The mystery of america’s gold

Since World War II, the two landmark events in the evolution of money were Bretton Woods in 1944, when the dollar became the de facto global reserve currency, and then the Nixon Shock of 1971, when th

Dominic Frisby Penguin Business, £22 T he rise and rise of bitcoin has pushed gold out of the limelight and has robbed the yellow metal of its status as the asset of choice for those convinced the glo

“There is always someone worse off than you,” as Aesop reminded us. That also means there is always someone to feel superior to. In post-war Europe, Italy was the country everyone made fun of, dismiss

“We’ll have a majority [on the Federal Reserve Board] very shortly… People are paying too high an interest rate… We have to get the rates down a little bit,” says Donald Trump. The US president isn’t

Issue of the week: the Murdoch succession ...

Parents of young children, and pet owners, often start to worry when they have been enjoying an unusually long period of silence. Investors are experiencing a similar sensation. Markets seem calm, wit