What is 1 + 1? It depends who you ask!

Donald Trump

By Shealah Craighead - White House, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63768460
Official portrait of President Donald J. Trump, Friday, By Shealah Craighead – White House, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63768460

“Glad you asked me this question. I am a very stable genius and math is one of my specialties. When I was on the Howard Stern show, he asked me a very difficult math question, “What is 17 times 6?”.

 

Continue reading “What is 1 + 1? It depends who you ask!”

Is Boris Johnson’s Optimism about London’s Financial Centre Justified?

In his first trip to the US, Boris Johnson, Britain’s new Foreign Minister and a leader in the Brexit campaign, claimed that UK financial firms will keep EU ‘passporting’, which allows banks to sell their services to clients across the EU. He claimed that the “City” (as London Financial district is called) offers the deepest pools of liquidity, talent and skill for the capital formation needs of businesses across Europe (Julian Ambrose, in Daily Telegraph, July 23rd).

The “talent and skill” is crucial. As someone who was brought up in the UK, I cannot shake the suspicion that, for every financial whizz-kid in the City, there are ten upper-class twits (good example of an upper-class twit – John Cleese in the Monty Python sketch “The Ministry of Silly Walks”).

Is Johnson’s optimism justified? Several reasons suggest that it is not: Continue reading “Is Boris Johnson’s Optimism about London’s Financial Centre Justified?”