Insult Macron at your peril: we may need his electricity
‘The jury’s out’, was Liz Truss’s pert response to the question ‘Macron: friend or foe?’ at last week’s Norwich hustings.…
The money shot
Is the onscreen portrayal of investment bankers as monsters true to life? Martin Vander Weyer talks to the writers of Industry
Never mind the Bank’s mandate, clear out its board of directors
Liz Truss says she intends to review the Bank of England’s mandate, which has been fixed as a 2 per…
The realpolitik of Saudi oil profits and that infamous fist-bump
How outraged should we be that Saudi Aramco has reported a world-record quarterly profit of $48 billion, representing a giant…
Money-saving tips to beat the gloomy GDP figures
We’ll find out shortly whether official statistics agree with economists surveyed by Bloomberg who say UK GDP probably shrank by…
Why Centrica is right to restore its dividend
‘What’s worse, they’re paying the profits to shareholders,’ said a grey-haired woman ahead of me in the Co-op queue. ‘Bloody…
Shame the inflation price-rise opportunists
The government’s ‘cost-of-living tsar’, Just Eat co-founder David Buttress, was appointed last month as a Canutian gesture against the inflation…
Sack Heathrow’s boss? No, put him on the front line
Airports are on my mind, since I’ve just stepped off an on-time early-morning flight from East Midlands to Bergerac –…
The next black swan? Keep your eye on China’s banks
‘Black swan’ theory, developed by the writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb, refers to unexpected events that have extreme consequences but are…
Grim prospects ahead
We live in discombobulating times, economically speaking. We know we’re descending into the highest inflation for half a century and…
Inflation pressures may be easing but the worst still lies ahead
Is anything anywhere getting noticeably better – economically speaking – or at least less bad? Are commodities and manufactured goods…
Oxford Street reborn could be the model for every British high street
Oxford Street is ‘a dinosaur district destined for extinction’, says Marks & Spencer boss Stuart Machin – whose plan to…
All’s calm on my morning train — but it won’t be by autumn
Here I go again, in my occasional role as your intrepid transport correspondent. Last week I reported on airport chaos,…
No wonder shares are falling but when will they turn?
Stock markets are tumbling, but given the tide of economic news, that’s hardly surprising. The S&P 500 index dived into…
Hot stuff
The reality TV star who’s turned astrophysicist
Who dares ask how far Brexit is to blame for UK inflation?
After the Jubilee dream of a lovely lost Britain, back to reality with a face-slap: the reality of the £8…
Of course airlines should have started rehiring months ago — but they didn’t
I sincerely hope you’re not reading this on a holiday flight that’s sitting on the tarmac with no indication as…
A moving experience from Paddington to Liverpool Street
It’s 8.16 on Tuesday morning and I’m actually writing this on a moving Elizabeth line train. Moving in the sense…
How far will house prices fall? Frankly, don’t ask me
‘Forecasting is a mug’s game’ is a truism attributed to everyone from fantasy author Douglas Adams to former Bank of…
Haldane would have been a smarter inflation fighter than Bailey
Would Andy Haldane, the economist who left the Bank of England to run the Royal Society of Arts, have made…
No, BP’s profit hasn’t boosted Starmer’s windfall-tax call
BP’s ‘underlying’ first-quarter profit of $6.2 billion, compared with $2.6 billion in the first quarter of 2021, was a direct…
My revised economic forecast: this sucker could go down
Anecdotes and statistics should never be confused, but let’s do just that to build a composite picture of today’s UK…
Memo to Elon Musk: Tesla matters more for civilisation than Twitter
I spent Easter agonising over whether to throw the considerable weight of this column behind Elon Musk’s maverick $43 billion…
Who can put the toothpaste of inflation back in its tube?
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s food price index rose 13 per cent last month to stand a third higher…
Market mischief and bad politicsmean business is never dull
Enough of stagflation forecasts, each more frightening than the last. Enough – for now – of energy policy sermons, as…
