Despite a recent bout of weakness, the dollar still looks strong. Consider the Big Mac index, our lighthearted measure of currency valuation. Of the currencies of the 20 trading partners studied by America’s Treasury, our measure suggests that all have gained relative to the greenback since July, but that all apart from the Swiss franc…
The revolutionary theory of the nature of light which won Albert Einstein the 1921 Nobel prize for physics went on to remake the world. Oliver Morton surveys a century of innovation. Albert Einstein won the 1921 Nobel prize for physics in 1922. The temporal anomaly embodied in that sentence was not, alas, one of the…
Save for a few industries such as health care, it is safe to assume that investment in innovation will plummet during the covid-19 pandemic. It usually does in times of crisis. Venture capital (vc) will also dry up as everyone keeps their heads down and tries to preserve cash. In 2007-09, vc funding in America fell by…
The world has been turned on its head thanks to COVID19 and as with most negative things, such as wars and other pandemics, there is generally a hidden benefit that appears once the crisis is over. The fallout from the Coronavirus is already beginning to demonstrate new ways of working and bringing about changes to…
It is a do or die decade ahead for big oil companies. With an evermore energy and eco-conscious society things have to change and because oil companies are so large change is often slow and the consequences considerable… Read more
The Economist writes that back in 1900, only one in three cars on American roads ran on volts. Then oil began gushing out of Texas. Cheaper than batteries, and easier to top up, petrol fuelled the rise of mass-produced automobiles. Cost and worries about limited range have kept electric vehicles (evs) in a niche ever…
