The east’s innovators are no threat to the west
Innovation is a word like democracy. Everyone is in favour of it, but different people attach different meanings to the same word...
A passive approach to bank states is inadequate
Governments of the world are becoming major shareholders in their financial institutions. The British government owns two mortgag...
Obama is right to put pragmatism at the core of politics
Barack Obama faces the dilemma that has confronted all politicians of the centre left since the demise of socialism: to articulate a ne...
Friedman and the limits of academic pluralism
The University of Chicago is appealing for $200 million to establish a Milton Friedman Institute. The plan to honour the memory o...
Equitable Life’s lessons for the bank crisis
The failure of Equitable Life, a sad story which resurfaced last week, seems barely significant in the context of the international ban...
Could Napoleon have copied in a credit crunch?
John Sculley was chief executive of Apple from 1983 – 1993. He gave an extended account of his experiences and achievements to Fo...
Surplus capital is not for wimps after all
Can a bank have too much capital? To the person in the street, the answer is obvious. The function of a bank is to seek out...
Banks got burned by their own ‘innocent fraud’
How could banks have persuaded themselves, their shareholders, and the public that they were making so much money when in reality they ...
Public assistance must first protect the tax payer
Government intervention in business usually has unintended consequences. The results of regulation are often disappointing, but t...
Why pain is good – in both medicine and finance
Pain has been described as the gift no-one wants. There cannot be a single reader who has not, at some time, wished not to experi...