Don’t you just hate it when a good theory falls apart? The late anthropologist David Graeber’s book Bullshit Jobs had a great premise: that the modern economy has generated vast numbers of pointless jobs, and “the people doing these jobs are completely unhappy because they know their work is bullshit”. Corporate lawyers, lobbyists, middle managers
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President Joe Biden is set to name Lael Brainard, vice-chair of the US Federal Reserve, to be his top economic adviser, bringing the central bank’s second-in-command to the White House to serve as one of Washington’s top financial policymakers. Brainard will become the next director of the National Economic Council, the main White House job
The Rothschilds have enlisted some of Europe’s wealthiest families, including the billionaire brothers behind luxury group Chanel, to help take the Franco-British investment bank private, in a deal that values one of the best known names in global finance at €3.7bn. Concordia, the Rothschild family holding company that controls the bank, said on Monday that
The White House has said there is no evidence yet that three objects shot down over North America in recent days were conducting surveillance, but added it could not rule out the possibility of espionage. John Kirby, National Security Council spokesperson, said President Joe Biden had ordered the shooting down of the unidentified objects —
The UK government has been urged by tax experts to reform and clarify laws around homeworking, as they warned more people were being caught up in “complicated and inconsistent” rules. Some 44 per cent of UK workers spent some or all of the time working from home between September 2022 and January 2023, according to
Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy has vowed to double down on the company’s struggling grocery store business, despite recently announcing that its growth plans were on hold. Jassy told the Financial Times that the ecommerce giant was ready to “go big” on bricks-and-mortar stores, blaming a lack of “normalcy” during the pandemic for a series
At the start of every shift at the once world-renowned Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast where the Titanic was built, a horn that could be heard across the city used to ring out. It sounded again last month — this time to mark a new beginning. Three years ago, as boss of London-based energy
Liberty Global, the US group chaired by “cable cowboy” John Malone, has bought a nearly 5 per cent stake in Vodafone, as it bets that forthcoming deals and restructuring will revive the beleaguered UK telecoms group. Denver-based Liberty Global has acquired 1.3bn shares, representing 4.92 per cent of share capital, financed mostly through derivatives, and
Rishi Sunak has said the UK will do “whatever it takes” to keep itself safe and that its air force is on standby to take down any unidentified objects or suspected Chinese spy balloons that enter national airspace. The prime minister’s comments on Monday followed the launch of a security review by defence secretary Ben
Global stocks opened on Monday with gains as investors looked ahead to upcoming economic data they hoped would ease the pressure on the US central bank to continue lifting interest rates. Wall Street’s blue-chip S&P 500 index rose 0.7 per cent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite added 0.9 per cent shortly after the New York
Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s whirlwind tour of European capitals last week to press allies for modern, long-range weapons was only partly successful. Ukraine’s president extracted a pledge from the UK to start training Ukrainian fighter pilots. Britain also made a vague offer of “long-range capabilities”. France, Germany and other allies in the EU were less forthcoming, rebuffing
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made an unlikely celebrity of Professor John Mearsheimer. His 2015 lecture — “Why is Ukraine the West’s fault? — has now racked up 28mn views on YouTube. In that lecture, and in later articles and talks, the University of Chicago academic argued that the west had provoked a war in
China has accused the US of flying high-altitude balloons into its airspace more than 10 times last year, and of conducting hundreds of reconnaissance missions, as the aerial surveillance dispute between the two nations takes their ties to a new low. Beijing’s accusations came after the US shot down what it said was a Chinese
The Philippines has accused China of targeting one of its coast guard vessels with a military-grade laser in the South China Sea, as Beijing’s almost-constant presence in the contested waters raises regional tensions. The Chinese coast guard ship directed the laser at the BRP Malapascua twice on February 6, “causing temporary blindness to [the] crew
Umm Anwar fled Syria for a new life in the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep. When, early last Monday, the rundown apartment block she now calls home began to shake uncontrollably, she found herself jolted back to her previous life. “I felt like I was back in Syria under the bombs,” said the mother of
What’s the best language through which to understand the complex events of the world today? Is it economic? Political? Cultural? I’ve begun to think it might be psychological. Psychologists (at least many of those I know) tend to divide the world up into two types of personalities: paranoids, who operate as if they are always
A leading Conservative business figure has quit the party after almost 40 years, citing the party’s alleged “f*** business” attitude and willingness to put vulnerable groups on the front line of a culture war. Iain Anderson, founder of the Cicero public relations group and named “LGBT business champion” in Boris Johnson’s government in September 2021,
Investors joining Amazon’s earning call earlier this month were greeted with a surprise guest: the group’s chief executive, Andy Jassy. Unlike Apple’s Tim Cook, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg or Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, it is rare that an Amazon chief executive — whether Jassy or his predecessor Jeff Bezos — puts himself up for the quarterly session
One of the UK pension industry’s biggest asset managers abandoned mark-to-market pricing on funds reeling from the country’s government bond crisis last year, instead choosing higher values that presented a rosier picture of its position. The highly unusual and previously unreported move by Insight Investment came at the height of the September crisis that began
As the UK entered a cost of living crisis in recent months, private equity headhunter Sita Kolossa had a surreal conversation with a client about his salary. “He told me £1mn was not enough,” she said, sounding aghast, noting that this figure excluded his bonus. “I mean, what do I even do with that?”. While
It is another week of British industrial unrest. Civil servants at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency will also strike on Monday, followed on Wednesday by university staff — although no longer teaching staff in Wales — and then ambulance workers in Northern Ireland on Friday. At the least the UK government will be hard