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Columns

James Forsyth

Politics: Can the coalition survive the crises ahead?

Can the coalition survive the crises ahead? For something cobbled together by eight sleep-deprived men over four days, the coalition agreement has proved remarkably durable. Even now, with relations between the Tories and Lib Dems arguably more strained than ever, the document’s writ still runs. Both parties know that if they didn’t abide by its

Any other business

Investment Special: The social network bubble

It’s an irritating daily occurrence. The names of two or three people I barely know pop up in my inbox asking me to join their ‘professional network’, LinkedIn. Early on, I was tempted by the idea that being part of this family might widen my range of contacts, and perhaps also my story-gathering capacity. But

Investment Special: The doom boom

Not for nothing is economics known as the dismal science. Having failed to foresee the global bubbles in credit, banking and housing, mainstream economists have compounded the problem by advocating entirely the wrong solutions. Like generals fighting the last war, most economists (and leftists who think they understand economics) continue to bang the drum of

Investment Special: Bottom fishing

Here’s the good news. Share prices are falling. Investors are panicking. Talk of crisis dominates the headlines. These are precisely the conditions in which bargains tend to become available on the stock market. Just as history is written by the victors, so the day-to-day stock-market narrative is written from the perspective of those with most

Any other business | 10 September 2011

A thunderous collapse could drown out the clamour over banking reform The banking lobby doth protest too much, methinks — to misquote Hamlet’s mother — and so doth its enemies, not to mention the opponents of planning reform. In fact, there’s a whole lot of grandstanding going on in the public arena which I fear