America is a brand. Trash it, and the costs of every global transaction will rise. A dealmaker cannot want that.
Being born rich (or marrying well) becomes a surer route to success than working hard or starting a firm. It is a recipe for social stagnation, and perhaps crisis.
At an auction organised by Stack's Bowers on March 31st, 2017, an American cent from 1793 sold for $940,000, becoming the costliest penny ever.
Starbucks opens a new branch in China every 15 hours.
Those timorous chief executives serve longer than the average Roman emperor did: bosses departing in 2015 had an average of 11 years in office for S&P 500 firms, the highest figure for 13 years.
Making money yourself from investing other people's has been a good business for over a century.
Datang, China's "sock city" near Hangzhou in 2014 it made 26bn pairs of socks, some 70 % of China's production.
As Warren Buffett puts it, "What is smart at one price is dumb at another."
Foreign workers may make goods but American cashiers still sell them.
In private equity nowadays, it seems, what counts is less the depth of your pockets than speed on your feet.
If liking motorcycles turns out to predict a lower IQ, he asks, should employers be allowed to reject job applicants who admit to liking motorcycles?
Oil's well that ends well.
But if the history of gold is any guide, what goes up will come down – and then go up again.
Economists and psychologists talk about the "curse of knowledge": people who know something have a hard time imagining someone else who does not.
Migrants from the countryside in China numbered 282m at the end of last year, 4m more than in 2015 (an increase in just one year equivalent to the population of Los Angeles).
Bankers typically make money by charging a higher rate for loans than they pay to depositors: the so-called 3–6–3 model (borrow at 3 %, lend at 6 % and be on the golf course by 3pm).
Seeing more sedans than pickup trucks, for instance, strongly suggests that a neighbourhood tends to vote for the Democrats.
Build a better mousetrap, the saying goes, and the world will beat a path to your door. Find a way to beat the stockmarket and they will construct a high-speed railway.
Executives justify flying private on the grounds that they may need to get back to the office quickly in an emergency, and that confidential documents or company devices may be lost or stolen on a commercial flight. But when they enjoy that extra security, they are exposing themselves to another risk: private-plane crashes are a leading cause of death for CEOs, behind only heart attacks, cancer and strokes.
In cheap action films the bad guy is taken out by force. In the better sort, he falls victim to his own hubris. The great risk, though, is that Europe and Russia find themselves in a film noir, where the villain's plot fails but takes everyone down with it.
You make your money working in active management but invest the proceeds passively.
Being in the chemicals business is like swimming in a vat of sulphuric acid.
In trade as elsewhere, the new administration seems prone to using statistics as a drunk uses a lamppost – for support rather than illumination.
Like an errant husband, investors may proclaim their fidelity to democracy but are not averse to seeing someone else on the side.
There are many ways to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Malls were conceived in the 1950s by Victor Gruen, an Austrian immigrant, as a new enclosed version of a town square.
China has a history of hilariously inappropriate export brand-names, including Front Gate men's underwear, Long March luggage and, guaranteed to raise a laugh, Great Leap Forward floor polish.
It is impossible to know if a television viewer has gone to the bathroom during the commercials. Fraud is a peskier problem. Bad actors hide within advertising's supply chain, unleashing robots to "see" ads and suck money from advertisers.
In 2014 the International Energy Agency (IEA), a semi-official forecaster, predicted that decarbonising the global electricity grid will require almost $20trn in investment in the 20 years to 2035, at which point the process will still be far from finished.
Mr Xi is China's "COE", or chairman of everything.
The prices of good and bad tulips soared alike in 17th-century Holland, and in 2008 subprime debt was almost as valuable as Treasury bonds.
For investors the most dangerous words in the English language are "this time it's different".
Why don't fund managers look out of the window in the mornings? Because then they'd have nothing to do in the afternoons.
If all the nation's economists were laid end to end, they would point in all different directions.
The use of tractors in agriculture rose sharply from the 1910s to the 1950s, and horses were displaced in vast numbers. As demand for traditional horse-work fell, so did horse prices, by about 80 % between 1910 and 1950. As the numbers of working horses and mules in America fell from about 21m in 1918 to only 3m or so in 1960, the decline was mirrored in the overall horse population.
Acquirers only want the family silver, not the dross.
You can display your yacht in a way that you can't show off your house or hotel suite, because there is always the option of weighing anchor and taking it into the middle of the ocean where you don't have to socialise with anybody except the glitterati. Superyacht owners are always dropping in on each other as they criss-cross the seas, to compare not just their vessels but also their guest lists. When the Monaco Yacht Show started in 1991 there were just 1,147 superyachts (that is, yachts longer than 30 metres) in the global superyacht fleet. Today there are 4,473, with another 473 under construction.
To make or to buy is perhaps the most basic question in business.
It is hard to when bubbles will pop, in particular when they are nested within each other predict.
Politician + pump prices + poll = panic.
America's dynamic economy creates and destroys around 5m jobs each month.
Returns on rare coins over ten years to the end of 2016 were 195 %, easily beating art (139 %), stamps (133 %), furniture (–31 %) and the S&P 500 index (58 %). Coins are more portable than paintings or furniture, and boast a higher value-to-volume ratio. Stamps may be lighter, but, come doomsday, cannot be melted down. Today, global sales of rare coins are estimated at $5bn–8bn a year, with 85 % of the market in America.
An authoritarian government can provide certainty, at least in the short term. In 1922, when Mussolini took power in Italy, its equity market returned 29 % and its government bonds 18 %, according to Mike Staunton of the London Business School. Hitler's accession in 1933 saw German shares return 14 % and bonds 15 %.
If you want to get rich, goes a Chinese saying, first build a road.
The bond market looks about as intimidating as a chihuahua in a handbag.
One calls him the best possible pilot of the worst possible aircraft.
Notes such as one with a face value of 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollars are worth much more now as a novelty on eBay (where they sell for about $45) than they ever were in shops in Harare.
Like politicians, financial regulators know that late on a Friday is a good time to slip out bad news.
The National Resistance Movement in Uganda bribed voters with hoes, saucepans, seeds, sugar and salt.
Richard Nixon saw China's potential in 1971 ("Put 800m Chinese to work under a decent system – and they will be the leaders of the world"). But, before he died in 1994, he came to fear that "we may have created a Frankenstein".
Everyone is a capitalist these days. That means keeping a much closer eye on those who manage that capital.
Pushing down prices on one side of the platform may cause charges on the other side to rise, a bit like a waterbed.
"Cocaine," said Robin Williams, a comedian who was rueful about addiction, "is God's way of saying that you're making too much money."
Children are sometimes reassured that new siblings arrive via friendly storks. The reality is messier. Money creation is much the same. The "stork" in this case is the central bank; many think it transfers money to private banks, which act as intermediaries, pushing the money around the economy. In reality, most money is created by private banks.
In a recent report McKinsey, a consulting firm, looked at five measures of Africa's economic connection with the world: trade, investment stock, investment growth, infrastructure financing and aid. It found that China is among the top four partners in each of these.
Two hundred metric tons of gold would occupy a cube of a little more than two meters on a side – it would fit into a small bedroom.
Forget left and right. These days, it is often said, the real dividing line in politics is between open-door liberals and pull-up-the-drawbridge nationalists.
Unless you are a hermit, you own and consume things that have passed through the port of Rotterdam.
The arrival of mass democracy after 1918 was followed by a boom in the 1920s but then by the Depression, stockmarket collapse and abandonment of the gold standard.
Trade deals are started by liberals but finished by protectionists.
Valeant describes itself as "bringing value to our shareholders". While there is no indication of fraudulent or illegal practice, the company could end up joining a pantheon of corporate fiascos that includes Enron (which pledged to "create significant value for our shareholders"), Lehman Brothers, ("maximising shareholder value") and MCI WorldCom ("a proven record of shareholder value creation").
Teodoro Obiang, the president of Equatorial Guinea, and Teodorín, the most influential of his 42 recognised children, have expensive tastes. While most of his citizens live on less than $2 a day, the older Mr Obiang once shelled out $55 million for a Boeing 737 with gold-plated lavatory fittings. His son had at one point amassed $300m in assets, including 32 sports cars, a Malibu mansion and nearly $2m in Michael Jackson memorabilia. In 2014 the United States Department of Justice forced Teodorín Obiang to sell off a Ferrari, his Los Angeles abode and six life-size Michael Jackson statues in a money-laundering settlement. (He was allowed to keep one of the King of Pop's crystal-encrusted gloves.)
Slavery in America was not just wicked, it was lucrative: by 1860 the total capital that slave-holders had "invested" in captive human beings was three times larger than investment in manufacturing in the northern and southern states combined.
China produced more steel in two years than Britain since 1900.
The US is still the US, held together by credit cards and Indian names.
China's problems are so many, various and deep that it does indeed seem impossible that the Communist Party can survive. Yet it raises the opposite question too: what, then, has held such an improbable regime together for so long?
Creating pay structures that perfectly reflect performance is a mug's game. That hasn't stopped an entire industry of consultants and proxy advisers from trying. Setting detailed targets risks distorting behaviour.
The company that establishes itself early enjoys disproportionate rewards. First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.
One Western company urged its employees to "act like an owner" without realising that, in some cultures, acting like an owner means playing golf all day.
Bad money chases out good.
Authenticity is the secret of success; once you can fake it, you've got it.
There are more people in America who believe that Elvis is still alive than thought Obama's stimulus would create jobs.
Class identifying markers: occupation, address, accent and income.
That openness is evident across British life. The country's car industry is almost totally foreign owned (Tata has made a great success of Jaguar Land Rover); many of its biggest airports are in Spanish hands; chunks of its energy industry belong to French and Chinese investors; its football clubs make the United Nations look monocultural. Its central bank is run by a Canadian and the London Olympics were organised by an Australian. London's glitziest property developers are from Qatar and Malaysia and its stock exchange may soon be in German hands. In 2013 the proportion of shares in Britain's firms owned by foreigners zoomed passed the 50 % mark, to almost total public indifference.
What gets measured gets managed.
A country where shareholders with opinions have hitherto been about as welcome as skunks at a garden party.
Cost of capital is now king. The king seems to live in China.
What is poverty and when is a person poor? Does a family home have a dirt or dung floor? Does it lack a decent toilet? Must members of the household travel more than 30 minutes on foot to get clean water to drink? Do they live without electricity?
Lehman Brothers disaster would never have happened if it had been Lehman Sisters.
Walmart's 2.2m worldwide workforce is about the same size as China's army, excluding reservists.
We are born in a Pullman house, fed from the Pullman shop, taught in the Pullman school, catechised in the Pullman church, and when we die we shall be buried in the Pullman cemetery and go to the Pullman hell.
The wealth distribution in the world is equivalent to a world of ten people, in which one has $1,000 and the other nine has $1 each.
John Maynard Keynes still best describes the challenge facing the discipline today: "Economics is the science of thinking in terms of models joined to the art of choosing models which are relevant to the contemporary world."
Why didn't Sony invent the iPod?
The Busara Centre for Behavioural Economics in Nairobi, Kenya, runs experiments with participants from slums and rural areas. Its researchers looked at the results of a lottery-like scheme in rural Kenya, in which a random sample of 503 households spread over 120 villages was chosen to receive cash transfers of up to $1,525. The average transfer, $357, was almost enough to double the wealth of a typical villager. The researchers measured the well-being of villagers before and after the transfer, using a range of different methods: questionnaires about people's life satisfaction, screening for clinical depression and saliva tests for cortisol, a hormone associated with stress. There is an asymmetry in the way people compare themselves with others. We tend to look exclusively at those better off than us, rather than contemplate our position within the full range of outcomes. When the lot of others improves, we react negatively, but when our own lot improves, we shift our reference group to those who are still better off. In other words, we are never satisfied, since we quickly become accustomed to our own achievements. Perhaps that is what spurs people to earn more, and economies to grow.
The latest rally has been led by a small namber of stocks, sometimes dubbed the FAANGs (Facebook, Amason, Apple, Netflix and Google's parent, Alphabet) and sometimes FAAMG (replacing Netflix with Microsoft).
Should guests really expect authentic affection from staff whose weekly wage is less than their minibar bill?
Sometimes when you make a step forward you step in shit.
It is amazing how little $25m buys you these days.
Winston Churchill famously said America would always do the right thing after exhausting the alternatives.
If bullshit was currency, he would be a billionaire.
Slave ships could be smelled from miles away.
My watch costs more than your car… that's who I am.
Putting your man in charge is one thing, putting money on the table quite another.
Consultants steal your watch and then tell you the time.
Ford famously said that car-buyers could have any colour they liked, as long as it was black.
Rise early, work hard, strike oil.
They say that money can't buy happiness, but I would like to find out for myself if that's true.
Adam Smith spotted that economics has problems valuing nature. "Nothing is more useful than water: but it will purchase scarce anything; scarce anything can be had in exchange for it. A diamond, on the contrary, has scarce any value in use; but a very great quantity of other goods may frequently be had in exchange for it," he wrote.
"For a moderate fee," jokes Deirdre McCloskey, an economic historian, "an economist will tell you with all the confidence of a witch doctor that interest rates will rise 56 basis points next month or that dropping agricultural subsidies will increase Swiss national income by 14.8 %."
Haier and higher!
Britain had a window tax in the late 17th century, well before it introduced an income tax.
Pay the gas bill first, in other words, and then think of the world cruise.
The economic forces driving high-flying legal eagles into the bargain bin are no mystery.
The typical chief executive is more than six feet tall, has a deep voice, a good posture, a touch of grey in his thick, lustrous hair and, for his age, a fit body.
Running US Steel at the turn of the 20th century, Charles Schwab was perhaps the first person in America to earn a salary of $1m a year. What made him so successful? Was he a genius? No. Did he know more about steel than other people? Certainly not. So how did he get ahead? Schwab knew how "to make people like him".
At present the tallest is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which was completed in 2010 and, at 828 metres, shot past the previous record-holder, the 508-metre Taipei 101 tower. The Mecca Royal Clock Tower in Saudi Arabia, completed in 2012, is now, at 601 metres, the second-tallest. The Freedom Tower in lower Manhattan, built near the site of the World Trade Centre's twin towers (417 metres and 415 metres) that were destroyed by al-Qaeda in 2001, had its spire added in May to reach 541 metres. But work has now started on the Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Its exact proposed height is still a secret, but it will be at least a kilometre.
Scratch the surface of the planet and the chances that hydrocarbons will spew forth appear to grow by the day. This week America's Energy Information Administration (EIA) released new estimates of the amount of gas in the world's shale beds. It reckons that there are 7,299 trillion cubic feet, 10 % more than its 2011 estimate. The EIA's estimates for shale oil, not included in the 2011 numbers, are a staggering 345 billion barrels, adding a tenth to the world's total oil resources.
You can happily go through a day consuming nothing but the products of family concerns: reading the New York Times (or the Daily Mail), driving a BMW (or a Ford or a Fiat), making calls on your Samsung Galaxy, munching on Mars Bars and watching Fox on your Comcast cable.
He was a man of splendid abilities, but utterly corrupt. Like rotten mackerel by moonlight, he shines and stinks.
Koch Industries has also demonstrated a striking ability to reform itself. Prodded by the spate of legal suits in the late 1990s, the firm introduced a big safety programme. Charles's corporate mantra was "10,000 % compliance with all laws and regulations", by which he meant 100 % compliance from 100 % of employees.
Gold miners were supposed to be "believers" in gold rather than efficient managers out to maximise profits.
The best way to find Albany on a map is to look for the intersection of greed and ambition.
Simon Kuznets, a Nobel laureate, is supposed to have remarked: "There are four kinds of countries in the world: developed countries, undeveloped countries, Japan and Argentina."
The supply side sets the scene; the demand side provides the drama.
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