Opinion

We often think wars are won with missiles, tanks and soldiers. In reality, they are won with banks. Every shell that is fired, every drone that is launched and every factory that shifts from producing washing machines to artillery shells has to be financed by someone. Governments issue debt. Central banks manage liquidity. Commercial banks…

For years I thought cryptocurrency was a fascinating financial experiment. It challenged banks, questioned governments and forced regulators to think differently about money. What I hadn’t fully appreciated was that it wasn’t just disrupting finance. It was quietly becoming a force in politics and government, as I blogged the other day, and it’s now gone…

I just had my American Express Business Card suspended without warning or explanation. It turns out that they need to re-onboard me due to Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulations. Strange. I’ve been a customer for 25 years and they need to re-establish if I really am me. So much for trust. More than this, they…

The BBC has run many reports about how people accidentally become money mules through their ignorance: It’s not easy money. This scam wrecks your credit I got quick cash in my account but it was too good to be true I became a money mule by mistake A key point here is that, in statistics…

I’ve avoided talking about the Epstein files on this blog. The main reason is that it’s appalling how wealth, power and connections can get away with anything they want. The worst part of it, for me, was a report that alleges that Donald Trump watched a 13-year-old girl give birth to a baby girl who…

I’ve been talking with many friends about genetic versus environmental development. Back in the day, this was a big discussion in my Sociology classes. How much of your personality is genetic versus environmentally developed? Is it nature or nurture? This is a question raised regularly by psychologists and researches and, as a father of twin…

One of the biggest themes that recurs over and over again is the wealth divide in societies. I’ve talked about this often, and we all should have heard of the 1% by now or the fact that six men have more wealth than half the population of the planet combined. It is an important subject,…

Jamie Dimon, the chap that runs JPMorgan, has just stirred up a big debate about debanking by accusing Trump Media, the folks that run Donald’s Truth Social platform, of ‘making up things’. What things are they making up? That they’ve been debanked by JPMorgan for their political affiliation. The thing is that Jamie then poked…

Being raised on an independent island, I learned lots about British history. For my GCSE’s, it was all about learning Henry VIII’s story of leaving the Holy Empire of Rome to marry Anne Boleyn and the story of the first and second World Wars. We knew nothing about Europe, let alone the rest of the…

For no particular reason, I was reflecting on being a boomer the other day. Probably it was to do with the speed of change. After all, when I was a lad, there was no tech at home. I played with Batman and James Bond Corgi toys – which I still do – and that was…