Editor’s note (June 20th 2024): The Supreme Court has ruled in Moore v United States, upholding the tax at issue (the “mandatory repatriation tax”). The court declined to weigh in on the constitutionality of a tax on unrealised gains. What is income, really? Ask an economist and they might describe…

Things are big in America. That is true of houses, cars and food portions. Perhaps most shocking of all is the size of tips. In much of the rest of the world, gratuities are a small gesture for good service. In American restaurants they are de rigueur. And they are…

How can you tell it’s time to get out of the market? In 1929 Joseph Kennedy, an American businessman and politician, supposedly realised the party was over upon hearing a shoe-shine boy dispensing stock tips. In 2000 the exit doors beckoned after 17 “dotcom” firms paid millions of dollars each…

It was a French politician, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who coined the term “exorbitant privilege” in the 1960s. He was referring to the benefits received by America as issuer of the world’s reserve currency—namely, the ability to run high deficits comfortably. These days France is reminded that it has no such…

Is a fresh housing boom under way? In April a house-price index for the world, excluding China, rose by more than 3% year on year (see chart 1). American house prices are 6.5% higher than a year ago, Australian ones are up by 5% and Portuguese ones are soaring. In…

The HISTORY of leveraged finance—the business of lending to risky, indebted companies—is best told in three acts. High-yield (or “junk”) bonds were the subject of the first. That ended in 1990 when Michael Milken, the godfather of this sort of debt, was sent to prison for fraud. In the second…

Returning from his paternity leave last week, your columnist was keen to get writing. After all, numerous studies say parents’ careers can suffer after they have children. Best to immediately dispel any notion that his might do so. But then he remembered that he is a man, and went to…

In some parts of the world, not least America’s capital, “trade” is a dirty word. Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden now champion protectionism, and neither president signed a single new trade deal. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is a shell of its former self. So you might think that…

It is the million-person mystery, and its solution will help determine just how strong American growth truly is. According to an official survey of employers, America’s economy has added 1.2m jobs in net terms since the start of the year. But a separate survey of households paints a completely different…

Chinese officials seem pleased with the yuan’s recent progress as a global currency. The international monetary system is diversifying at an accelerating pace, said Pan Gongsheng, the governor of China’s central bank, in March. The yuan has become the fourth-most active currency in global payments, he noted. In trade finance,…