Matthew Lynn is a financial columnist and author of ‘Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis’ and ‘The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031’
A ceasefire has been agreed with Iran. The Straits of Hormuz will reopen. And the oil market will get back to normal very quickly. By Wednesday morning, it looked as if the energy crisis was over. Finance ministers will be breathing a sigh of relief as the crisis abates. But hold on. In reality, the
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Sir Issac Newton, Alexander Flemming and James Watt may all have to move aside to make way for another name in the pantheon of Great British inventors: Adam Back. According to an exhaustive investigation published by the New York Times today, the mystery of who created Bitcoin appears to have been solved. All the signs
It was, on the surface, a fairly routine proposal. Officials from the BRICS nations, made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, have decided to discuss, at a summit in New Delhi later this year, how to deepen trade and collaboration. No one was paying very much attention when the decision was made.
Over the last 24 hours, President Trump has come up with a bewildering series of ‘solutions’ to the global oil crisis triggered by his war with Iran. He might seize all of the country’s oil wells. He may send the marines in to capture its main exporting hub, Kharg Island. He has threatened to bomb
When the war against Iran started, President Trump could have justifiably felt confident that the price of oil could be controlled from the White House. America, after all, is the biggest oil producer in the world. It has the most refining capacity, and, separately, it has by far the world’s strongest military. And yet, over
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Tax the billionaires, nationalise the utilities and abolish the Office for Budget Responsibility. Green party leader Zack Polanski has set out his vision for how Britain’s economy should be run. The sticking point? There are plenty, not least the fact that there is little in his speech today at the New Economics Foundation to suggest
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It will probably come as a surprise to anyone who has paid £10 per hour or more for one of its car parks, been stung by one of its ‘overstay charges’, or lost a wing mirror trying to squeeze an average family vehicle into a space that seems to have been designed for a toy
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The Bank of England has announced that pictures of wildlife will replace famous faces on our banknotes. A cute kitten, perhaps? Or a puppy doing some tricks? Or, given that China may well have hacked into the system, even a panda bear? Whichever animals end up making the cut, it’s goodbye to Winston Churchill, Jane
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In some parallel universe, a British Chancellor of the Exchequer today delivered a barnstorming Spring Statement designed to fix the energy crisis before it became critical, bring talent back from the Gulf and restore a crashing labour market. She announced that she was removing the restrictions on new licences in the North Sea and lowering
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The self-employed have paid up. And investors are paying record amounts of capital gains tax. The public finance figures for January have been published, showing record tax receipts and handing the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, a surprise £30 billion bonus. It is great news that the public finances are stabilising. Manchester mayor Andy Burnham may not
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For the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to tell everyone in advance that her Spring statement will be ‘boring’ is a little like Nigel Farage telling us he might be popping out for a pint, or Sir Keir Starmer telling us he might change his mind. It is useful information, but hardly a huge surprise. Still, the
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In his speech in Munich on Saturday, the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, made it very clear that he was planning to rejoin the European Union’s single market, perhaps as early as this year. The argument in favour of this is that it will boost growth – and it will put Britain at the heart
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It should have moved ‘Beyond Petroleum’ by now, with wind, solar and hydroelectric power powering its profits. If you rewind twenty years, BP had a clear plan to place itself at the forefront of the green energy transition. It hasn’t worked out as they had hoped. Instead, today the company announced it was suspending share
As the hype builds for the reported $1.5 trillion (£1 trillion) IPO of Elon Musk’s SpaceX later this year, there will be plenty of critics who argue the company’s marketing has more hot air than one of its rockets. It has been claimed by some that the IPO will be worth more than the top
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Anyone who thought that gold, the world’s oldest form of money, was a safe asset that they could tuck away and forget about has been through a rough few days. It has soared, then plunged, then soared again. Its price has been even more volatile than Bitcoin or one of the overhyped artificial intelligence stocks.
Has Tesla run out of road? The electric car firm put plenty of spin on its annual results, talking bullishly about the new projects that were coming to fruition. Elon Musk’s company plans to go big on robots, pivot to Artificial Intelligence, and develop its self-driving unit. Yet there was no disguising the real message
Last year might have proved a good time to own shares in the chip-maker Nvidia, along with the booming American tech giants. Or a piece of the defence manufacturers as the world re-arms. Or to hold a position in some of the rapidly growing economies of South America or Asia, or even one of the
A Tesla would whisk you to the airport. The planes would be self-flying. And robots would serve the over-priced sandwiches, while, inevitably, every seat is hooked up to a live X feed. A full-scale takeover of Ryanair by Elon Musk may still be some way off, but with the billionaire polling his followers on X
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No one really knows how the situation in Venezuela will unfold over the next few years following President Trump’s audacious kidnap of its former leader Nicolas Maduro. It may or may not be legal. It might restore democracy or it might just pave the way for another dictator. But one point is certain: America looks
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It depends on whether you re-heat it when you get home, apparently. Or whether it is sold in a bag labelled hot food. The supermarket chain Morrisons has lost a fiendishly complex court battle over whether its rotisserie chickens should be subject to VAT or not. It will have to stump up an extra £17
