Innehållsförteckning för Issue 1012 från MoneyWeek

Sweden’s Storytel is surfing a powerful wave, according to German business weekly Der Aktionär. Audio books and podcasts are becoming increasingly popular worldwide: during lockdown one million Germans listened to them for the first time. Storytel’s app allows users to stream 400,000 audiobooks for a monthly fee of €14.90. The group has a presence in 20 countries, with launches in Thailand and Indonesia on the cards soon. It has just snapped up the Middle East’s biggest audiobook-streaming group. Subscriptions have quadrupled since early 2019, boosting sales by 43% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2020. Ongoing expansion has delayed overall profitability, but the outlook is auspicious.…

Just days before he will formally accept the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party, Joe Biden made history by selecting Californian senator Kamala Harris as his running mate, making her the first African-American woman “on a main US party’s presidential ticket”, says Lauren Fedor in the Financial Times. Harris, who served as California’s attorney-general before she became a senator in 2016, launched a bid for the Democratic nomination herself last year. Her campaign failed to break through in a crowded field, but she won plaudits for a strong showing. By selecting Harris, rather than someone with more left-liberal political views, Biden is all but telling the progressive wing of the Democratic Party to “drop dead”, says Ted Rall in The Wall Street Journal. Harris’s branding of herself in her early…

• Shareholders in Electronic Arts have “overwhelmingly” rejected the US video game-maker’s executive pay plan in an advisory vote, says Rob Golum on Bloomberg. Andrew Wilson (pictured), the CEO, was to get $21.4m for 2020, up from $18.3m last year, but less than the $35.7m he was paid in 2018, largely in the form of share awards. Wilson’s pay is 56% more than the median for a CEO in a similar position. Blake Jorgensen, the finance and operations chief, was to be paid $19.5m for this year, and Laura Miele, the chief studios officer, $16m. • James Farley, the chief operating officer at Ford, will be taking over from Jim Hackett as CEO of the second-biggest carmaker in the US. His annualised salary will rise to $1.7m from $1.4m. Hackett,…

Investing strategies can be split into two broad types. Passive investments aim to earn the same return as the wider market as cheaply as possible, by buying all the stocks in an index such as the FTSE 100 or the S&P 500. Active strategies aim to earn a higher return by only investing in a smaller number of specific stocks or bonds that look particularly attractive. Core-satellite investing tries to combine both approaches to produce a portfolio that has low overall costs but may still be able to beat the market. The core of the portfolio is one or more passive funds. This investment will usually be as broad as possible: it will either track your main domestic stockmarket index or a global benchmark such as the MSCI World or…

California-based activist investor ValueAct has sold its entire stake in Rolls-Royce. The move comes as the aeroplane-engine maker ponders a rights issue of between £1.5bn and £2bn to “restore a coronavirusravaged balance sheet”, say Peggy Hollinger and Billy Nauman in the Financial Times. ValueAct’s exit from the company it built a 10% stake in five years ago reflects frustration over the lack of progress in Rolls-Royce’s “serial restructuring” following a series of profit warnings. The activist began trimming its stake last year following the departure of its chief operating officer Brad Singer from Rolls-Royce’s board. Remaining investors are irked by the rush to raise funds just as the shares in the company have hit a ten-year low.…

“It was brilliant. I was 22, fresh out of college and earning in the high £20,000s in 1997. Then I learnt that my co-presenters Matt Baker and Simon Thomas were being paid more than me. So I kicked off, fought for my rights and upped my salary. Because I’d done maths as part of my degree, Imade sure I got all the back payments with compound interest.” Television presenter Konnie Huq (pictured) on hosting Blue Peter, quoted in The Sunday Telegraph “Next to bombing, rent controls seem in many cases to be the most efficient technique for destroying cities.” Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, quoted on adamsmith.org “The Democrats are the party of government activism, the party that says government can make you richer, smarter, taller, and get the chickweed out…

hbr.org You make a commitment to something you feel passionate about. Then your interest wanes, but you feel obliged to stick to your commitments. Before long, you’re not turning up as often as you used to. Then you start “ghosting” the group – not showing up anymore, but not really admitting you’ve left. Sound familiar? asks Elizabeth Grace Saunders. The trouble with carrying on like this is that your commitment hangs around in your conscience, weighing you down and making you feel guilty. Far better is to make a clean break. Instead of skirting the issue and just not showing up, communicate directly and honestly with the appropriate people. Tell them you no longer wish to be involved, and thank them for what you have got out of your previous…

Small businesses face some difficult decisions. With the government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme now winding down, they must assess the costs accruing for furloughed staff and determine whether there is work for them to return to. Under the scheme, the government reimbursed employers for up to 80% of furloughed employees’ salaries, up to a maximum of £2,500 a month. The state also covered the cost of these employees’ national insurance (NI) and pensions contributions. That enabled employers to keep these staff on their books even if work had dried up. There was little or no cost to keeping them employed, though some firms topped up staff wages beyond the 80% cap. However, since 1 August, employers have become responsible for paying NI and pension contributions. From 1 September, the government’s…

“Gold is not just a weak dollar story. It’s also a weak fiat-currency story” One of the best books on investment you will ever read is Edwin Lefevre’s Reminiscences Of A Stock Operator. It’s a thinly disguised biography of Wall Street legend Jesse Livermore, regarded by many as the greatest trader who ever lived. I am not alone in having agreat affection for the passage in which Larry Livingston (a pseudonym for Livermore) recalls a veteran trader, old Mr Partridge, with whom the firm was extremely unhappy because he was giving “very little in the way of commissions”. Every time old Mr Partridge was given atip to sell a stock so that he could buy it back at lower prices, he would thank the tipster politely, smile and just say,…

A consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic is that interest rates are going to be much lower for much longer. In the US the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates below 0.25%. The Fed Fund Futures market (where investors can speculate on the path of future interest rates) predicts that rates will turn negative before rising. This is hardly surprising. The Taylor rule serves as arule of thumb for central bankers; it takes unemployment and inflation as its inputs and spits out a target interest rate. Today it recommends an interest rate of minus 5%. It will be a long time before the US sees any interest-rate rises. The outlook is not very different here in the UK. All this means that investors will be even more starved for income in…

What’s in a name? Quite a lot if you’re called Bernard Looney, says The Sunday Times. BP’s new boss admits his name has sometimes caused amusement. “I lived in America for nine years, says Looney. They say Ber-nard and I’d correct them and say it’s Ber-nard. A guy from Mississippi said, ‘Listen, when your last name is Looney, who cares what your first name is?’” An Irishman who grew up on a dairy farm in County Kerry, Looney, 49, has the gift of the blarney. His observations on social media are admired by a rising generation of business hopefuls who rate his perspicacity. He often talks about “the need to challenge old habits to run a better business”, says the FT, regularly consulting a “20-something-year-old reverse mentor” to buff up…

Can you solve this philosopher’s conundrum? What is something and nothing at the same time? Consider the following facts. “Printed money is a ‘bezzle’ worthy of Ponzi. Or better” In 1970, Americans earned almost 90% of what they spent. By 2019, about one dollar in every three came to them as a “transfer” payment from the government. The federal budget called for $3.2trn in “transfers” even before the calendar year began. That was in addition to the approximately $1.5trn of other spending – military spending, funding government agencies and departments. Then came the Cares Act – $2.2trn – boosting the federal deficit for the first nine months alone to $2.7trn. And, of course, the Federal Reserve pitched in with $3trn, which it lent out at silly rates to Wall Street.…

Shares in Hong Kong media group Next Digital, controlled by pro-democracy tycoon Jimmy Lai (pictured), nearly tripled following his arrest as activists piled into the stock in a display of solidarity, say Daniel Shane and Hudson Lockett in the Financial Times. Next Digital’s stock jumped 344% to HK$0.40 after Lai was detained for allegedly breaching the city’s controversial national security law, imposed by Beijing in June. Lai, a vocal critic of the Chinese and Hong Kong governments, was accused of crimes including working with foreign forces. Pro-democracy activists called on investors to snap up shares, and trading volumes for the company rose to 14 times their recent average. Stanley Wong, a columnist for Apple Daily, Lai’s tabloid, bought 1.2 million shares in the company as a “show of support” for…

Britain is in the grip of a “mini house-buying boom”, says BBC.com. The Halifax house price index shows that prices hit an all-time high in July, with the average house value of £241,604 up 3.8% on a year before. Some 63,250 properties changed hands in June, writes Will Kirkman in the Daily Mail. That is a 32% increase from a month before. Pent-up demand from sales delayed during lockdown is doubtless partly responsible, while Rishi Sunak’s stamp duty holiday has also “put a shot in the arm” of the market. The big question is whether the surge in activity can last into the autumn, when the government’s furlough scheme ends. The “mini-boom” could yet turn into a “maxi-bust”, cautions Andrew Montlake of London mortgage broker Coreco. Perhaps the most striking…

Silver hit aseven-year high of more than $29 an ounce last week and could have further to go, despite seeing a significant correction mid-week (see page 20). One indicator widely monitored by precious metals investors is the gold/silver ratio. This measures how many ounces of silver it takes to buy one ounce of gold. When the ratio is high relative to history, it indicates that silver is cheap compared with gold and is due a catch-up as the ratio reverts to the long-term mean. This can happen either through silver rising more rapidly than the gold price – or via the gold price falling relative to silver. The ratio hit an 87-year high of 111.7 in April 2020 before slipping as low as below 70 last week. The average over…

Chinese electric-car start-up and Tesla rival Xpeng Motors has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange, says Arjun Kharpal on CNBC. It wants to raise $100m to help it fend off competitors in its domestic market. Xpeng was founded in 2015 and recently raised $400m from Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba (one of its biggest shareholders), the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund Mubadala. The group has tried to distinguish itself from Chinese rivals by “talking up” its software: its XPILOT feature gives cars some semi-autonomous driving features such as automated parking, comparable to Tesla’s Autopilot.…

Rio Tinto’s chief executive, Jean-Sébastien Jacques, is facing calls to resign after the company destroyed an ancient Aboriginal site, says Jamie Smyth in the Financial Times. The 46,000-year-old site was blown up in order to access $135m worth of iron-ore deposits –even though a 2018 report commissioned by Rio, which Jacques claimed not to have read, found that the site was of the “highest archaeological significance”. Rio Tinto’s decision to destroy an ancient site for a relatively “paltry” amount of iron ore is bad enough, says Alistair Osborne in The Times. Especially given it had other options that would have kept the damage to a minimum while still allowing it to mine most of the area. But the revelations that its board doesn’t seem to know what’s going on inside…

Joe Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris ashis running mate (see story below) vindicated my tip back in March to bet on her (along with Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg and Catherine Masto) as the Democratic vice-presidential candidate. The announcement doesn’t, however, seem to have had a big effect on punters’ perceptions of the national contest. With £56.3m matched on Betfair, Biden’s odds have drifted out a bit compared with a week ago to 1.68 (59.5%), while Donald Trump’s have tightened to 2.68 (37.3%). One interesting opportunity is the market on the contest to represent Alabama in the Senate. Senator Doug Jones (pictured) was narrowly elected in 2017 after his opponent Roy Moore imploded after allegations surfaced about sexual misconduct. This time round Jones faces a tough challenge from former college American…

Members of the House of Lords have taken full advantage of being able to “work from home” during the lockdown, says The Sunday Times. Since April, peers have claimed £926,000 in taxpayer-funded “attendance” allowances while sitting on their sofas. The daily allowance was halved to £162 in early May to discourage elderly members and peers deemed “at risk” from attending in person. An average of 502 peers voted in each of the 18 divisions that were held in June, the highest monthly average since 2000. During the 2017-2019 session, the figure was 360. That month, members claimed £624,000, making 3,850 payments across only 17 full sitting days. “This means that, on average, nearly a third of the chamber claimed an allowance each day. Analysis of... records reveals that 75 peers…

“Investors are being infantilised by the relentless Federal Reserve activity,” says Seth Klarman, the value investor who runs the Baupost hedge fund, in his latest commentary. The US central bank’s “seemingly never-ending” asset purchases and ultra-low interest rates are creating “market conditions that are unsupported by economic data”. “It’s as if the Fed considers [investors] foolish children, unable to rationally set the prices of securities so it must intervene. When the market has a tantrum, the benevolent Fed has a soothing yet enabling response.” That’s why sentiment remains “surprisingly ebullient even though business fundamentals are often dreadful”. It’s noteworthy that “shares of bankrupt companies are lately among the top performers” – including car-rental firm Hertz – as speculators “scrape together a few dollars of surplus cash” to buy “worthless shares…

■ “The past 12 months should have been the ideal moment for... absolute return funds to shine,” says Mark Atherton in The Times. But in the year to 1 July only 25 out of 71 absolute return funds, which are supposed to produce positive returns whatever the market backdrop, actually did. They lost an average of 2.9%, and their three-year track record is “equally bleak”: only 24 out of 59 funds made money for investors, with an average loss of 0.1%. Despite “dismal” returns, many of these funds continue to charge large performance fees: The Alpha Select Alternative fund paid itself £4.2m in performance fees after generating a return of 7% in 2019. The Absolute Value fund returned 4.4% and earned a fee of £3.8m, while Blackrock UK Absolute Alpha…

mises.org The concept of intellectual property (IP) rights has been criticised for interfering with the dissemination of innovation. But it is more than that – it is an “impossibility” from the point of view of the science of human action, and is a fundamental obstacle to growth, says Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski. Ideas are not economic goods, are not scarce, but are infinitely replicable and are the precondition of action. Physical goods that have been transformed by ideas become as heterogeneous and thus unique as the individuals who do the work. As such, IP is not a defence of property rights, but an arbitrary barrier that gets in the way of entrepreneurial activity. Such laws are exploited by established players in an industry to cripple entrepreneurial upstarts. Those upstarts, if successful,…

Small businesses are set to miss out on more than £1bn of grants that could help them temper the impact of Covid-19, the Local Government Association (LGA) is warning. The government has told local authorities it will close three funding schemes implemented earlier in the year to provide crucial financial support. The Small Business Grant Fund, the Retail, Hospitality and Leisure Business Grants Fund and the Discretionary Grant Fund will all shut up shop on 28 August. Local authorities have received central government funding to cover the cost of the schemes, but any unclaimed funds will have to be returned to the government. The LGA believes that thousands of businesses have yet to claim support they are due, with the total amount of grant cash still available estimated to be…

Clouds are gathering over the global economy. In late June the International Monetary Fund revised its expectation of a 3% contraction in global GDP in 2020 down to a recession of 4.9%. It added that investors are gambling that central banks will come to their rescue if a second wave of Covid-19 occurs as lockdowns are lifted. In these uncertain times investors should seek out companies with strong market positions in defensive sectors and “wide moats”: entrenched competitive advantages that help them fend off any potential rivals. Stocks should offer reasonable value and a meaningful dividend yield. Seek safety and value “The group has 26 products with sales of over $1bn” These two criteria are key. For example, software giant Adobe is an excellent company with a wide moat, but…

Online grocer Ocado (LSE: OCDO) has been one of the biggest winners of the Covid-19 lockdown as consumers have kept away from bricks-and-mortar supermarkets. So many new customers were knocking at its virtual door that it had to close to new business; at one point it had a waiting list of over a million. Ocado, once one of the most shorted stocks on the market, has risen by 93% in the last year and now boasts a market value of £16bn, says The Times. It is worth more than Sainsbury’s and Morrisons combined, despite only having 1.7% of the market.…

Henry Fauntleroy was born in London in 1784, the son of banker William Fauntleroy, the managing partner of Marsh, Stracey, Fauntleroy and Graham, also known as the “Berners Street Bank”, after the London street on which it was located. Henry joined the bank at the age of 16. He was so successful that, when his father, who was one of the founders, died in 1807, the other partners decided to let Henry take over the management of the institution, on a generous salary, even though Henry was only 23 at the time. What was the scam? During the first seven years of Henry Fauntleroy’s management, the bank’s position steadily worsened. Fauntleroy was able to hide this from his partners by manipulating the bank’s figures, but the institution was on the…

Lockdown and social distancing have caused camera sales to plummet as there isn’t much point in buying a camera if there’s nothing much to take pictures of. However, with restrictions on outdoor activities being gradually lifted, photography enthusiasts may now be thinking about buying a new camera. One option that they should consider is Sony’s A6100 camera, which I had the privilege of testing in late February and early March. Released last year, it is designed to replace the A6000 as Sony’s entry-level interchangeable-lens mirrorless camera. Although the cheapest model, the A6100 features all the latest advances in camera technology. The autofocus system is fast and reliable, allowing you to not only track a moving subject, but also lock focus on their eyes. Those interested in video will also enjoy…

Who says equity markets are “dislocated from reality”, asks a Morgan Stanley note. America’s S&P 500 has rallied by more than 50% since the March lows and closed just short of an all-time high on Monday. In a year marked by a devastating pandemic the index is up by more than 3%. Yet earnings have been surprisingly chipper, suggesting that everything is not quite as grim as predicted. Clearing a very low bar As of early this week about 90% of S&P 500 companies had reported profits for the second-quarter, a period that coincided with the worst of the global lockdowns. Unsurprisingly, aggregate earnings are down by 33% year-on-year, says Morgan Stanley. That was driven by steep losses at energy, travel and finance companies, but the median loss was a…

“In normal times at 4pm on a [weekday] City boys and girls would be gearing up for a night on the town… Instead, the financial district is dead… [If it remains] so, then... the City of London has had it… Banking has always thrived on the pubs, restaurants and clubs where the real business often gets done… if the City’s fun side doesn’t return, it hardens the case of Frankfurt and Brussels as rival places to do business. They aren’t much fun either and thus far have been unable to compete with London as financial centres for precisely that reason… David Buik of Aquis Exchange [says] ‘the tech can’t do everything; it needs people…. If we don’t go back to the office the interpersonal skills the financial sector needs will…

Three to buy Legal & General Evening Standard “There’s no pleasing” some people. This life insurance and annuities giant has bucked the trend by announcing that it will pay the same dividend as last year, only to receive a “share-price clobbering”. Investors had been hoping for an increase. Covid-19 has made only a small dent in L&G’s profits and the business should enjoy structural growth from an ageing population and corporations looking to transfer pension risks. A recovery may be some way off, but on a dividend yield of almost 8% shareholders can afford to be patient. 220p Softcat Investors Chronicle Corporate demand for computer software and hardware is soaring and IT resellers are quids in. Softcat has become one of the UK’s top players in the sector, with operating…

• Corporate raider Edward Bramson (pictured) has launched “yet another broadside” against Barclays’ management that reads like the “desperate act of someone who can’t bring himself to admit failure”, says Ben Marlow in The Daily Telegraph. The activist investor remains “obsessed” with the group’s investment bank, convinced that Barclays should shrink the division and concentrate on its “extensive high-street operations”. However, the investment banking division was the “one bright spot” in the group’s “otherwise dismal” latest results, with combined turnover from bond, currency, commodity and share trading increasing to £4.5bn on the back of “volatile” markets. With many European banks quitting investment banking, there is room for Barclays to earn a “respectable crust” alongside the “big beasts” of Wall Street. After a “fruitless” two-year campaign, it is time for Bramson…

TikTok, a social-media app for sharing videos, which has millions of teen and even pre-teen followers, would seem an unlikely battleground for a geopolitical struggle between the world’s two largest economies. Owned by the Chinese web giant ByteDance, TikTok has more than 800 million users and has started to rival the American giants of social media. With its engaging mix of jokes, videos and music, TikTok is a lot of fun, and it has the potential to be a huge business as well. A bridge between East and West President Donald Trump, though, is not amused. He has threatened to ban the app in America and is forcing through a sale of at least some of its operations to Microsoft. Why? The US argues that the massive amount of data…

Emerging markets are changing – or at least some of their stockmarkets are. The largest firms in the MSCI Emerging Markets index were once banks, oil firms or miners. Now the top places are held by the Chinese internet giants Alibaba and Tencent, followed by Korean electronics conglomerate Samsung Electronics and Taiwanese chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. Further down the top ten you find Meituan-Dianping (a Chinese firm that offers food delivery, online booking and voucher deals), JD.com (China’s Amazon) and Naspers (a South African internet group with investments in several countries). Investors are also flocking to US-listed firms such as MercadoLibre (a Latin American eBay) and SEA (which offers online gaming, ecommerce and digital finance services in Southeast Asia). “SEA has surged almost 900% in 18 months” All of these…

The AVI Global Trust (LSE: AGT) offers investors access to three opportunities at once. The first is family-controlled holding companies. Shares of companies with high ownership by founding families outperform. A recent report by fund managers Pictet found that those with family ownership above 30% outperformed the global market by 46% between 2007 and 2019. The direct link between ownership and management acts as a powerful incentive to focus on long-term value accretion rather than the short-term dash for glory favoured by all too many hired-hand chief executives. A new bull market Then there is Japan. Charles Gave, chairman of Gavekal, the investment research group, points out that “a new bull market in non-financial Japanese equities began sometime between 2012 and 2016, and it probably has a lot further to…

We still need to take back control Emma Duncan The Times The prime minister’s solution to the housing crisis is to grab more power over planning (see page 9). His response to the failings of the government’s response to coronavirus is the same. The pattern is a familiar one, says Emma Duncan. When things go wrong, central government blames other institutions and takes power away from them. That leaves them weaker and less able to deal with the next crisis. This cycle is accelerating under Johnson, whose special adviser, Dominic Cummings, “has not yet encountered an institution he did not want to weaken” and has turned Britain into one of the most centralised countries in the world. Local government in Britain raises less than 10% of its revenues, compared with…

jpkoning.blogspot.com The coronavirus pandemic has caused a global rise in the amount of cash in the economy, says John Paul Koning. In the UK, for example, there has been a big jump in the number of banknotes in circulation, even as withdrawals from cash machines collapsed by as much as 60%. It’s a similar story in the US, Canada and Europe. Given the drop in cash coming out of cash machines, as we buy more online instead, it can’t be that we’re withdrawing more and storing it under the mattress. So it must be that businesses and individuals are returning less cash to banks. The data suggests this is indeed what’s happening. But why? My theory is that it’s to do with the nature of black markets. It’s quite easy…

If you thought you’d heard the last of payment protection insurance (PPI) claims, think again. A new round of payouts may be about to begin – and you could be owed thousands. Over the years PPI was sold to millions of us, attached to loans, credit cards and mortgages. The idea was that PPI would cover your repayments if you died, became ill or disabled, lost your job, or for some other reason were unable to pay the debt. You just paid a small premium alongside your debt repayments. The trouble started when it became clear that many of us had been sold PPI despite the fact that we would never be able to claim on it owing to exclusions in the small print. With hefty commissions on offer, banks…

Which videoconferencing tool is right for your business? The work-from-home phenomenon looks likely to endure beyond the pandemic, even if staff eventually return to a mix of office-based and home-working. So choosing the best videoconferencing tool for your needs is crucial. To some extent, this is a personal choice, depending on which tools your staff are used to and feel comfortable with, and the facilities your firm needs. On features and usability, reviewers at PC Magazine give Google Meet and Zoom the edge over Microsoft Teams when it comes to the three videoconferencing tools currently dominating the market. Zoom wins plaudits for how easy it is for participants to join calls and to select options such as muting sound and video, as well as for features such as data on…

Hiscox (LSE: HSX) is an insurance company headquartered in Bermuda. It sells both commercial and personal policies, with offerings including buildings and contents insurance as well as specialist policies covering fine art and classic cars. Claims arising from the lockdown, including missed holidays and cancelled sporting events, have cost it dear. It recently increased its estimate of Covid-19-related claims by more than 50% to $232m, says the Financial Times, and reported a pre-tax loss of $138.9m for the first half of 2020. The share price has almost halved in 12 months.…

I have a soft spot for Ayala. I visited the winery 13 years ago and asked them to keep back several hundred cases of their fizz in their cellars, in Aÿ, for an extra nine months over the usual three years, to differentiate it from the regular Brut Majeur cuvée. A label saying “extra age” was stuck on the neck. This special label was a huge success for the members of a private club, but it was not on general release. It was a cool project and the wine was sublime. Imagine my surprise when I spotted a bottle at a Majestic tasting the other day, labelled Ayala Extra Age (£44.99, reduced to £34.99 for a Mix Six) – it brought the memories flooding back and reminded me that I…

America in the World A History of US Diplomacy and Foreign Policy By Robert B. Zoellick Twelve, £26.82 After nearly an entire term of President Donald Trump turning his back on “alliances, the international order, free trade, and human rights”, it’s easy to view his foreign policy as an “aberration”, says Foreign Policy magazine. America in the World: A History of US Diplomacy and Foreign Policy, by former diplomat Robert B. Zoellick, however, argues that Trump isn’t as much of an outlier as we might think. Zoellick’s account of 200 years of US diplomacy and foreign policy makes the case that America has always been torn between those who want to abandon foreign affairs in favour of the “ongoing national experiment”, and the belief that “American exceptionalism can remake the…

• Spain’s former king, Juan Carlos I (pictured), is accused of having committed several financial misdemeanours, of having “thousands of lovers, slaughtering wildlife on an industrial scale” and of having fled the country to, we are told, the Dominican Republic, says Virginia Blackburn in the Daily Express. “But before we all join the chorus of disapproval, shouldn’t we actually be glad that there are still afew flamboyant monarchs left?” After all, the Scandinavian “bicycle monarchies” are worthy, but dull, and Prince Albert of Monaco “looks a little like a middle-aged accountant”, but his sister, Princess Stephanie, was far more interesting. She ran off with an elephant trainer before marrying an acrobat. Yes, Juan Carlos’s days of wine and roses are long since over. “But while it lasted, by golly, it…