Showing 1 - 10 of 20
New words I probably won't be using
Roger Crutchley, Published on 31/08/2025
» The Cambridge Dictionary recently announced the inclusion of 6,000 new words mainly derived from their common usage in social media. I fear those words will simply be added to an already lengthy list of vocabulary I am totally unfamiliar with. As one observer noted "internet culture is changing the English language."
Betting on bitcoin
Oped, Postbag, Published on 14/01/2025
» Re: "Buying bitcoin, more firms bet on rewards over risks", (Business, Jan 10).
Moving towards a fifth world order
Oped, Gordon Brown & Mohamed A El-Erian, Published on 26/10/2024
» The Bretton Woods institutions -- the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank -- are now 80 years old. But they are as under-resourced and poorly supported by national governments as at any time in their history. Their predicament is perhaps the clearest sign that economic and financial multilateralism is fragmenting along with the global economy. Worse, this fragmentation comes at a time of rising international tensions, financial fragility, sputtering growth, rising poverty, and mounting reconstruction bills in Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine, and elsewhere.
It's feeling a bit on the warm side
Roger Crutchley, Published on 07/04/2024
» It was Oscar Wilde who observed that "conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative". He might have had a point but it means there are a lot of unimaginative people in Thailand at present. I can hardly recall a conversation lately without a reference to the heat. It has definitely been "a bit on the warm side".
Here's how to salvage COP28
News, Gordon Brown, Published on 30/11/2023
» The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai starts on Thursday. It has become increasingly clear that only a bold financing initiative spearheaded by the United Arab Emirates could provide essential funding and support to the Global South.
'Women's economics' goes mainstream
Oped, Antara Haldar, Published on 10/11/2023
» William Shakespeare's 1597 comedy Love's Labour's Lost tells the story of four Frenchmen as they navigate the tension between commitment to intellectual development and the quest for domestic bliss. Some four centuries later, Harvard economist Claudia Goldin reimagined the tale from the vantage point of American women balancing career and family. Now, Ms Goldin's profound insights into women's labour-market outcomes have won her a Nobel Prize in Economics.
Global rulebook needs a facelift
Oped, Gordon Brown, Published on 28/09/2023
» After India's G20 summit and the UN General Assembly this month, world leaders next month will attend the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Marrakesh, before heading to the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai. But there is little optimism that these summits will deliver meaningful progress in tackling our greatest challenges, not because of any lack of resolve, but because the global rulebook we have been following since the end of World War II is no longer fit for purpose.
Climate change is killing our summer
News, Niall Ferguson, Published on 31/07/2023
» Most of us have an idea of summer in our heads. It generally involves beaches. Americans head to their coasts -- avoiding only fog-shrouded San Francisco -- and Europeans to the Mediterranean or Aegean. We all strip down to near nakedness and sit around in the sun, occasionally frolicking in the ocean waves. We aim to return home tanned and toned. If you come from another planet and don't know what I am talking about, watch the Barbie trailer.
The banks the world badly needs
Oped, Lawrence H Summers & N K Singh, Published on 27/07/2023
» The world is literally on fire. Experts estimate that another Covid-level public health threat is likely to emerge in the next generation. Rising interest rates have left dozens of countries with unmanageable debt burdens. And for the first time in nearly half a century, the global economy is fracturing rather than coming together.