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“If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands”. Clapping is a common gesture across all cultures – even babies clap. Read more

A couple of weeks ago, I spoke to a group of 13-year-old South Island students on a college excursion to the capital. Their teacher had introduced them to me as specially “gifted and talented” but their main gift appeared to be an inclination towards state action. Read more

Tonight, and probably on my own in New Zealand, I am celebrating a geopolitical anniversary. On this 9th of November, 30 years have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Read more

November 1 was the beginning of a new era for the European Central Bank. Former French finance minister and IMF director Christine Lagarde is the new president of the ECB. Read more

Until last week, the East German state of Thuringia was internationally most famous as the home of Martin Luther, Thuringian roasted sausages and the Bauhaus Movement. Now we can add last Sunday’s state election result to that list. Read more

Last Thursday, the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank pledged to offer on a daily basis at least $120 billion of cash injections in the short-term money market, up from the initial $75 billion supply agreed last month. Read more

As Karl Marx taught us, history repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce. With Brexit we are long past these two separate stages. Read more

A common saying about the various stages of social acceptance is: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win." A decade after Bitcoin was born, cryptocurrencies are about to enter the "fight" phase in their quest to become a mainstream means of payment. That is all due to Libra, a new global digital currency that a Facebook-led coalition plans to launch as early as next year. Read more

This week, all eyes will be on Brexit – again. With the Halloween deadline just a couple of weeks away, the coming days will be crucial for the future of Britain, the European Union and their relationship with each other. Read more

When future historians look back at our world today, they will regard it as the end of an era. Over the space of just a few years, the fundamentals of our political and economic order have all changed. Read more