Rachel Reeves, Britain’s new chancellor, says that she has inherited the worst fiscal circumstances since the second world war. An exaggeration, perhaps, but only a small one. To address the squeeze, Ms Reeves will seek the help of Britain’s retirement savings. On July 8th she said that she wants the country’s pension funds “to drive […]

China’s paramount leader, Xi Jinping, contains multitudes. His economic philosophy touts both self-reliance and openness. His vision of policymaking embraces top-down design, but also bottom-up experimentation. During the covid-19 pandemic, he urged local officials to eliminate infections (which often required lockdowns) and promote growth (which r

In May 27 members of the Community Empowerment Resource Network (CERNET), a Philippine charity, were charged with bankrolling communist rebels. Straight away the case looked strange. A social-media post by police claimed they had jailed Estrella Flores-Catarata, one of CERNET’s associates, who received an award from the UN for her work with indigen

The earliest depiction of the ouroboros—a serpent coiled in a circle, eating its own tail—was found in the tomb of Tutankhamun, a pharaoh who ruled Egypt around 1320BC. It was used in his funerary texts to depict the infinite nature of time, and later cropped up all over the place. In Ancient Rome it signified […]

The world is still, in a sense, swimming in cash. Or at least the electronic equivalent: central-bank reserves. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), a club of central banks, estimates that the balance-sheets of rich-country central banks amount to roughly 50% of collective GDP. That is down from 70% in 2021—a reduction which reflects quant

Starbucks offers endless opportunities for innovation. Parts of social media delight in hacking the chain’s menu to create highly instagrammable drinks. Fancy a “cake batter Frappuccino”? Simply order a “vanilla bean crème Frappuccino”, add a pump of hazelnut syrup and ask the barista to put a cake pop in the blender. How about some “liquid [&helli

The savings and loan (S&L) crisis terrorised America’s banks for years. Starting in the mid-1980s, a mix of aggressive lending growth, poor risk controls and a property downturn contributed to the collapse or consolidation of over 1,000 small lending institutions. China’s smallest banks are now suffering from many of the same ailments. But unti

Move to San Francisco and it is hard not to be swept up by mania over artificial intelligence (AI). Advertisements tell you about how the tech will revolutionise your workplace. In bars people speculate about when the world will “get AGI”, or when machines will become more advanced than humans. The five big tech firms—Alphabet, […]

War is still exacting a heavy toll on Ukraine’s economy. The country’s GDP is a quarter smaller than on the eve of Vladimir Putin’s invasion, the central bank is tearing through foreign reserves and Russia’s recent attacks on critical infrastructure have depressed growth forecasts. “Strong armies,” warned Sergii Marchenko, Ukraine’s finance ministe

Sixteen years ago American stockmarkets reached their modern nadir. During the early 2000s European and emerging-market equities went on a bull run. By March 2008 America had entered recession and its financial crisis was under way. The country’s stocks accounted for less than 40% of the world’s total stockmarket capitalisation. Fast-forward to tod

Queues of idle trucks trying to enter America are standard fare at Mexico’s border. Recently, however, vehicles at the Otay Mesa crossing, which separates California and the city of Tijuana, have been lining up to get into Mexico. The trucks do not travel far—they offload their shipping containers in newly built warehouses just 15km south […

From some angles it seems as if thermal coal, the world’s dirtiest fuel, is having a tough year. Prices are down a bit. China, which gobbles up over half the world’s supply, is in economic trouble; a surge in hydropower generation there is squeezing out the fuel. In May G7 members agreed to phase out […]

Which is the greatest rivalry in tennis? Older players might reminisce about the “fire and ice” contests between the cool-headed Bjorn Borg and the tempestuous John McEnroe; those a generation younger might rave about the all-American duels between Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras. After a two-decade-long era dominated by rivalries between Roger Feder

In the cartoon “SpongeBob SquarePants”, Mr Krabs, purveyor of krabby patty hamburgers, is a frequent and ruthless price-gouger. He can get away with it since he has no competition, save for the unappetising Chum Bucket. McDonald’s, a fast-food chain that flips real-world hamburgers, can only dream of Mr Krabs’s pricing power. It has been forced [&h

In April a New York fried-chicken shop went viral. It was not the food at Sansan Chicken East Village that captured the world’s imagination, but the service. Diners found an assistant from the Philippines running the till via video link. The service is provided by Happy Cashier, which connects American firms with Filipino workers. Chi […]

Owing to the rapid spread of solar power, Spanish energy is increasingly cheap. Between 11am and 7pm, the sunniest hours in a sunny country, prices often loiter near zero on wholesale markets (see chart). Even in Germany, which by no reasonable definition is a sunny country, but which has plenty of wind, wholesale prices were […]

India’s stockmarket swooned upon the news that Narendra Modi, the country’s business-friendly prime minister, would return to power diminished and in a coalition after a recent general election. One benchmark, though, fell especially sharply and has yet to recover: the Bombay Stock Exchange’s index for Public Sector Undertakings (BSE PSU). It compr

Editor’s note (June 20th 2024): The Supreme Court has ruled in Moore v United States, upholding the tax at issue (the “mandatory repatriation tax”). The court declined to weigh in on the constitutionality of a tax on unrealised gains. What is income, really? Ask an economist and they might describe “Haig-Simons” income—the value of a […]

Things are big in America. That is true of houses, cars and food portions. Perhaps most shocking of all is the size of tips. In much of the rest of the world, gratuities are a small gesture for good service. In American restaurants they are de rigueur. And they are becoming more generous and more […]

How can you tell it’s time to get out of the market? In 1929 Joseph Kennedy, an American businessman and politician, supposedly realised the party was over upon hearing a shoe-shine boy dispensing stock tips. In 2000 the exit doors beckoned after 17 “dotcom” firms paid millions of dollars each for brief advertising slots during […]

It was a French politician, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who coined the term “exorbitant privilege” in the 1960s. He was referring to the benefits received by America as issuer of the world’s reserve currency—namely, the ability to run high deficits comfortably. These days France is reminded that it has no such privilege. Ahead of parliamentary electi

Is a fresh housing boom under way? In April a house-price index for the world, excluding China, rose by more than 3% year on year (see chart 1). American house prices are 6.5% higher than a year ago, Australian ones are up by 5% and Portuguese ones are soaring. In other countries, the market looks […]

The HISTORY of leveraged finance—the business of lending to risky, indebted companies—is best told in three acts. High-yield (or “junk”) bonds were the subject of the first. That ended in 1990 when Michael Milken, the godfather of this sort of debt, was sent to prison for fraud. In the second act, the extraordinary growth of […]

Returning from his paternity leave last week, your columnist was keen to get writing. After all, numerous studies say parents’ careers can suffer after they have children. Best to immediately dispel any notion that his might do so. But then he remembered that he is a man, and went to get a coffee. For the […]

In some parts of the world, not least America’s capital, “trade” is a dirty word. Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden now champion protectionism, and neither president signed a single new trade deal. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is a shell of its former self. So you might think that trade deals are history—but in […]

It is the million-person mystery, and its solution will help determine just how strong American growth truly is. According to an official survey of employers, America’s economy has added 1.2m jobs in net terms since the start of the year. But a separate survey of households paints a completely different picture: that the country has […]

Chinese officials seem pleased with the yuan’s recent progress as a global currency. The international monetary system is diversifying at an accelerating pace, said Pan Gongsheng, the governor of China’s central bank, in March. The yuan has become the fourth-most active currency in global payments, he noted. In trade finance, it now ranks third. An

Ahead of America’s election in November, company bosses, financiers and diplomats are busy calling on Donald Trump’s allies, trying to divine the economic policies that the former president will pursue if he is re-elected. But there is one man in Mr Trump’s orbit who holds more sway than most and who, for now, is virtually […]

Investors in China’s stockmarket have been doing handsomely this year. The Shanghai composite index has risen by 13% from a multi-year low in February, notwithstanding a recent drop. Equity analysts and state media alike are cheering. For Xi Jinping, China’s leader, the rally was a relief, since retail investors own at least 80% of the […]

A new paper suggests the answer is “yes”

Many people have experienced the joy of finding some spare change down the back of the sofa. On May 30th the World Bank experienced something similar, if on a grander scale. After rooting around in 176 countries, it discovered almost $7trn in extra global GDP—equivalent to an extra France and a Mexico. In fact, there […]

Days after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Raiffeisen, an Austrian bank, said it was considering selling its business in Russia. Twenty-seven months later, the lender’s unit in the country is doing rather well. Its staff has grown to nearly 10,000, a 7% rise since 2022. Last year its profit reached €1.8bn ($2bn)—more than any of […]

“Equities in Dallas,” cried the traders in “Liar’s Poker”, an account by Michael Lewis of his life as a junior banker in the late 1980s. Demotion from New York to the backwater of Texas would be a humiliation. Who wants to sling shares to yokels? Times may be changing. On June 4th an upstart Texas […]

On June 7th each share in Nvidia will become many. In one sense such stock splits ought not to matter much: they merely lower the share price, usually returning it to somewhere near $100, in order to make small trades easier. Yet for the company and its long-time backers this administrative exercise is cause to […]

Nothing has been able to stop American consumers. At first they splashed covid-19 savings on home-exercise bicycles; now they are more likely to plump for beachside holidays. Predictions, made by bank bosses last summer, that households would be squeezed by inflation have been confounded. Instead, their outlays have powered American GDP ever higher

Twenty years ago Joshua Cooper Ramo, a consultant, first wrote about the “Beijing consensus”. The Washington consensus of financial liberalisation, floating currencies and openness to foreign capital was, he posited, a damaged brand. China was pioneering its own approach to development based on principles of equality, innovation and a relentless fo

When William Nordhaus, who would later win a Nobel prize in economics, modelled the interaction between the economy and the atmosphere he represented the “damage function”—an estimate of harm done by an extra unit of warming—as a wiggly line. So little was known about the costs of climate change that he called it “terra incognita”, […]

How to explain the disparity? India’s economy is growing astonishingly fast, Bangalore and Mumbai have become destinations for bosses of global financial firms and Narendra Modi trumpets the country’s appeal in his electoral campaign. Given the enthusiasm, surely foreign money is flooding into the country. Not quite. In April foreign investors dump

What China’s leader may learn from a pair of reform-minded academics

Buying art can be a nerve-racking experience. But investors have long been able to console themselves with the thought that, if their purchase plummets in value, they will at least have something nice on their wall. Now they can also console themselves that they will have something to borrow against. That is because there has […]

Watch professionals play poker, and one of the first things to strike you is how often they fold when the game has barely begun. Rounds of Texas Hold’em, a popular variant, start with each player being dealt two cards and then deciding whether to bet on them. Amateurs are more likely to proceed than not, […]

The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies, a group that produces 40% of the world’s crude, wants to keep oil prices high and stable. Lately they have certainly been stable, even if not that high. Despite the recent death of Iran’s president and the escalating war in Gaza, prices of Brent […]

Baby-boomers were born between 1946 and 1964—and are the luckiest generation in history. Most of the cohort, which numbers 270m across the rich world, have not fought wars. Some got to see the Beatles live. They grew up during strong economic growth. Not all are rich, but in aggregate they have amassed great wealth, owing […]

Three decades ago much of the housing in China’s cities belonged to state-owned enterprises, which provided homes to workers at low rents. A lot has changed since then. China is now blessed, if that is the right word, with a sprawling commercial property market, which has produced vast numbers of flats and equal amounts of […]

At last, it seemed time for a manufacturing take-off. Having struggled to compete with China’s industrial might, other emerging markets stood ready to benefit as their rival’s labour costs surged and rising tensions between it and the West pushed firms to look for new factory locations. Last year foreign direct investment into China fell to [&helli

As one of the leaders of the passive-investing revolution, BlackRock is usually a disruptive force in the financial world. But the asset-management giant’s battle with Saba Capital, an activist fund, has cast it in an unfamiliar role: as besieged incumbent. Ten of BlackRock’s investment vehicles, known as closed-end funds, are in Saba’s sights. The

If current forecasts are accurate, 2064 will be the first year in centuries when fewer babies are born than people die. Birth rates in India will fall to below the level seen in America last year. Even with immigration and successful pro-natal policies, America’s population will only have a little bit of growth left. By […]

Governments are splurging on handouts to avert demographic catastrophe

There is only one problem with the chatter about Europe’s “soft landing”: its economy never truly flew. While America’s growth has consistently amazed, Europe’s has been miserable. Exclude Ireland, where national statistics are distorted by multinational companies minimising their tax bills, and the EU’s GDP has risen by about 3% since 2019, compar

Great investors are often known by a signature style. Warren Buffett made it big by investing in companies he thought cheap and holding on for many years. George Soros bet on macroeconomic events, at one point almost breaking the Bank of England. Jim Simons, who died on May 10th at the age of 86, was […]

The president has turned volatility into profit

Speaking in 2005, Mervyn King, then governor of the Bank of England, outlined his “Maradona theory of interest rates”. The great Argentine footballer’s performance at a World Cup match against England in 1986, Lord King argued, was the perfect illustration of how central bankers ought to conduct monetary policy. Running 60 yards from inside his [&h

In the early 1990s India abandoned the principles of swadeshi, or self-sufficiency, that had guided its policies since independence. Subsidies were scrapped; import levies tumbled. By 2014 the average tariff had fallen to 13%, from 125% in 1991. Over the same period, exports soared. Yet the country’s exports remain a little lopsided for the tastes

Land in Shenzhen, China’s southern technology hub, is scarce. Plots in years past have grabbed sky-high prices. But when Vanke, one of the country’s largest property firms, puts 19,000 square metres of land up for sale on May 18th, it will do so at a discount of 900m yuan ($125m), or 29%, on the price […]

Just over six years ago, when Donald Trump first announced tariffs on Chinese goods, it was as if a bomb had gone off. American stocks fell sharply at the prospect of a trade war, businesses warned of blowback and economists lined up to decry the move. Such is the protectionist mood in Washington now that […]

Pearls, it is said, represent purity. They may soon stand for something else: business dynamism. In Greenville, South Carolina, two locals have created earrings that look like jewels, but contain a cluster of microelectronics to track body temperature, heart rate and even the wearer’s menstrual cycle. Incora Health was established in 2022. It plans

Since Russia began its invasion in 2022, Ukraine’s economy has shrunk by a quarter. But the ravages of war are not the only reason for the government’s reduced tax take. Businesses are also making use of the chaos to dodge paying their fair share. This is particularly true in agriculture, which before the war was […]

On a regular Tuesday morning, a large crowd has gathered outside a grocery store in Xuchang, a city of 4m people. Visit Pangdonglai at the weekend and things are even busier. Thousands, some having travelled hundreds of kilometres, arrive before dawn to take their place in a queue that snakes back and forth in front […]

The EU is no stranger to overcapacity. Its economic landscape once featured butter mountains, milk lakes and other landmarks of excess production—the surreal results of its common agricultural policy, which guaranteed high prices to dairy farmers. Thus the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, knew what she was talking about w

BARRY CALLEBAUT, the world’s largest maker of bulk chocolate, is full of beans. Its share price has jumped by 20% since April, when it reported higher sales volumes despite a steep rise in the cost of cocoa. Peter Feld, its boss, told investors not to worry about expensive ingredients: “What goes up fast comes down […]

In 2020, when BBVA and Sabadell abandoned merger discussions, it was difficult to find investors with anything positive to say about European banks. A decade of near-zero interest rates, stiff regulation and anaemic economic growth had made them unprofitable and unattractive. The two Spanish lenders were no exception. BBVA had a market value of €26

Working on a trading desk is perhaps the closest an office job can get to a sport. Focus and reflexes matter. On the other side of every trill of the phone or ding from a computer is a client who wants to trade. If ignored, they will hang up and call a competitor. Everyone is […]

The Plaza Hotel has New York glamour in spades. Sitting at a corner of Central Park, it was the setting for “Home Alone 2”, a film that came out in 1992 in which a child finds himself lost in the metropolis. He takes up residence in one of the hotel’s suites, thanks to his father’s […]

Since Russia invaded in 2022, Ukraine’s economy has shrunk by a quarter. But the ravages of war are not the only reason for the government’s reduced tax take. Businesses are also making use of the chaos to dodge paying their fair share. This is particularly true in agriculture, which before the war was responsible for […]

When Russia’s leaders stopped most of the country’s gas deliveries to the EU in 2022, they thought themselves smart. Prices instantly shot up, enabling Russia to earn more despite lower export volumes. Meanwhile, Europe, which bought 40% of its gas from Russia in 2021, braced itself for inflation and blackouts. Yet two years later, owing […]

Hedge funds take great pains to hide their inner workings. So a recent court case in which Jane Street sued two former employees and Millennium Management, another fund to which they had jumped ship, was immensely pleasing to the firm’s rivals, since it offered a rare view into one of the industry’s giants. Among the […]

One-third of Ivy League graduates end up working in finance or consulting. So perhaps it is unsurprising that campus protesters are providing investment advice: they want university endowments to get rid of assets linked to Israel. At Columbia University, for instance, a coalition of more than 100 student organisations is demanding that administrat

When it comes to economic growth, America comfortably beats Europe. Many factors have fed America’s outperformance, from tech innovation to vast oil reserves. But there is one explanation that seems almost too simplistic: that “Americans just work harder”, as the head of Norway’s oil fund put it in an interview with the Financial Times on […

The West faces an unprecedented number of new arrivals

The hedge fund’s branding is a clue. 1789 Capital was set up last year and named for the year Congress proposed America’s bill of rights. It offers investors the chance to put money into what it says are three key themes: a parallel conservative economy catering to consumers who want to avoid being bombarded with […]

The law of supply and demand is one of the first things that students of economics learn. When the price of something goes up, producers bring more to market. What, then, is going on in global stockmarkets? Global share prices have never been higher, having risen by 14% over the past year. At the same […]

If any politician has the demeanour to ease tensions with Beijing, it is Janet Yellen. America’s treasury secretary comes across as a twinkly eyed professor, rather than a foreign-policy hawk. Sure enough, she used a recent trip to China, which ended on April 9th, to praise the “stronger footing” that Sino-American relations are now on […]

Perhaps it was always too good to be true. The big economic story of 2023 was the seemingly painless disinflation in America, with consumer price pressures receding even as growth remained resilient, which underpinned surging stock prices. Alas, the story thus far in 2024 is not quite so cheerful. Growth has remained robust but, partly […]

Perhaps it was always too good to be true. The big economic story of 2023 was the seemingly painless disinflation in America, with consumer price pressures receding even as growth remained resilient, which underpinned surging stock prices. Alas, the story thus far in 2024 is not quite so cheerful. Growth has remained robust but, partly […]

In “Permutation City”, a novel by Greg Egan, the character Peer, having achieved immortality within a virtual reality over which he has total control, finds himself terribly bored. So he engineers himself to have new passions. One moment he is pushing the boundaries of higher mathematics; the next he is writing operas. “He’d even been […]

We are hiring a writer on economics, ideally based at first in London. Journalistic experience is not necessary. The ability to write clearly and entertainingly is crucial. So is a thorough understanding of economics and an ability to work with data. The ideal candidate would have an interest in the economics of innovation and technology, […

Last year Xi Jinping, China’s leader, paid a visit to Heilongjiang in the country’s north-east. Part of China’s industrial rustbelt, the province exemplifies the problems besetting China’s economy. Its birth rate is the lowest in the country. House prices in its biggest city are falling. The province’s GDP grew by only 2.6% in 2023. Worse, [&hellip

For a brief moment, everyone who owned bitcoin had made money from it. On March 5th the crypto token rose to an all-time high of just above $69,000—a level sure to delight the meme-loving crypto-crowd—before slipping back a little. The record capped a remarkable comeback from the dark days of November 2022, when interest-rate rises […]

The Economist is seeking promising journalists and would-be journalists to apply for the 2024 Marjorie Deane internship. The successful candidate will spend six months with us in London writing about finance and economics, and receive payment. No previous experience is required. Applicants are asked to send a cv and an original article of no more [

In the next few weeks, Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, hopes to gain final parliamentary approval for an emergency war budget. It includes more cash for settlers in the West Bank, as well as for religious schools, where teenagers study the Torah rather than science—part of an attempt to unite his fissiparous political coalition. But [&

In economic terms, an asset has value because an owner might derive future benefits from it. Some assets, like cryptocurrencies, require a collective belief in those benefits. Others, like wine, will undeniably provide future pleasure, such as the ability to savour a 1974 Château Margaux. Still others, like American treasuries, represent a claim on

Less than two months of 2024 have passed, but the year has already been a pleasing one for stockmarket investors. The S&P 500 index of big American companies is up by 6%, and has passed 5,000 for the first time ever, driven by a surge in enthusiasm for tech giants, such as Meta and Nvidia. […]

In midtown manhattan reminders of commercial property’s difficulties are everywhere. On the west side, near Carnegie Hall, stands 1740 Broadway, a 26-storey building that Blackstone, an investment firm, bought for $605m in 2014—only to default on its mortgage in 2022. Soaring above Grand Central station is the iconic Helmsley building. Its mortgage

Central banks have embarked on austere monetary policy to crush inflation. Worries about the financial system, from bond markets to commercial property to the health of the banks, are ever-present. Some 4bn people will head to the polls this year, with unpredictable consequences. Most concerning of all, the world is on fire, with conflicts from [&h

Universities have boomed in recent decades. Higher-education institutions across the world now employ on the order of 15m researchers, up from 4m in 1980. These workers produce five times the number of papers each year. Governments have ramped up spending on the sector. The justification for this rapid expansion has, in part, followed sound economi

“Enough is enough,” declared a Hong Kong judge on January 29th of Evergrande, a failing Chinese property behemoth, and its two-year struggle to avoid repaying its creditors. In a landmark ruling, the court ordered a liquidation of the company, which, with more than $300bn in liabilities, is the world’s most indebted real-estate developer. A provisi

The interest-rate market has a dirty secret, which practitioners call “the hairy chart”. Its main body is the Federal Reserve’s policy rate, plotted as a thick line against time on the x-axis. Branching out from this trunk are hairs: fainter lines showing the future path for interest rates that the market, in aggregate, expects at […]

Science advances one funeral at a time, to paraphrase Max Planck. The Nobel prize-winning physicist was arguing that new ideas in his field would only catch on once the advocates of older ones died off. With a little adaptation he could have been describing the dismal science, too: economics advances one crisis at a time. […]

WHEN JAMES GORMAN took the helm of Morgan Stanley it was barely afloat. His tenure as the bank’s chief executive began on January 1st 2010, in the teeth of the global financial crisis. After the failure of Lehman Brothers, in 2008, fear had spread that other dominoes would soon topple. Morgan Stanley seemed a likely […]

The american economy is supposed to be slowing down by now, and that is supposed to be translating into a weaker labour market. But according to figures released on October 6th, the country added 336,000 jobs in September, nearly twice as many as forecast and the most since January (see chart). It is the latest […]

In late 2021 Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, called for the retirement of “transitory” as a description for the inflation afflicting America. The word had become a bugbear, having been taken by many to mean that the inflation which had bubbled up early in the year would fade away as supply shortages improved. […]

At some point American economic growth will disappoint expectations. For now, though, it appears to have ended 2023 much as it passed the previous few years, with yet another expansion that defied forecasts. Recent data suggest that the economy grew at an annualised pace of 2.5% or so in the final three months of the […]

By 2050 there will be a new crop of economic powers—if things go to plan. Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, wants his country’s GDP per person to surpass the World Bank’s high-income threshold three years before then. Indonesia’s leaders reckon that they have until the mid-century mark (when an ageing population will start to drag […]

A dusty, scuffed slab of concrete is the last hope that many Gazans have of escaping the nightmare which will accompany Israel’s coming ground assault. Cut off from electricity, food imports and water, and under constant bombardment, more than 2,000 people have already been killed and nearly half the population displaced. Gaza’s inhabitants are flo

Could 2024 be a year unlike any in America’s post-war economic history? Never since 1945 has annual inflation, measured by the consumer-price index, fallen from above 5% to below 3% without a recession at the time of the fall or within the subsequent 18 months. Yet professional forecasters surveyed by the Federal Reserve Bank of […]

Chopping off their heads does not work: cockroaches can live without one for as long as a week. Whacking them is no guarantee either: their flexible exoskeletons can bend to accommodate as much as 900 times their body weight. Nor is flushing them down the toilet a solution: some breeds can hold their breath for […]

It is hard to get a man to understand something, wrote Upton Sinclair, an American novelist, when his salary depends on not understanding it. Hard, but not impossible: just look at those paid to promote Britain’s stockmarket. Bankers and stock-exchange bosses have an interest in declaring it an excellent place to list new, exciting businesses, [&he

IT TOOK A jury just four hours to deliberate on the seven, complicated charges of financial fraud facing Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange. They had to parse what would make him guilty of defrauding his customers and his lenders; and of conspiring with others to commit securities fraud, commodities fraud and […

The history of inflation in Russia is long and painful. Following the revolution of 1917 the country dealt with years of soaring prices, and then faced sustained price pressure in the early period of Josef Stalin’s rule. The end of the Soviet Union, the global financial crisis of 2007-09 and then Vladimir Putin’s first invasion […]

In the run-up to its attack on Israel on October 7th, Hamas maintained tight operational security. The timing of the assault blindsided Israel’s army and intelligence services, and appears to have surprised even some of Hamas’s political leaders. However, a new working paper by Robert Jackson Jr, a former commissioner of America’s Securities and Ex

For financial markets the Holy Grail is a perfect leading indicator—a gauge that is both simple to monitor and consistently accurate in foretelling the future. In reality, such predictive perfection is unattainable. It is often hard enough to grasp what is happening in the present, let alone the future. A perfect real-time indicator would thus [&he

In 1790 America’s finances were in a precarious state: debt-servicing costs were higher than revenues and government bonds traded at 20 cents on the dollar. Alexander Hamilton, the country’s first treasury secretary, wanted a deep and liquid market for safe government debt. He understood the importance of investor confidence, so proposed honouring

The november meeting of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its partners (opec+) was meant to be a staid affair. Instead, the summit was first pushed back from the 26th and then moved online, revealing a fracas between the cartel’s big producers and its minnows. After acquiescing to lower output quotas at their […]