Teodoro Obiang, the president of Equatorial Guinea, and Teodorín, the most influential of his 42 recognised children, have expensive tastes. While most of his citizens live on less than $2 a day, the older Mr Obiang once shelled out $55 million for a Boeing 737 with gold-plated lavatory fittings. His son had at one point amassed $300m in assets, including 32 sports cars, a Malibu mansion and nearly $2m in Michael Jackson memorabilia. In 2014 the United States Department of Justice forced Teodorín Obiang to sell off a Ferrari, his Los Angeles abode and six life-size Michael Jackson statues in a money-laundering settlement. (He was allowed to keep one of the King of Pop's crystal-encrusted gloves.)
Slavery in America was not just wicked, it was lucrative: by 1860 the total capital that slave-holders had "invested" in captive human beings was three times larger than investment in manufacturing in the northern and southern states combined.
China produced more steel in two years than Britain since 1900.
The US is still the US, held together by credit cards and Indian names.
China's problems are so many, various and deep that it does indeed seem impossible that the Communist Party can survive. Yet it raises the opposite question too: what, then, has held such an improbable regime together for so long?
Creating pay structures that perfectly reflect performance is a mug's game. That hasn't stopped an entire industry of consultants and proxy advisers from trying. Setting detailed targets risks distorting behaviour.
The company that establishes itself early enjoys disproportionate rewards. First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.
One Western company urged its employees to "act like an owner" without realising that, in some cultures, acting like an owner means playing golf all day.
Bad money chases out good.
Authenticity is the secret of success; once you can fake it, you've got it.
There are more people in America who believe that Elvis is still alive than thought Obama's stimulus would create jobs.
Class identifying markers: occupation, address, accent and income.
That openness is evident across British life. The country's car industry is almost totally foreign owned (Tata has made a great success of Jaguar Land Rover); many of its biggest airports are in Spanish hands; chunks of its energy industry belong to French and Chinese investors; its football clubs make the United Nations look monocultural. Its central bank is run by a Canadian and the London Olympics were organised by an Australian. London's glitziest property developers are from Qatar and Malaysia and its stock exchange may soon be in German hands. In 2013 the proportion of shares in Britain's firms owned by foreigners zoomed passed the 50 % mark, to almost total public indifference.
What gets measured gets managed.
A country where shareholders with opinions have hitherto been about as welcome as skunks at a garden party.
Cost of capital is now king. The king seems to live in China.
What is poverty and when is a person poor? Does a family home have a dirt or dung floor? Does it lack a decent toilet? Must members of the household travel more than 30 minutes on foot to get clean water to drink? Do they live without electricity?
Lehman Brothers disaster would never have happened if it had been Lehman Sisters.
Walmart's 2.2m worldwide workforce is about the same size as China's army, excluding reservists.
We are born in a Pullman house, fed from the Pullman shop, taught in the Pullman school, catechised in the Pullman church, and when we die we shall be buried in the Pullman cemetery and go to the Pullman hell.
The wealth distribution in the world is equivalent to a world of ten people, in which one has $1,000 and the other nine has $1 each.
John Maynard Keynes still best describes the challenge facing the discipline today: "Economics is the science of thinking in terms of models joined to the art of choosing models which are relevant to the contemporary world."
Why didn't Sony invent the iPod?
The Busara Centre for Behavioural Economics in Nairobi, Kenya, runs experiments with participants from slums and rural areas. Its researchers looked at the results of a lottery-like scheme in rural Kenya, in which a random sample of 503 households spread over 120 villages was chosen to receive cash transfers of up to $1,525. The average transfer, $357, was almost enough to double the wealth of a typical villager. The researchers measured the well-being of villagers before and after the transfer, using a range of different methods: questionnaires about people's life satisfaction, screening for clinical depression and saliva tests for cortisol, a hormone associated with stress. There is an asymmetry in the way people compare themselves with others. We tend to look exclusively at those better off than us, rather than contemplate our position within the full range of outcomes. When the lot of others improves, we react negatively, but when our own lot improves, we shift our reference group to those who are still better off. In other words, we are never satisfied, since we quickly become accustomed to our own achievements. Perhaps that is what spurs people to earn more, and economies to grow.
The latest rally has been led by a small namber of stocks, sometimes dubbed the FAANGs (Facebook, Amason, Apple, Netflix and Google's parent, Alphabet) and sometimes FAAMG (replacing Netflix with Microsoft).
Should guests really expect authentic affection from staff whose weekly wage is less than their minibar bill?
Sometimes when you make a step forward you step in shit.
It is amazing how little $25m buys you these days.
Winston Churchill famously said America would always do the right thing after exhausting the alternatives.
If bullshit was currency, he would be a billionaire.
Slave ships could be smelled from miles away.
My watch costs more than your car… that's who I am.
Putting your man in charge is one thing, putting money on the table quite another.
Consultants steal your watch and then tell you the time.
Ford famously said that car-buyers could have any colour they liked, as long as it was black.
Rise early, work hard, strike oil.
They say that money can't buy happiness, but I would like to find out for myself if that's true.
Adam Smith spotted that economics has problems valuing nature. "Nothing is more useful than water: but it will purchase scarce anything; scarce anything can be had in exchange for it. A diamond, on the contrary, has scarce any value in use; but a very great quantity of other goods may frequently be had in exchange for it," he wrote.
"For a moderate fee," jokes Deirdre McCloskey, an economic historian, "an economist will tell you with all the confidence of a witch doctor that interest rates will rise 56 basis points next month or that dropping agricultural subsidies will increase Swiss national income by 14.8 %."
Haier and higher!
Britain had a window tax in the late 17th century, well before it introduced an income tax.
Pay the gas bill first, in other words, and then think of the world cruise.
The economic forces driving high-flying legal eagles into the bargain bin are no mystery.
The typical chief executive is more than six feet tall, has a deep voice, a good posture, a touch of grey in his thick, lustrous hair and, for his