Arrests have been made in China over a $7.6 billion Ponzi scheme involving a P2P (person-to-person, without the intervention of a bank) lender. My first response was: P2P lending in the Chinese banking system: what could possibly go wrong? My second, more thoughtful, insight is that distinguishing out-and-out Ponzi schemes from the world economy as […]

Donald Trump currently looks likely to win the Republican Presidential nomination and it appears Bernie Sanders has a decent shot at the Democrat one. The two candidates have unexpectedly strong support from voters who normally do not participate in elections and, although they are nominally from opposite political poles, their economic nostrums have a lot […]

Both stock and commodity markets have been stunned in the first couple of weeks of the New Year by a sharp decline in prices, which has surprised investors. However, with Fed policies since 2008 unprecedented, investors get surprised by a lot these days. We’re in uncharted waters, but there are reasons for thinking that the […]

It looks increasingly likely that David Cameron will produce a modest list of “reforms” at the next EU meeting in February, after which some time next summer the British people will be asked to express their view on whether to leave the European Union. The possibility of “Brexit” appears full of risk, a fact that […]

Saudi Arabia and Iran lurched into a dangerous situation last week, with Saudi Arabia executing a Shia cleric and Iranian militants the attacking the Saudi embassy, which has now been closed. The United States is inevitably involved, with troops in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet it’s difficult to see what vital U.S. interests are at […]

Imagine a game of Monopoly(™ Parker Brothers) in which the money supply for each player was infinite. You would see a glut of houses on all available spaces, followed in due course by a glut of hotels. Players would never go bankrupt, and all available spaces would be built until they could not physically hold […]

Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, in an exercise of warmist wishful thinking a few weeks ago, warned banks and by extension energy companies of the problem of “stranded” assets, left without value by environmental regulation. Naturally, this was just part of the threats and bluster designed to change behavior ahead of the Paris global […]

Over 200 nations signed a “climate change” regulation deal in Paris last weekend. Conversely Mike Froman, the U.S. trade representative, called this week for the Doha Round of free trade talks to be abandoned, as they were going nowhere – his view presumably reflects the official position of the Obama administration. No contrast more clearly […]

The COP-21 global climate talks ended this weekend, with a treaty that won’t have much practical effect. Yet regulations to combat “climate change” have already inflicted trillions of dollars of economic damage and there seems no prospect of ending their depredations. In other areas, the regulatory state set up since the 1960s expands steadily, with […]

The IMF has allowed the Chinese renminbi to become part of its Special Drawing Right from next October, with a weighting of 10.92%, the third largest after the dollar and the euro. China and India are both now growing much faster than the West, and their greater populations mean that their output will overwhelm the […]