You dont just pay for Uber when you hire one-your taxes subsidise it on February 13, 2017Technology and innovation are seen as the key driver of future growth and employment. One much cited example is the “sharing economy”. It is, at least according to its believers, likely to create a new culture of micro-entrepreneurs that will revolutionise the economy. This belief is incorrect and misleading. There are definitional disagreements regarding the […]
The only reason the global elite goes to Davos is to stave off loneliness and massage egos on January 30, 2017The 2,000 or so of the global elite (0.00003 per cent of the world’s population) who meet at the World Economic Forum (WEF) are the Davos Men, a term coined by political scientist Samuel P Huntington. They exchange views, coordinate strategies and shape policy, captured by the paparazzi and adoring media. The average age of […]
Why youre wrong to think that your house will finance your retirement on November 20, 2016According to English writer Virginia Woolf, a woman in Victorian England needed money and a room of her own in order to write. In the modern world, housing itself has become a work of fiction. A house provides shelter and a dwelling place. But increasingly this simple consumption good has been converted into a financial […]
Currency wars are nothing new – but who will be the casualty of the next? on September 11, 2016Wars frequently take place over years, with shifts in theatres, strategy, and tactics. The current currency wars began in 2009. Badly affected by the sub-prime crisis, the US cut interest rates dramatically and subsequently launched 3 waves of QE. Between March 2009 and August 2011, the US dollar fell by around 16 per cent on […]
Three ways our financial masters keep letting us down on July 17, 2016 All societies use technocrats to govern. In earlier civilisations, priests took on this mantle, intermediating between the rulers and their gods. Today, the new priest class – financial officials, central bankers and favoured academic advisors – interpret signs from economic and financial gods. They offer prayers, perform sacred ceremonies, using votive objects and undertake […]
This is how the next financial crisis will spread around the world on May 23, 2016 A new economic crisis, which I believe we are on the brink of experiencing, will have similarities, and differences, to 2008. The problem of crowded trades – where market participants all have the same basic positions and strategies, and identical risk models – will be familiar. The effect of new regulations, ironically designed to minimise […]