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.
This is how a continent sleepwalks into war. It’s not that Europe desires war, or pines for it after a hiatus of seventy years. Rather, the continent is slowly being ushered into one by immutable circumstance over which it no longer has control. It happened before. In 1914, the German...
Wednesday, May 8, 2024 – The corona (covid) virus arrived unexpectedly out of left field and held the world in its grip for well over a year. Government and business were caught by surprise – and woefully unprepared. Crisis management had to be improvised on the spot as developments succeeded...
Friday, May 1, 2024 – How to stand out in a crowd? Consider idiosyncrasy, a peculiar behaviour or attitude that marks the slightly unusual personality of the odd one out. This need not involve appeals to the outrageous as a mechanism to generate attention. The strategy was successfully deployed over...
In his inaugural address to the nation on Sunday, delivered on the steps of the Argentina’s domed neoclassical congress, President Javier Milei (53) repeatedly reminded the crowd that “all the money” has gone and austerity looms. His message was met with roars of applause even as he warned the nation...
Beneath our feet, the earth manufactures and hides a treasure trove of clean energy. In Lorraine, a former coal mining region hugging the French-German border, a reservoir containing up to 260 million metric tonnes of natural hydrogen has recently been discovered. The volume equals almost four times that of the...
In an election upset without precedent, Dutch voters on Wednesday chastised the ruling coalition of longtime prime minister Mark Rutte and handed the levers of power to political provocateur Geert Wilders whose Party for Freedom (PVV) unexpectedly secured 37 seats (+20) in the 150-strong Lower House.The PVV thus became the...
Whilst president of the European Council, Donald Tusk frequently caused a stir with comments that lacked in finesse or diplomacy. After the 2016 Brexit vote that sealed the UK’s departure from the European Union, the former, and likely future, prime minister of Poland speculated that supporters of the plan were...
Clutching at straws. With the slimmest of margins, voters in Poland opened a narrow path for the pro-EU opposition to reclaim power after eight years in the proverbial wilderness. With fear and ill-disguised loathing, the European Union watched as the national-conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) of deputy prime minister...
Few music genres are so poorly appreciated or understood as jazz. To its (many) detractors, jazz is just pretentious experimentation by pseudo musicians playing, ad nauseam, the same tunes over and over again. As seen by jazz historian Ted Gioia, the problem with jazz is that nobody has tried to...
Crypto is having another moment. Binance, the largest exchange for trading the digital currency and its derivatives, is in distress. A dozen senior executives have left and the company fired some 1,500 staff members as trading volumes dropped almost vertiginously. US government agencies, ranging from the Department of Justice to...