MoneyWeek

This Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of a momentous occasion in financial and monetary history. On 15 August, 1971, then-US president Richard Nixon “temporarily” suspended the convertibility of the US dollar into gold bullion. Less than two years l

American companies are posting “stellar results”, but the stockmarket has reacted with a shrug, says Patrick Mathurin in the Financial Times. Most have now reported their second-quarter earnings. The April-to-June quarter marked the peak of the reope

This summer marks three decades since “India’s Big Bang”, says William Pesek in Nikkei Asia. In 1991, a balance-of-payments disaster forced New Delhi to reform an overregulated economy. That let loose today’s “vibrant private sector”. In 2014 Narendr

Southeast Asia is now the epicentre of the Covid-19 pandemic, say Michael Heath and Karen Leigh on Bloomberg. The region recently overtook Latin America as the area with the biggest weekly death rate. Indonesia’s death toll has already topped 100,000

The biggest assessment of climate science in eight years from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has set out the starkest warning yet for humanity, says Fiona Harvey in The Guardian. We are seeing “widespread” and “unprecedented” changes t

Roads bill passes first test: A $1trn infrastructure package, which includes $550bn in new spending, “sailed through” the Senate with “broad bipartisan support” on Tuesday, says Andrew Duehren in The Wall Street Journal. It amounts to “one of the mos

What’s happened? Humanity has had the upper hand in the battle against pathogens since Alexander Fleming’s discovery of the antibiotic penicillin, which fights bacteria, in 1928. Yet bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites are constantly evolving to e

It isn’t really a claim you can make of the economy. Or of our diplomacy. Or, indeed, with the possible exception of music or education, of many fields of endeavour. Yet, at the Olympics, the UK punches well above its weight. For the third Games in a

The investment world has reacted with horror to the idea that Chinese communist policy makers and regulators might not be enthusiastic about large private companies with too much pricing power. The regulatory clampdown on online education platforms a

voxeu.org Concern about “moral hazard” has been widespread in economics, particularly since the financial crisis, but the focus has mostly been on the dangers inherent in state bailouts of failing institution, says Charles Goodhart. What has been

One of the biggest headaches that investors face in this climate is finding a steady income that has some protection against inflation. This isn’t a new thought: we’ve been wrestling with declining yields on most investments for more than a decade. B

Income drawdown, whereby you draw an income from your savings while keeping them invested, has become the overwhelmingly favoured choice for pension savers managing their money in retirement. But the downside of drawdown plans compared to annuities,

Many hope that Covid-19 lockdowns will lead to a permanent shift to more working from home. In fact, people have been opting for different ways of working for years. Hordes of entrepreneurs didn’t need a pandemic to ditch the daily grind and set out

Half Moon Street was built in the 1700s and became known as a colourful hangout for artistic, bohemian types in Victorian London. It’s where Algernon Moncrieff, from Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, lived. It makes sense then, that now

Eshiels House, Peebles, Scotland. A 17th-century property in rolling countryside with views towards the Peeblesshire hills. It retains its original stone turret and has period fireplaces and a contemporary extension leading onto a conservatory. 5 bed

Next July, Damien Hirst (pictured) will begin the process of destroying his artworks – not as some violent ideological statement, but rather as an experiment in economics. Three weeks ago, as part of a project called The Currency, Hirst sold 10,000 a

If there’s one rule in La La Land, it’s “don’t mess with the Mouse”. Scarlett Johansson (pictured) has disregarded the received wisdom. She is suing the Walt Disney Company, claiming that the company breached her contract when it released Black Widow

Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell has admitted that “inflation could be higher and more persistent than we expected”. New inflation readings suggest that this time he is right. The Fed’s preferred measure of inflation has hit its highest level i