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.
At about the same time Germany shuttered its last three nuclear power plants, five lignite-burning ones were recommissioned. In another disconcerting sign of times past, earlier this year in North-Rhine Westphalia, energy producer RWE Power began dismantling a wind farm to make way for the expansion of an open-pit lignite...
“There’s gold in them thar depths.” Millions upon untold millions of potato-sized rocks lay scattered across 4.5 million square kilometres of seafloor between the Hawaiian archipelago and Clipperton, an uninhabited atoll some 1,300 kms southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico. This ultimate of desert islands belongs to France. Last year, the industrial...
There is a name for that. Sportswashing, or the leveraging of an athletic event to embellish a reputation tainted by scandal or controversy. The term was coined in 2015 to describe attempts by the Azerbaijan government to divert attention from its human rights record with the hosting of the first-ever...
The peace dividend, now exhausted, delivered the countries of Europe a windfall of some €4.2 trillion (£3.6 trillion) over the past thirty years – a sum roughly equivalent to a quarter of the European Union’s GDP. The number comes from Bruegel, a non-partisan policy think tank in Brussels. The institute...
To text or not to text? That was the question. It took diplomats five days of frantic talks to find an answer. In the end, a compromise statement – of 83 paragraphs – was duly produced and unanimously approved by the G20 leaders assembled in New Delhi for their annual...
On this day fifty years ago, a pleasant early-spring Tuesday, democracy fell to armed force in Chile. Absconded in La Moneda, probably one of the least gracious buildings erected by the Spanish colonial empire, the constitutional president of the country, Salvador Allende, fought a desperate fight against putschist generals. Plumes...
After an 18-year hiatus, the Rolling Stones on Wednesday announced the imminent release of an all-new studio album. “We were just a bit lazy,” said Mick Jagger (80) by way of explanation. Hackney Diamonds was recorded last December over only a few weeks after the three remaining band members agreed...
Each year in spring, American families spread out impulse buys and other paraphernalia on their front lawn in a ritual known as the garage sale. Neighbours peruse each other’s wares and usually buy as much as they sell. The goods so acquired are stored in the garage which, in the...
China, Europe, and even the United States are all said to be at risk of ‘Japanification’: a protracted malaise of low growth, low inflation, low interest rates, and skewed demographics necessitating quantitative easing on a massive scale. A lost decade, sparked in 1991 by the Bank of Japan (BoJ) trying...
In Germany, trains no longer run on time. This is a big issue for a country that derives its national identity from punctuality, order, and ‘Gründlichkeit’ – a thoroughness usually applied in a ruthless fashion. The neighbouring Swiss now refuse to grant late-running German trains access to their network for...