Any other business

A boom market in economic nonsense

The government recently proposed that schoolchildren be given lessons in personal finance. Can I ask that, alongside the Lower Fourth, room be made in the classes for the AA spokesman who recently said this: ‘People wanting to get high-aspiration vehicles at an affordable price will have been hit by the crash in [the cars’] value.’

Matthew Lynn

City death: why so many moneymen kill themselves

Among the many overused clichés that have been dusted off to describe the chaos in financial markets over the past few months is the observation that this is ‘a crisis like no other’. Yet in one rather dark respect, it is following convention to the letter. As losses pile up and billions evaporate, an increasing

And Another Thing | 24 January 2009

It is a sobering thought that a year ago the nominal wealth of the world, as registered in bank holdings, stock and bond prices, real estate and company valuations, was twice what it is today. Where has all the money gone? Was it there in the first place? The $50 billion ‘invested’ with Bernard Madoff

Private bankers run into very public trouble

Matthew Lynn says banks that prospered by offering exclusive ‘wealth management’ services during the boom years are about to encounter some very angry customers Of all the phrases in the financial lexicon, ‘private banker’ is one of the most evocative. It summons up images of discreet addresses in the more remote Swiss cantons, of luxuriously

Surviving the Recession

The credit crunch has had some unlikely repercussions. Tim Blixeth, a US lumber billionaire, was recently trying to sell his Caribbean island. With little interest shown in the $75 million asking price, Blixeth is now trying to barter it. He has suggested that a Gulfstream jet or a snazzy New York apartment might just secure

And Another Thing | 17 January 2009

A Pantocrat who should be on everyone’s curriculum The decision by the authorities to drop Coleridge from the syllabus of state schools is intended as another nail in the coffin of English literature. He is to be replaced by a person unknown to me but apparently popular on TV quiz shows. No reason is provided

Global Warning | 17 January 2009

My wife tells me, and so it must be right, that now that we are retired we must beware of the involution of our habits and interests. It is all too easy for old people to live the petty round, in which a visit to the grocer seems an expedition of some magnitude, and not

Can hedge funds live to fight another day?

Hedge Fund Land seems to be in disarray. Investment losses keep mounting up. It would not come as a surprise to hear that fully 70 per cent of these often complex and sophisticated offshore investment vehicles have percentage losses running into double figures over the last year, with a large number down by over 25

And Another Thing | 10 January 2009

Are you sophisticated? Here’s how to find out The word ‘sophisticated’, though commonly used, especially by persons who turn out on close investigation to be unsophisticated, is tricky, and truly sophisticated people avoid it altogether. Now, having got that off my chest, let us try to define it. One difficulty is that the root of

Restoring the Taj is just part of Tata’s challenge

As guests made their way out of the Taj hotel in Mumbai after spending New Year’s Eve in its restaurants, many stopped to study a small memorial plaque erected to commemorate the 12 staff who died protecting guests from terrorists at the end of November. If it has the same dignified simplicity as a British

And Another Thing | 3 January 2009

This is the time of year when I repeat Christina Rossetti’s lines In the bleak mid-winter Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron Water like a stone. November was as cold as I remember this once-muggy, foggy month. And December even harder. The Met Office says the rest of winter will be severe,

Global Warning | 3 January 2009

Reading an account by the historian John Waller of the Dancing Plague in Alsace in 1518 recently, I could not help but notice the interesting but perhaps incomplete parallels with our own time. Economic conditions in Strasbourg were dire in 1518 when a woman called Frau Troffea started dancing in public and continued for days

Global Warning | 20 December 2008

To a hammer everything is a nail, and to a doctor everything is a symptom. I was recently in a supermarket in a handsome and as yet unspoilt town in the west of England where, as my wife observed (being French and therefore a close observer of the English in all their guises), every woman

Martin Vander Weyer

Any Other Business | 20 December 2008

A hot new brand, a better train service and a kinder role model for harsh times Here in Old Queen Street, we have (in our editor’s eloquent phrase) said pants to recession by launching a fistful of ‘brand extensions’ this year: our Australian edition, our online Book Club, and the soaraway monthly Spectator Business. Even

Thought for the day

‘Behold, I bring good news for all the people,’ the Christmas angel reassures the shepherds. Given that ‘all the people’ includes capitalists, has the Church a gospel for them, other than ‘Don’t be’? Christianity’s down on capitalism surely stems from Christ. His impoverished birth in a stable sets the stamp on a life where market

Investment

Next year will be a good one for anniversaries. A century since Lloyd George’s People’s Budget, 60 years since Attlee’s devaluation, 25 since inflation swept away the ha’penny coin and £1 note. And it’s the golden jubilee of the reverse yield gap. Yet the reverse yield gap will not be present at its own celebrations.

The threat of deflation

Zero interest rates, record borrowing, printing money; the government has indicated that it is prepared to consider anything to slay the spectre of deflation. But if deflation is really such a bad thing — and I’m not convinced that, in a mild form, it is — then perhaps ministers should look at reining in a

And another thing | 13 December 2008

A simple explanation for the origins of the universe — and us too Some people maintain that, in the age of the internet and Google, public lectures are an outmoded way of acquiring knowledge. I don’t agree. They demand effort to get to, fighting London’s horrid traffic, crowded tubes, parking problems etc., and that is

And Another Thing | 12 December 2008

I am old enough to remember the last slump — I was three in 1932 and lived in the Potteries in North Staffordshire, always a precarious area economically, and badly hit by slack trade. Most of the workers in the pot bank were women and girls, traditionally paid low wages, and now subjected to pay

An idea whose time has come

On my walk from Charing Cross station each morning I see Steven outside Boots, rain or shine, his outstretched arm holding the latest Big Issue at eye level for passing commuters. He’s part vendor, part performance artist. Many, like me, stop to buy; others look down and hurry on. Though passers-by might pretend he’s invisible,