It’s different this time, or is it? The US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and the European Central Bank have become gargantuan, out-of-control, rogue hedge funds. Global central banks have magicked-up hundreds of trillions of dollars in debt and guarantees. Global stock market valuations are stratospheric—buoyed by stock buybacks, funded by record corporate […]

George Osborne was to have been a new kind of chancellor for a new kind of Britain. Instead of being an economy hooked on financial services and trading, we were going to be an economy under the stern command of business investment and export markets. Instead of government profligacy, we were going to see government […]

Chris Menon interviews the author of the best-selling Planet Ponzi on the housing bubble, market manipulation, gold and the subversion of democracy Monday, 16 June 2014 at 09:49 Chris Menon: In Planet Ponzi you’ve written about the huge debt bubble that was created over the past 30 years. For those who haven’t read your book, how […]

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 […]

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 […]

Accountable: A letter in the Sunday Times called for Osborne to begin spending cuts a year earlier than planned In February 2010, twenty economists published a letter in the Sunday Times calling on George Osborne to begin spending cuts a year earlier than planned. The key sentence of that letter stated that, ‘In order to be credible, […]

Solution? Business secretary Vince Cable has said he wants to nationalise the 18pc of RBS that isn’t already owned by the taxpayer Vince Cable wants to nationalise RBS. You can see his logic. The taxpayer owns 82% of the firm already. Nationalisation is hardly such a radical idea; it’s more the logical completion of a […]

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, […]