Bank of England

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9
Jan 12

Obama the war president

Why stockmarkets will rise 50% in 2012

Waiting for my host in Zafferano, an Italian restaurant in Knightsbridge, I eavesdropped on my lunchtime neighbours and found myself surrounded by the themes of the moment. The husband and wife couple to my left were Germans, on a romantic weekend break in London, accompanying the gourmet menu with a bottle of Crystal champagne and undoubtedly heading to their hotel bedroom for an afternoon of nookie. They had an air of confidence, as befits the new masters of Europe.  Continue reading...

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24
Oct 11

London and Caracas: two sides of the same coin

Income inequality and the foreign conundrum

There are echoes of pre-Chavez Venezuela in the UK these days. A classic example of elite capitalism and the virtually insurmountable gap between the haves and have nots. In Caracas, the elite lived in guarded mansions in the Eastern hills of the city with bodyguards accompanying them everywhere. The benefits of decades of petroleum revenues never made it into the barrios of the Western hills of the city. President Hugo Chavez was the result.  Continue reading...

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15
Sep 11

Chinese banks vs UK banks

Base instincts kept at bay

As I jostled the respectable blonde next to me in order to move forward in the EasyJet queue at Rhodes Airport, the equivalent in August of a circle of Hell in Dante’s Inferno, I could quite see myself throwing bricks at a store front in the midst of the London riots in order to walk off with some loot. It would have been the Etro store on Bond street rather than Footlocker and its Nike trainers. Still, the veneer of civilisation in all of us is barely skin deep.  Continue reading...

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9
Jun 11

The coming Euro Ministry of Finance

SIF and the Mayr: intrusive interventions

How the mighty are fallen! Not only Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF head who allegedly sexually assaulted a chambermaid, or former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his Tunisian counterpart Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

There are a host of others: one of the world’s foremost Israeli football agents, a household-name UK broadcaster, plus a number of European chairmen. Last week they were all at the infamous Mayr Clinic, whose mission it is to clean out its residents’ guts to restore them to health and energy via a quasi-liquid fasting cure. One would imagine the conversation would range from the FIFA scandal to Greek debt restructuring.  Continue reading...

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