A fascinating book “Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives – A World Without World War I” by Richard Ned Lebow (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) looks at history’s likely trajectory if the Sarajevo assassin Gavrilo Princip had missed and concludes that while much would be changed, we would at best be only modestly better off. However Lebow is not […]

The New York Attorney General’s lawsuit against Barclays’ dark pool is yet another example of banks’ increasing resemblance to asbestos manufacturers, but it also reflects an uncomfortable truth: Whether through “fast trading,” through the new area of “crypto-currencies” or through the increasing frailty of bank and corporate security systems, technology is transforming previously well understood […]

The French bank BNP Paribas is about to be fined $9-10 billion for doing business with Iran, a country with which the U.S. is finding common ground in Iraq. Since 2008, the U.S. and the trial bar have obtained fines and settlements from global banks totaling $88 billion (as of early June.) Now medium sized […]

Non-farm business productivity fell by 3.2% in the first quarter of 2014, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ revised data. Most commentators have rather ignored this number. You expect productivity figures to be bad when GDP drops unexpectedly, as it did in the first quarter —after all the last such bad number was in […]

Eight years ago, the accountants Ernst and Young got in trouble with the Chinese authorities for estimating the bad debts in the Chinese banking system at $911 billion – it was especially tactless in that the major Chinese banks were mostly within months of doing IPOs in the international markets. Since then, the Chinese bad […]

Since the crash of 2008, huge attention has been paid by regulators to systemic risk, the risk that some event will cause the crash of the entire banking system, not just of an individual bank. Tens of thousands of pages of financial regulations have been written, and almost as many thousands of speeches have been […]

Good times tend to be relatively infertile of new economic ideas. Even radical economists, grinding their teeth at the apparent success of the market, don’t want to be accused of killing the golden-egg-laying goose. Conversely, bad times — lengthy or especially deep recessions – bring out the madmen from the woodwork, and bring with them […]

Extreme policies produce extreme attitudes among investors. Now the nearly six years of zero interest rate policies, accompanied by quantitative easing, that we have seen in most Western economies are producing such an extreme attitude – in the world’s bond markets. Bond investors’ appetites for high yields have grown so far that they are seeking […]

When I wrote two years ago that the Eurozone resembled the Hindenburg approaching the docking mast at Lakehurst, New Jersey, Euroskeptics cheered and only those committed to the worst features of Europhilia suggested that I had underestimated Europe’s capacity for recovery. Through gritted teeth, I am now forced to admit that the Europhiles were right, […]

This column is being written before final Indian election results are available, let alone a government being selected. However if exit polls are confirmed and Narenda Modi has won a majority that allows him to govern for five years, then he has potentially the most important job in the world. Let me explain why, and […]