The United Kingdom has too much debt. Reports normally focus on government debt: currently around 80% of national income, unless you take into account (as you should) the debts of the bailed-out banks and their toxic portfolios, which would pretty much double that figure. But what about consumer debt? Mortgage debt? Business debt? The huge […]

              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 […]

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 […]

Planet Ponzi hopes everyone loves fudge. The “official” U-3 unemployment figures released monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) are truly rich. See that red line on the chart? The bottom one? That’s the one the government would ideally like you to focus on, but if they can they’ll keep you focused on U3, […]