Scotland’s sense of injustice is a blight on its future
Last week, Labour suffered its most crushing by election defeat yet by losing the Glasgow East constituency to the Scottish National Pa...
Brown’s rules are a flawed basis for policy
In 1998, Gordon Brown as Chancellor laid out a long term framework for public finances, based on the ‘golden rule’ and the ‘sustainable...
Fannie Mae and the limits of public obligation
And still the bills roll in. Taxpayers have already written impressively large cheques for Northern Rock and Bear Stearns. ...
Forget the meltdown, worry about goo and asteroids
Last week was the hundredth anniversary of the Tunguska explosion. If you weren’t celebrating, you should have been. The in...
Metaphors in free fall: now the anti-bubble has a name.
Life has changed for market participants over the last year. More time for reflection, less champagne. I completely underes...
The strange financial physics of the inverse bubble
Some literary journals invite their readers to compete in the invention of new words to describe activities or concepts that have not y...
Smoking, cynicism and sheer muddled thinking
I had always thought that the argument ‘the government doesn’t want us to stop smoking because it collects so much revenue in tax’ was ...
Business books: the good, the bad and the cheesy
The FT, with Goldman Sachs, has just launched its annual business book competition. So the editor raised the question: what makes...
Darwin’s marriage and war in Iraq: the missing link
The University of Cambridge has put online the complete works of Charles Darwin. Not just the Origin of Species, but his personal...
A ban on touts will not rig a fixed game
The internet is transforming many businesses, and none more than the business of the ticket tout. The spiv on the street corner h...