MoneyWeek

In his book, The Great Crash 1929, economist J. K. Galbraith came up with one of the most useful concepts ever coined in finance: “the bezzle”. In short, it’s the as-yet-unrevealed inventory of nasty shocks that builds up in the economy during the go

Delays at Suez will do nothing to ease the global “supply-chain crisis”, says George Stahl in The Wall Street Journal. The semiconductor industry is looking particularly stressed. Computer-chip shortages have been driven by the demand side of the mar

No matter how bad your week was, at least you didn’t halt “global trade during a pandemic by parallel parking [a] 50,000-ton cargo ship in a tiny canal”, says Twitter user Oliver Fletcher. The grounding of the Ever Given container ship halted traffi

The world needs a global treaty for pandemics in the wake of Covid-19, akin to the post-war settlement, Boris Johnson and other world leaders have said. In a joint article published in newspapers across the world, 24 leaders including Emmanuel Macron

Investors in China have had a reality check. The benchmark CSI 300 index soared by 27% in 2020 thanks to the Covid-19-induced stimulus, but the rally peaked in February this year and the index has since tumbled by 13%. It has lost 4% since 1 January.

New York goes pro-pot: Early this week New York was poised to join 14 other states that have legalised marijuana in the US after lawmakers reached a deal to allow sales of the drug for recreational use. A vote in the state legislature was expected as

Right from the beginning of nuclear power – the first commercial nuclear reactor was built at Windscale in Cumbria in 1956 – it was controversial due to issues of safety, cost and the long-lived and toxic waste it produces. Even so, nuclear energy co

project-syndicate.org By the second quarter of 2020, US GDP had plunged by a record 11%, says Jeffrey Frankel. Unlike in previous recessions, however, this was entirely predictable as aresult of government actions in the wake of Covid-19. Now that

You normally get what you pay for when buying investment trusts. Well-managed funds with a good record generally trade at a premium to net asset value (NAV), while a large discount usually reflects a poor record and doubtful quality. However, there a

In early March, Spirax-Sarco Engineering’s results for 2020 caused the share price to rise by 380p. What made this catch my eye was not the size of the jump – less than 3.5% from £110 – but that 380p was far more than I remember paying for shares in

Private equity is now firmly part of the investment mainstream, thanks to a record of strong returns. Over the last ten years, European buyout funds have achieved an annual return (as measured by internal rate of return, or IRR) of 15%, according to

End-of-financial year planning for small businesses can be difficult – not least because the date of the end of their year may vary. But with 5 April, the last day of the 2020-2021 tax year, almost here, business owners need to be on top of their aff

“There isn’t much information out there about Stripe,” wrote Michael Arrington on TechCrunch in 2011, when word of a mysterious new payments start-up was doing the rounds of Silicon Valley. But the general vibe was encouraging. “How is it different t

Bond Island Windmill, a 300-year-old converted windmill in Norfolk that was once owned by James Bond actor Roger Moore, is newly available to rent for holidays, says Roshina Jowaheer for Esquire magazine. It offers panoramic views over the Norfolk Br

Corrie Bank, Lochawe, Dalmally, Argyll and Bute, Scotland. A cottage surrounded by landscaped gardens in a prominent elevated position with far-reaching views across Loch Awe. It has an open fireplace and large picture windows in the open-plan living

British mathematician William Bourne made some of the earliest known plans for a submarine around 1578. He saw it as an enclosed wooden vessel that could be submerged and rowed below the surface, sheathed in leather. Dutch polymath Cornelis Drebbel m

The Covid-19 pandemic, as well as China’s behaviour in Hong Kong and towards the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, has caused governments across the world to reassess their attitude toward Beijing. In The World Turned Upside Down, veteran US trade negotiator and

Georg Friedrich Prinz von Preussen (pictured with wife Sophie), the current head of the Hohenzollern dynasty and Kaiser Wilhelm II’s great-great-grandson, is being mocked in Germany for his “exorbitant and unrealistic” demands on the government, says

The Germans have marvellous words for things. Katastrophenhausse, for example. Even without knowing the language, you know you’re not going to like it. Economist Ludwig von Mises coined the term, and it is usually translated as a “crack-up boom”. It’