The border between Northern and Southern Ireland has become the most important factor preventing a clean exit for Britain from the European Union. Yet British statesmen sacrificing the needs of the entire country to fulfil a 1998 commitment of the odious Tony Blair are omitting one consideration: even if Britain sacrifices everything to keep Northern […]

A year ago, I wrote about the worrying increase in leverage among America’s blue chips caused by share repurchases (“Hollowed-out blue chips are the next subprime”, November 13, 2017). Today I wanted to return to the subject, because the travails of GE (NYSE:GE) are a reliable advance signal of the trouble ahead for the large […]

Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the Armistice that ended the world’s greatest avoidable tragedy, the Great War of 1914-18. In terms of human welfare, we would all have been immensely better off if that war had never been fought, with the benefits extending through the intervening decades even to today. Economically, however, the scale […]

Since this column appears on the 413th anniversary of Guy Fawkes’ attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament, I thought it worth reflecting on why he got so close. The principal reason was the parlous state of early Stuart finances, which was due to two factors: the lack of a central bank and the […]