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Plus ça Change: Mired in Multiple Crises, Lebanon Votes for Continuity
In a scathing indictment of the country’s political elite, Lebanon tumbled some 25 places on the annual United Nations World Happiness Index and now ranks only above Afghanistan as the most depressing country in the world. Severely dysfunctional states such
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Crypto Jitters: Unhinged Stablecoins Add Volatility to an Already Unstable Market
The dig is impossible to resist. On Thursday, tether – the world’s biggest ‘stablecoin’ – briefly became untethered from its dollar peg. tether’s value sank to 95¢ before recovering to 97¢. That may seem a minor oscillation but indicates a
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Power Meets Pluck: Paranoid and Haunted, President Putin Sees Nazis Everywhere
In President Vladimir Putin’s book everybody not excitedly cheering his ‘special military operation’ to liberate Ukraine is a Nazi. If the Russian press is believed, the worse of the lot are to be found in Finland and Sweden as those
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The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity – A Non-Linear Anarchist Reading of World History
It’s an ideology that inspires fear and loathing in equal measure. Anarchism or the conviction that the state – and its pantheon of agents including potentates, scribblers, soldiers, and priests – is a parasite of society and inherently oppressive and
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Crash by Stealth: Investors Head for the Hills to Find a Valley of Tears
In a bear market, nobody can hear you scream. Equity markets are suffering a crash by stealth with reality nibbling away at asset values. Not long after he slipped into his job, Ben Bernanke, the two-term 14th chair of the
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Corporate Earnings Fine, Markets Not So Much: Seesawing Stock Markets Rattle Investors
And just like that… the party was over. Wednesday’s stock market rally, sparked by the dovish comments of US Federal Reserve Chairperson Jay Powell, not only fizzled out but reversed with Nasdaq suffering its biggest drop since June 2020. The
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The Tale of the Squawking Dove: US Federal Reserve Moves with Cautious Resolve
Markets may have disliked what Jay Powell had to say before; however, what he does now proves a bullseye hit – pardon the pun. The US Federal Reserve surprised no one when, at the end of a two-day policy meeting,
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From Bear to Bull: Warren Buffett Casts a Vote of Confidence in US Stock Market
A perennial favourite of investors, the snowclone ‘What Would Warren Do?’, has an answer. Warren buys oil and other blue chips that show exceptional generosity towards shareholders. Over the first quarter, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway ploughed some $41bn of its
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Unfriending Europe: President Putin Turns the Screw
This is perhaps not the time to tell the Germans ‘told you so’ as the nation deals with the fallout of the now disproved premises of its unfortunate energy policy. Not only has Germany’s dependency on Russian natural gas turned
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Illusory Visions of Strategic Autonomy: Emmanuel Macron Wins France, Loses Europe
This Sunday, most French voters held their nose as they granted President Emmanuel Macron a second term in office. Faced with an impossible conundrum – how to spark change without upsetting the apple cart – France reluctantly concluded that President
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