The City

Hedonic adjustments and inflation Down Under

Years ago, at the Rugby 7s in New Zealand, I found myself talking to a young lady from England. She’d found a working holiday job…

Show me the central bankers’ incentive, and I’ll show you the inflationary outcome

People often wonder how the hell inflation got so badly out of control in Weimar in Germany. Well, you’re about to find out. And not…

Snoop Dogg for Bank of England governor?

There’s an old adage that central banking is all about having the guts to “take away the punchbowl just when the party gets going”. Unfortunately…

The Everything Bubble has burst at last. Now what?

They called it the Everything Bubble while it was inflating. Rarely do the mainstream media get it so right on the way up. But all…

A bull market in burnable effigies, but not much else

Today’s Fortune & Freedom is an update on a series of themes we’ve been exploring for months now. Whether Japan has unleased a monetary Pearl…

Inflation, shortages, lockdowns, recession and political risk

Nigel Farage is not very optimistic about the stock market or the government. In this weekly update, we dig into some of the reasons why.…

Why don’t people trust the government any more?

“The top nine most terrifying words in the English Language are: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” Imagine getting elected on that…

Inflation or recession? The Bank of England chooses both…

Dear reader, Planning to fail might be a plan, but you’re still going to fail. That’s how I’d sum up Bank of England policy right…

Will the political pendulum swing against Boris, or the entire Conservative Party?

This week, Nigel Farage spent some time with old friends in the City. And what he heard there is a bit of a worry. Those…

The Treasury will need a bailout from the Bank of England in order to finance its bailout of the Bank of England

Yesterday’s Fortune & Freedom introduced you to some of the chaos unfolding at the Bank of England. But all that was mere amusement compared to…

The Bank of England is in all sorts of strife

Usually, we try to present you with some sort of useful conclusion or take-away in each edition of Fortune & Freedom. But I haven’t got…

How high can interest rates go before the crash?

It’s reverse limbo at the Bank of England. How high can interest rates go before disaster strikes? And will the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street,…

We know bubbles burst… but do we act like it?

You might not think that economics and financial markets lend themselves to beautiful prose. But you’d be wrong. Especially when it comes to the nature…

If an Englishman’s word is his bond, someone should run a spellcheck

On 16 September 2021, we published a piece about bonds and why they are a bad investment, if not downright dangerous to hold. Since then,…

Welcome to Rishi Sunak’s haunted house of tax horrors. (His wife is out.)

Did you hear the door slam behind you? Have you tried checking whether it’s locked? Oh… well it looks like we’re stuck inside Rishi Sunak’s…

Duck now to avoid the Russian sanctions boomerang

No doubt the world’s movers and shakers are very surprised by what their Russian sanctions have triggered so far – an energy crisis, a food…

Will uranium or shorter showers save us from Putin?

The tide is turning on net zero, inflation and nuclear power. But what are the political and financial implications, if some of our firmest beliefs…

What they did while you were in lockdown is nothing new

So, the director general of the Cabinet Office’s COVID-19 Taskforce was fined for breaking Covid-19 lockdown rules. And the government’s former ethics chief was fined…

Is the yen signalling a monetary Pearl Harbor?

You’ll need your thinking caps on for this one, my friends. But if someone had explained sub-prime mortgages to you in 2006, that would’ve been…

What if Janet Yellen’s delusional prediction was actually a promise?

Back in 2017, at an event in London, Janet Yellen, then the Federal Reserve chair at the time, made an extraordinary prediction: “Would I say…