Docking pay Politicians may have been doing a fine job of looking amateur in recent months, but investors tend to reserve their strongest criticism for central bankers. In recent years, much of the criticism has been trained on the scale and timespan of quantitative easing
Interesting times ‘May you live in interesting times’, goes the old curse. Its force is surely not lost on the prime minister just now. London’s leafy Kensington is the UK’s richest constituency and not normally a bellwether of the national mood, but last week it summed
Mayday? “If you want to make God laugh,” said Woody Allen, “tell him about your plans.” Theresa May appears to be learning the lesson the hard way. Just a few weeks ago, it all looked so simple. No Conservative prime minister in modern history has enjoyed such
Machine learning For more than 2,500 years, the Chinese game of Go has continued to attract new players, making it perhaps the oldest board game in the world with an unbroken history – it is also probably the most complex. Its longevity makes last week’s watershed all
Shifting allegiances “These are my principles,” Groucho Marx once said, “and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.” Last week, after four decades operating in Thatcher’s shadow, the Conservative Party published an election manifesto that very much appeared to preach other principles – or
Anxiety lull “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well,” wrote Julian of Norwich, the first woman to pen a book in the English language, around 1395. Markets last week appeared to agree, albeit for less spiritual
Marco, Macron There can be few times in living memory when major national votes in the US, UK and France have all taken place in the space of twelve months – and yet only the French result was the outcome preferred by markets. So it was
Taxing times “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax,” said Albert Einstein. Since then, it has only got harder, not least in the US. Gary Cohn, the chief economic advisor to the president, reminded press last week that the current US
Two-way street It has become a commonplace of the past ten months that, when politics pushes sterling rapidly in one direction, so the FTSE 100 travels a similar distance, but the opposite way. Last week was no different but, even by recent standards, both moves were
Easter surprise Last week’s events were quickly overshadowed by Theresa May’s announcement on Tuesday that she planned to call a general election, to be held on 8 June, subject to parliamentary approval. This completes the picture of a European summer dominated by national elections in
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