Society

It is no accident that we remember Marie Antoinette for supposedly saying “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche (let them eat cake).”  Whether she actually said it is irrelevant.  The fact is that the French Revolution evolved out of food shortages that forced the desperate poor to take to the streets …

Once again the people of Britain have been forced into an election that they did not want.  Facing opposition from her own party, observing the early indicators of a coming recession, and faced by a divided opposition, British Prime Minister Theresa May has chosen to trigger an early general election. …

Getting beaten up and thrown off the plane by a bunch of goons is simply the United Airlines’ digital version of a long-established banking practice according to Izabella Kaminska at the Financial Times: “Some might call it “bad public relations”, but we would prefer to call it a sign of things …

Baroness Helena Kennedy called it “government without wing mirrors.”  It is the practice of passing into law draconian measures that the government of the day claims to be too nice or too sensible to ever use against the people: “It is… vital that any process of modernisation or reform must …

Here’s a spooky little story that just might resonate with this week’s news: In a somewhat obscure spy thriller from 1982 – The Twentieth Day of January – Ted Allbeury tells the story of how in the future the KGB interferes with a US presidential election in order to get …

With the election of Donald Trump, and the promise/threat to tear up the international trade treaties that many believe are a core foundation of the global economy, the USA looks set to take another turn down the spiral of imperial decline.  While America will continue to be an important player …

It was Bill Clinton who observed that elections turn on the economy – “It’s the economy, stupid!”  But mass media has left us largely in the dark as to what economic policy a Trump administration might pursue.  Will Americans find themselves on the receiving end of round after round of …

China’s Finance Minister Lou Jiwei, speaking on behalf of the G20, has identified “voter-luring populism” as one of the largest threats to the economy. Without mentioning Donald Trump or Brexit directly, it is clear that Jiwei had these and other right-wing populist trends in the developed world in mind.  The …

A new age had dawned.  Big bang had just happened.  A confident and youthful financial sector was poised to lead the UK economy out of the depression of the 1970s and early 1980s.  But there was a problem.  The commanding heights of the economy were still in the dead hands …