MoneyWeek

A central banker gave investors a nasty wake-up call this week. It wasn’t one of the usual suspects – Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell, or Bank of England boss Andrew Bailey. It was Lael Brainard, who is set to take over as vice-chair of the Fe

The West’s decision to sanction Russia’s central bank raises deep questions about the future of the global monetary system, says Jon Sindreu in The Wall Street Journal. The US and its allies have frozen Moscow’s access to more than half of its $630bn

America’s S&P 500 index had its worst quarter since the pandemic began two years ago, finishing down 4.9%. The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite did even worse, falling 9.1%, while Europe’s Stoxx 600 index dropped 6.5% in the same period. The UK’s FTSE 1

This week the Tokyo Stock Exchange launched its biggest shake up since 1961 in a bid to attract foreign investors. The exchange has scrapped a “cumbersome system of four separate boards” for a more streamlined split into three new sections – “prime,

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, “the closest things Russian president Vladimir Putin has to a friend in the club of EU leaders”, won a fifth term in power on Sunday in an election that became a referendum on his promise to block support for Uk

Nato foreign ministers met on Wednesday after the discovery of dead civilians in Bucha “spurred” Western leaders to ratchet up pressure on the Kremlin and prompted Joe Biden to call for Vladimir Putin to be tried for war crimes in Ukraine, says Ellen

RBC buys Brewin: Brewin Dolphin will become the second British wealth manager to be snapped up by a North American buyer in the past year, following Raymond James’s acquisition of Charles Stanley last July, says Joshua Oliver in the Financial Times.

The cost of living crisis; rising taxes and prices, especially for energy; redundancies and other hardships imposed by the government’s response to Covid-19; the increasingly insecure nature of work for many; decades of inflationary monetary policy;

There’s a commonly held belief that gold miners represent a leveraged play on gold. When gold goes up, gold miners go up by more. This belief stems partly from the experiences of the 1930s and 1970s. In the US, during the Great Depression, president

“Scenario planning” is a helpful aid to strategic thinking for decision makers, especially those having to deal with situations of turbulence and uncertainty, say Matt Finch and Marie Mahon. The similarity between what is involved in that and science

The exchange-traded fund (ETF) market has seen a flurry of recent launches, especially when it comes to actively managed ETFs. These became popular in the US and have now made their way to the UK. Most ETFs are passive funds, following an index. But

The law for any great social reformer is “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win”, a quote often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi (wrongly, though he had expressed similar ideas). The battle for universal basic i

No one likes dealing with insurance companies. But imagine one that will pay your claim in seconds rather than weeks or months. This is the promise of Lemonade, the flag carrier of the new insurance technology (insurtech) companies that are trying to

Cyberattacks can strike almost any company. Books and crafts retailer The Works had to close some stores temporarily this week after hackers got into its systems. In February, deliveries of crisps and nuts were disrupted when KP Snacks was hit by a r

The stockmarket can be a very hard taskmaster. Companies that disappoint it after many years of steady improvement often see their shares take a hammering. In addition, if those firms operate in areas where sentiment has soured, the result can prove

It took Arkady Volozh 20 years to build Yandex into Russia’s Google, Uber, Spotify and Amazon combined, says Wired – and just 20 days for “everything to crumble”. The country’s preeminent tech giant has been so stricken by the Ukraine war that there

It was not until I was out in the countryside that I realised how much I needed to escape the hustle and bustle of the city. It became clear while overlooking the woodland and listening to the birds from the heated infinity pool at Wildwood Spa, Rave

Great Peter House, Great Peter Street, London SW1P. A third-floor apartment in a period property close to the River Thames and the Houses of Parliament. It has large sash windows, a grand reception room, a passenger lift and underground parking. Bed,

“Say hello to the most thrilling long-termer in motor history – the McLaren 720S,” says Cameron Kirby for Motor Magazine. Slick, speedy and dangerously fun, “the 720S sits in an interesting place in McLaren’s line-up. It is, and will remain for the t

On the Ides of March 44 BC (15 March), Julius Caesar came to a sticky end in Rome at the hands of the city’s senators. The great dictator succumbed to his, according to legend, foreseen fate, under a whirlwind of flashing knives, directed by Gaius Ca

The start of April signals the beginning of another cricket season, but the national game is not what it used to be. Call me old fashioned, but I believe it has been on a downward spiral ever since the abolition of the Gentlemen versus Players matche

“The time has come to reverse the flow of power and resources, from Washington to the states and communities, and more importantly, to the people all across America.”–Richard Nixon, 1971 The great Potomac of power and resources continues flowing – t