Throughout history and throughout the world, there have been classes of untouchables. Best known perhaps (other than Elliott Ness and Wall Street bankers) are the caste that goes by the name in South Asia, a.k.a. the Dalits, but there are/were als [More...]

A report came out in Britain 10 days ago that deserves more attention than it got. If only because it uses the great term "unburnable carbon", great even before it's defined. It makes me ponder the popular and somewhat crazy claims about shale and [More...]

"The world’s leading economies acknowledged on Friday that 'further actions are required' to put the global economy on track for strong, stable and balanced growth.", writes the FT. The torture never stops. Not that we had expected it to just [More...]

The Nicole Foss 2013 tour of Australia is well underway, and since I'm not there, it's a bit hard for me to write about it. But we do keep in touch on a daily basis of course, so I know things are going well, with lots of good people, good ideas a [More...]

A report published Thursday by the real estate industry in the Netherlands states that the average home price is now 18% lower than it was at the peak in 2008, while detached homes lost 20%-25% (March 2013 YoY prices fell 6.8%, says Eurostat) [More...]

Oliver Stone's 1987 film Wall Street was as much an answer to as a parody of a mind change that had pervaded the world since Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher came to power in their respective nations.

But in the upper echelons Gordon Gekko' [More...]

Seeing Spanish and Italian bond yields drop over the past few days, it's impossible not to wonder what it is the markets, whoever they're comprised of, can't seem to figure out. Like that the Italian cloud will hang over Europe well into summ [More...]

Yeah, some things in life are inevitable. That's why it was no surprise, though still endlessly amusing, to find that while depositors of Laiki Bank (aka Cyprus Popular Bank) on the island itself have been unable to get to their money for 10 days [More...]

Over the past week, Europe, or rather the present EU leadership, has done damage to itself it will never be able to repair.

It seems to escape everbody, but that doesn't make it any less true: people from Portugal to Spain to Italy to Gre [More...]