With developed world populations ageing fast, you would think that entrepreneurs would be jumping at the opportunity to find new ways to cash in the silver dollar (pound, or euro, yen, etc).
The Covid-19 pandemic offers a big opportunity to do that – the key is for governments to act to facilitate it.
Continue readingThe International Monetary Fund is worried. Yes, it’s true that it always is, but this time we should be, too — or at least, those of us living in Britain.
What a spectacular lesson the first half of the year delivered for investors. At the beginning of the year, it looked like the UK’s vote to leave the European Union was a great idea: the eurozone seemed on the brink of disintegration.
This has been a year when the world’s values changed in ways many people would have believed impossible. The Brexit vote was a vote for disintegration and isolation, rather than integration and cooperation. Hot on its heels came the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States.
Both votes prove that public opinion is turning away from the liberal values that seemed, only at the beginning of the year, to solidly anchor the Western world. What it is turning towards definitely looks like a not-so-liberal, not-so-tolerant version of democracy.
If you’re curious what the new year has in store for Britons, all you need to do is look at the latest opinion surveys to realise the mood on Brexit is souring.
The way the markets have reacted to Brexit, you’d be forgiven to wonder what the fuss was all about.
There are few things that are less certain right now than the path of interest rates in the UK. That’s despite the Bank of England’s attempts to reassure investors that it will not raise its key interest rate anytime soon from the record low level of 0.5%. Even when it does, it will do so in a gradual manner, the central bank says.
In a recent speech, British Prime Minister David Cameron again slammed corruption and those who tolerate it, and called for global political leaders to talk more about the “cancer of corruption” and how to combat it.
If you’re going on holiday to Europe and haven’t yet bought any euros, maybe you should hurry. Unless Greece really exits the eurozone (and that can still happen), the pound’s advance versus the euro seems limited from here on.
By Antonia Oprita
House prices in the UK are getting another boost from the government, just in time for the May 7 general election.