t really be news. Sometimes interest rates rise, sometimes they fall. Sometimes savers lose, sometimes borrowers do. Swings and roundabouts. Only – have you noticed? – these aren’t normal times. The Bank of England’s main lending rate has been glued to 0.5% for more than three years […]

      Facebook is a phenomenal company. Mark Zuckerberg is a remarkable man and an astonishing entrepreneur. He’s created something sensational — something genuinely world-changing — and he’s young enough to be my son. But Facebook the company is one thing. The mooted valuation of Facebook is quite another. I admire the first, and […]

Let’s not be too hard on George Osborne. He came into office with what was arguably a more difficult bundle of challenges than any incoming Chancellor had ever faced. Facing a challenge: George Osborne Flaky banks, a hideous deficit, soaring debts, public services that had become hooked on ladlefuls of new cash, and an economy […]

There’s a theory that you can’t trust any message conveyed by a person’s most public expressions and gestures. Instead, the theory runs, you have to study the fleeting look, the involuntary movement. The micro-expression that lasts a second or two, before the welcome smile is fixed in place. That theory sounds good to me — […]

Five weeks ago, the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, was a happy man. He said, ‘The [Greek] problem is solved. How happy I am a solution to the Greek crisis … has been found.’ Which is good. Everyone, even presidents, deserves a little sunshine.  Looking on the bright side: France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy should not think […]

The largest, oldest living thing? Blue whale? Giant redwood? Some kind of deep sea critter? No, no and no. The right answer is the honey mushroom. You’ll see the thing growing out of trees in Oregon and Washington. It doesn’t look particularly creepy, or at least no creepier than these things normally do. Except it […]