Expanding the Legacy
Expanding the Legacy
The US Federal Reserve celebrated the death of inflation with a bold interest rate cut. As the Federal Open Market Committee mulled its next move during a highly-anticipated meeting yesterday, its twelve members just hoped, and perhaps even prayed (this is, after all, America), that the reports of inflation’s death are not ‘greatly exaggerated’. The benchmark federal fund rate receded to five percent.
The withdrawal of banks from the high streets and neighbourhood corners is unsurprising. Today, most banks derive no more than three percent of their turnover from ‘traditional’ business operations such as fees and lending depositors’ cash to companies wishing to expand or families looking to buy a home. In 2022, the total assets of the financial sector in the UK amounted to a truly staggering $16.88 trillion - well over five time the aggregate output of the country’s entire economy. Those assets comprise mostly claims on other banks.
He lapped up life daringly, mastered the art of rebellion, and looked far beyond the horizon to find adventure and clam his restless soul. Just before the implacable woke crowd could ‘cancel’ him, biographer Sue Prideaux snatched Paul Gauguin from its claws. The French postimpressionist painter seemed ripe for the picking: the perfect candidate to be knocked off his pedestal, thrown from his perch, and relegated to the scrapheap of art history. It was not for a lack of trying that the über politically correct posse failed in its pursuit.
To placate its critics, the German government has temporarily reasserted control over the country’s borders. The measure is meant to stem the flow of immigrants entering the country to submit unfounded asylum claims. As of tomorrow, checks will take place on incoming traffic by roving border patrols.
The Republican campaign for the presidency is being shredded by an epic catfight between Trump groupies vying for the love and attention of their idol. Get the popcorn! Also: Kamala Harris Takes Advice from Chinese Sage and American Cheapskates Fail to Pay Up for Defence of Ukraine.
Whichever way US voters decide on election day, it’s the day after that causes most concern. A win by Donald Trump is unlikely to be contested by his opponents but promises to usher in a man who vowed to don the mantle of a dictator on his first day in office. Conversely, it is a foregone conclusion that a loss will be bitterly contested by Mr Trump.
In the US, the number of covid-19 deaths has rushed past 200,000 whilst worldwide more than one million people succumbed to the disease. As the second wave of the Corona Pandemic gathers pace, it remains eerily quiet on the vaccine front. However, warnings abound that the virus may roam freely...
President Donald Trump has become the unlikely saviour of the long-suffering book publishing industry. In the run-up to the election, and his possible eviction from the White House, publishers are scrambling to release a veritable tsunami of tell-all books by former associates of Mr Trump, most of whom have an...
Monday, May 25, 2020 – The Hague is expected to deploy the biggest gun available to EU member states and roll out its veto to derail a Franco-German plan that introduces eurobonds under a different name. Last week, the Dutch were said to have succumbed under pressure from Germany and...
Some 2,980 puppets have gathered in Beijing to applaud President Xi Jinping in an annual choreographed ritual that goes by the name of National People’s Congress (NPC) – a misnomer on at least two counts. Over the course of ten days, President Jinping and his close associates pull the strings...
In one sense, the economic impact of the corona pandemic is helpful to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson: the depth and scope of the flash recession are such that any fallout from the country’s imminent departure from the European Union will seem trivial by comparison. Nobody could have foretold that...
Slowly and ominously, as the chronicle of a death foretold, the epicentre of the corona pandemic is moving south of the border. Today, the World Health Organisation (WHO), down but far from out, issued a stark warning that after developed countries have managed to flatten the curve and start emerging...
Don’t follow the leader. Also, please don’t smoke. The leader self-medicates whilst smokers die early. That may be true but with a caveat unearthed by scientists: the novel corona virus seems to dislike nicotine and apparently shies away from smokers. Medical authorities in China, France, the United Kingdom, the United...
A Republican Alaska state representative has apologised for likening the curbs on civic freedoms adopted in the fight against the corona virus to the treatment of Jewish people in Nazi Germany. Only after a firestorm erupted amongst his peers in the state capitol and elsewhere did Representative Ben Carpenter see...
Swedes are a remarkably compliant people. Civil disobedience as an expression of individuality is collectively frowned upon whilst strict adherence to official instructions and suggestions is celebrated as the defining component of ‘lagom’, a supposedly untranslatable word that indicates both an acceptance of rules and convention and a passionate desire...
Listening to Dr Rick Bright testify before US Congress and reveal the inner workings of the Trump Administration almost undermines one’s trust in politicians and their carefully selected appointees. In 2016, the good doctor was asked to lead the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a federal agency charged with...