2026-02-02 13:00:31
Warren Buffett has a great line on how hard it is to pick winners when major industrial change is afoot. “What you really should have done in 1905 or so, when you saw what was going to happen with the auto, is you should have gone short horses,” the Oracle of Omaha once said.
2026-02-02 13:00:29
Britain’s feudal property tributes known as “ground rent” are heading for the scrap heap. Keir Starmer’s Labour government is pledging to cap these payments at an annual £250 ($345) and then reduce them to a financially insignificant level after 40 years. Few should mourn the demise of an archaic and abusive system that’s imposed an unnecessary burden on millions of homeowners. How the phase-out happens matters, though. Taking the landlord class to task may play well politically — but it also ra
2026-02-02 13:00:27
The appointment signals that the bare-knuckles legal fight to control the Fed is over.
2026-02-02 12:00:27
The Victorian statesman Viscount Palmerston’s definition of undogmatic foreign policy remains as pertinent today as when first formulated in an 1840 speech. “Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” Out of tact, Palmerston’s name will not have been on UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s lips during his four-day courtesy call on Xi Jinping “to build a more sophisticated relationship,” but that’s still the name of the diplomatic game.
2026-02-02 12:00:26
Among the world’s top energy consumers, no country is more price sensitive than India. Few are as vocal in airing their misery when costs surge. Currently, though, everyone in New Delhi feels rather relaxed. Ask government officials and industry executives, many are convinced oil, gas and coal have become a buyer’s market — perhaps for good.
2026-02-02 09:00:25
India’s annual budget has brought home to markets the unpleasant reality of fiscal dominance, in which the central bank ends up prioritizing deficit financing over its primary function of controlling inflation.