There is a yet another plan to reform the House of Lords, getting rid of lots of life peers, proposing partial direct election and, as always with these ideas, the fuller representation of ethnic minorities. Commentators and politicians may be tempted to look at these plans ‘on their merits’ and go through them minutely. This
A recent movie suggests that the Duke of Edinburgh’s nickname for the Queen is ‘Cabbage’. His experience dates back to the day when this delicious vegetable was overboiled into tastelessness. But now that most people cook it very lightly and so preserve its fine flavour and crispiness, the term is one of endearment, as (no
In June 1773 Adam Smith was at home in Kirkaldy, Fife, hard at work on his Wealth of Nations, when an excited letter arrived from his fellow philosopher David Hume. ‘Do these events affect your theory?’ wrote Hume. ‘What say you?’ Smith was caught up in perhaps the third or fourth most serious stock market
Once synonymous with men in red braces peddling junk bonds, the leveraged buy-out industry has become almost respectable. This is in large part thanks to some clever rebranding that would make even David Cameron blush; now invariably described as ‘private equity’, which sounds a lot cuddlier, the industry has even enticed that holier-than-thou old rock
Hedge funds, you read here in June, are often riskier than they are made out to be. Putting your money into ‘a fund that blows up, closes down or disappears with all your money’, I suggested, is a real risk for the unwary investor. The danger, I could have written, is that you will find
As the absurdly coiffed and probably deranged Kim Jong-Il fingers his nuclear button, not even the ballsiest hedge fund manager would contemplate investing in the prospect of Korean reunification. But I could name one secretive London investor who took a big punt back in the 1980s, buying a bundle of North Korean government debt at
