Ten years ago this week, this column asked: “Will the Tens be another Bear decade?” predicting that the stock market in late 2019 would be lower than in late 2009. Alas, that prediction was complete rubbish. Yet the column’s economic forecast – that the early years of the Tens would be grim, but improvement would […]

Boris Johnson’s Conservative “Tory” party’s big victory in the British election December 12 was achieved by winning seats that had been Labour since 1987, 1935 and even 1922. His majority thus represents far more working-class voters from the North of England – and far fewer rich Londoners – than any previous Tory government. To survive […]

All 60 of the United States’ leading university endowments underperformed a cheap “tracker fund” over the past decade, according to a study reported in the Financial Times. The culprit is the “Yale Model” of university endowment investment, whereby they focus on private equity, hedge funds and unquoted investments rather than on ordinary stock markets. From […]

In 1982-2000, I avoided large losses by completely ignoring gold as an investment vehicle — I started thinking about it again when in July 2000 I noticed that Vanguard’s precious metals fund was its only loser over the preceding 5 years. Since 2008, I have invested consistently in gold mining stocks, and enjoyed good years […]

The outstanding winners from the 1991-2016 policies of globalization were dwellers in poor countries. With international sourcing much cheaper and easier and foreign investment flows soaring, well-run poor countries could attract capital, jobs and export-producing industries in profusion, producing revenues that could educate their workforce and hugely raise their living standards. For poor countries, the […]

December 12’s U.K. election is essentially a referendum on Brexit, with much of the population fearing its outcome. The post-Brexit future is unclear. However, we can say more about the past than the future, even a past depending on an event that did not happen, since most other variables are known. Hence it is worthwhile […]

In an earlier column, I reflected gloomily on the terminal debt crash that the world is likely to suffer around 2040, and on the possibility that productivity growth is slowly disappearing. If those hypotheses are true – and I would not claim them as more than probable — then we will return in our economic […]

A new paper reports that the Bitcoin bubble of 2017-18, when the price of that cryptocurrency reached $20,000, was fueled by “funny money” creation in its sister coin Tether. That is hardly surprising, the cryptocurrency universe, where all values are artificial, is bound to be subject to scams and bubbles. However, it throws a lurid […]

Assuming Britain finally manages to edge its way out of the EU, it will look for other affiliations. The obvious one is with the core Anglosphere of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. At first sight, this looks like a model driven by mere nostalgia. Not so: the governance of the Anglosphere […]

The Western world approaches the 2020s at the top of a boom, with asset prices and leverage at all-time highs and interest rates at all time lows, yet with living standards mostly disappointing expectations. The extreme policies that have produced this position are unsustainable over another decade, even if we were mad enough to try. […]