Innehållsförteckning för Issue 1021 från MoneyWeek

Three to buy Durnal Group The Sunday Times This Aim-listed drug developer is one of only a handful of drug firms on London’s junior market that “already has a product on the market”: Alkindi, a treatment for adrenal insufficiency. The firm is now conducting early stage trials of another drug, Ditest, a possible treatment for hypogonadism that has “blockbuster potential”. The business is likely to remain loss-making until 2023, but Diurnal “looks like a winner”. Buy. 63p Burford Capital Interactive Investor This litigation-finance business has shrugged off attacks from short-sellers to deliver capital gains to shareholders. Burford’s financial statements are difficult to parse: “it is impossible to be sure” of the “underlying value” of undecided legal cases. That remains a concern, but there is “genuine scope” for growth. All…

• Italian Instagram star Chiara Ferragni (pictured) has used her personal life and “collaborations with Dior, Lancôme and others” to accumulate 21 million followers, says Lisa Jucca on Breakingviews. Ferragni is now mulling a stockmarket listing to monetise the “clothing-to-lifestyle persona she has built”, which includes the marketing company Sisterhood and a stake in fashion group Serendipity. If she does float in Milan it would test the staying power of the “influencer” business model. Her group could be worth up to €80m, but the virus is forcing firms to cut marketing costs. Investors will need to be convinced that “digital businesses built on pretty faces are more than skin-deep”. • Ride-sharing and food-delivery companies Uber and Lyft are hoping that Proposition 22, which California voters will decide on in a…

Attempts to halt aconflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which has led to at least 500 deaths, appear to have failed, with both sides resuming “artillery, rocket and drone attacks” against each other, say Max Seddon and Laura Pitel in the Financial Times. The conflict involves the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, an important corridor for energy supplies to Europe. The region is nominally a part of Azerbaijan, but most of the population considers itself Armenian and it was promised significant autonomy after a war in the early 1990s that killed 30,000. At the end of last month Azerbaijan launched a surprise offensive to recapture the region. Both sides have “legitimate and passionately held claims to justice”, says The Observer, and tensions have been made worse by Turkey’s decision actively to support…

• The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), the country’s biggest bank, has “managed to fend off a protest vote against executive pay”, says The Sydney Morning Herald. One fifth of shareholders rejected the remuneration report, which handed chief executive Matt Comyn (pictured) a total pay package of almost A$5.7m (£3.1m) for the year, up from A$4.4m in 2019. His pay included a short-term bonus of A$2.4m. CBA’s stock is down 30% to 40%, results are down 11% for the year yet the bonuses get bigger, Vas Kolesnikoff of shareholder advisory service ISS said ahead of the vote. • Álex Cruz stepped down as chairman and CEO at British Airways last week with immediate effect (see page 8) after leading the airline for four years. He was paid £805,000 in salary,…

Free cash flow (FCF) measures a firm’s ability to generate spare cash that can be returned to shareholders as dividends or share buybacks, or used to pay down debts. FCF shows how much money is left over after all the costs of doing business and making capital investments. Free cash flow is important because a business needs to generate excess cash if it’s going to reward investors. If the amount of cash it produces is little more than it needs to survive, it’s not going to be a good long-term investment. In addition, cash flow is harder to fake than accounting profits (net income or earnings per share) so can provide a useful check on whether the company is doing as well as it claims. How you define FCF depends…

“I’ve barely bought anything new since March. Usually in the summer, I’ll go buy a new bikini without even thinking about it. This summer, I think I donated like six bags of stuff. I’m definitely feeling appreciative for how privileged I was just to be able to be home with my loved ones.” Georgia May Jagger (above), daughter of Mick, in The Daily Telegraph “A stockbroker is someone who invests your money until it’s all gone.” Woody Allen, quoted in The Sunday Times “I cheat my boys every chance I get. I want to keep ’em sharp.” “Devil Bill” Rockefeller, whose son John D. later became the world’s richest man, quoted in The Sunday Telegraph “£14.95 to watch a game on pay-per-view is disgraceful. £5, OK, but £14.95? It’s disgusting.…

Daniel Loeb of hedge fund Third Point is urging Disney to cut its dividend and use the cash to grow its Disney+ streaming service. Loeb, who built a stake in Disney during the second quarter of this year, says the firm should double its $1bn annual content budget, as well as raising the Disney+ monthly fee. Focusing on streaming could earn Disney $500bn per year and raise the “lifetime value” of each customer from $100 to $500, says Loeb, who reckons the market values Netflix’s subscribers at $1,200 each. Disney+ has gained 100 million streaming customers since launching in November 2019; Netflix has almost 200 million after 13 years. Disney suspended its first-half dividend in May as it struggles with theme-park closures and delayed film releases.…

Biden’s plans for reducing carbon emissions, “which go further than any previous Democratic presidential hopeful”, says Whitney Voûte of the US Solar Fund, should help renewable-energy stocks. They have already ticked up in anticipation of his victory. The iShares Global Clean Energy UCITS ETF USD (LSE: INRG) is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that tracks the S&P Global Clean Energy index. It invests in 30 large renewable-energy companies, roughly half of which are headquartered in the US. The two biggest holdings are Sunrun, a California-based residential solar power, and SolarEdge, an American firm working with Tesla Motors to produce cheap battery storage for residential solar panels. The only downside is that the ETF has a trailing price/ earnings (p/e) ratio of 32. The fund has an ongoing charge of 0.65% a…

With the US election nearing, there have been several recent studies examining the returns that investors should expect depending on the result. Looking at the 12 elections from 1972 onwards, Supriya Menon, Arun Sai and Marco Piersimoni of Pictet Asset Management argue that presidential elections have only a “transient” impact on stocks. In the short run it is hard to spot a consistent pattern: the performance of the S&P 500 in the three months after voting day has ranged from 10.2% after Bill Clinton’s re-election in 1996 to -17.9% after Barack Obama’s victory in 2008. However, if you take a longer view by looking at elections since 1933, the market tends to do better in the first three months after a Republican victory than under the Democrats, notes Chris Konstantinos…

Shares in Luceco (LSE: LUCE), which provides both businesses and consumers with LED-lighting, have gained 142% in the past 12 months. For the six months to 30 June pre-tax profit rose by 58.5% to £8.4m. The impressive performance prompted Luceco to reinstate its dividend and make an additional interim payment to make up for the 2019 final payout it suspended amid the crisis. Robust demand online and from households doing DIY has now prompted the group to raise its full-year guidance for the third time in three months, says Steven Frazer in Shares.…

Thomas Knowles was born in 1782 in Hythe, Kent, and went on to work as a servant in London. He was declared insolvent in 1819 and 1825, before finally being admitted to debtors’ prison for several months in 1829. William Hole, who was also born in Hythe, in 1793, worked as an apprentice before moving to London to set up his own shop. Like Knowles, he also faced personal financial problems and was declared bankrupt in 1827. In 1836 the pair teamed up with two other bankrupts to form the Independent West Middlesex Fire and Life Assurance Company (IWM). How did the scam work? IWM offered annuities and life insurance at rates that were far more generous than the competition, supposedly backed up by £1m in capital. They claimed the…

JJ Prüm is just about the only epic wine estate in the world on my hit list of greats that I have yet to visit. I have travelled to Germany many times and I have asked to visit Prüm (twice), but they have turned me down (both times). I am not sure why, but it hasn’t stopped me drinking gallons of their wines and writing up their finest releases in my various columns. The rieslings from the Wehlener Sonnenuhr vineyard, across all sweetness levels including the rare goldkapsel (gold capsule) wines, are all celestial, highly sophisticated and extraordinarily age-worthy. This 33-acre estate, with nearly 70% of ungrafted vines, also includes holdings in Zeltinger Sonnenuhr, my featured Graacher Himmelreich, Graacher Domprobst, Bernkasteler Lay and Bernkasteler Badstube, and all of these wines…

It will be the first time Hergé’s initial artwork for The Blue Lotus goes up for auction (see main article). The piece was inspired by a picture of Anna May Wong, the Chinese-American actress who appeared with Marlene Dietrich in the 1932 film Shanghai Express, says Bruno Waterfield in The Times. After it was rejected for being too expensive to reproduce, Hergé (pictured) gave it to Jean-Paul Casterman, the publisher’s young son. The boy tucked it away for safe-keeping. That’s the official version of events. “Hergé’s old friends say this account is as fanciful as any Tintin tale: they are aghast that the picture is up for auction, and say it was pinched from the author,” says Leo Cendrowicz on i news. “I met Jean-Paul in 1990 and he told…

100,000 The face value in bolivars of Venezuela’s new and biggest-ever denomination banknote. Due to delays in printing and the effects of hyperinflation, it will be worth around 18p by the time it enters circulation, says Bloomberg. £50m The total value of the Earthshot Prize, which is being launched by Prince William and Sir David Attenborough to reward the best ideas and technologies to save the planet from environmental disaster. Five £1m prizes will be awarded every year for ten years. S$10,000 The total value of baby bonuses (£5,700) currently available to parents in Singapore. The city-state in Southeast Asia is planning to offer new parents an extra, one-off payment (yet to be specified) in a bid to raise its birth rate further. $80m The expected sale price at auction…

Once a learner driver has paid £23 to take their driving theory test, they are told that they should revise for at least 20 hours before taking it, says Holly Bancroft in The Mail on Sunday. “But it would seem some candidates don’t even manage to open the highway code.” Last year, 279 learners got every one of the 50 questions wrong – incredible given that some answers “only require common sense”, and even guessing at random should give a score of about 12 out of 50 (there are four possible answers for each question). The Driving Standards Agency said that of the 1.9 million people who took the test, just over a million scored 43 or above to pass first time. Those who failed might want to remember that…

“Lockdowns have sped up the rate at which national debts are burgeoning. How tall can a house of cards rise before it topples? According to ‘magic money tree’ thinking, AKA modern monetary theory, a government that controls its currency can print money to cover its expenses without limit. We can see why this theory is so popular: everything for nothing. What’s wrong with this fairytale? It’s deeply counterintuitive, and never underestimate common sense. I can’t cite a single product that can be manufactured in infinite quantity and still retain its value. Flood the market with corn, and the price... plunges... the logic of oversupply also pertains to money: the more you conjure from thin air, the less it will buy. As an ominous early warning, the US Federal Reserve announced…

With 31,200 employees in 25 countries, France’s engineering-consulting group Alten is the first port of call for an array of industries, says WirtschaftsWoche. Aerospace and defence giants Airbus and Thales, car manufacturer BMW and energy multinationals EDF and Total are among Alten’s’ illustrious clients. Activities range from helping pharma groups develop vaccines to bolstering cyber defences in the financial sector. Alten has always been a defensive stock given its wide diversification, but the pandemic has dealt it a rare blow. A price-to-sales ratio of one is a bargain for a company set to benefit from key structural-growth trends such as digitisation and renewable energy.…

With shares in International Consolidated Airlines Group (IAG) “bumping along at all-time lows”, IAG’s new boss Luis Gallego has decided to shake things up, say Robert Lea and Martin Strydom in The Times. He has forced out Álex Cruz, the controversial head of British Airways, which IAG owns. Cruz, who has been replaced with Sean Doyle of Aer Lingus, earned notoriety for scrapping complimentary food and drink for short-haul economy passengers and overseeing IT disasters that left passengers stranded. BA was branded a “national disgrace” under his management for its job-cutting strategy. Many BA workers will see the departure of Cruz as “the first good news for cabin crew in months”, says Jim Armitage in the Evening Standard. But while his cuts “may not have been popular”, his overhaul has…

In his “boldest move” since becoming Labour leader, Keir Starmer used a live televised news conference to call for a “circuit breaker” lockdown, says Andrew Woodcock in The Independent. He said that Johnson’s three-tier plan would cause “prolonged agony” to the economy as “restrictions were repeatedly ramped up in response to their inevitable failure”, and that a short lockdown would provide time to ‘reset’ the test-and-trace system. A government source described him as a “shameless opportunist”. And rightly so, says The Daily Telegraph. Starmer could have mentioned his support for a lockdown in the Commons on Monday. He cannot “lament” job losses due to lockdowns only to propose one himself. His intervention was the “closest thing to true leadership the country has seen in months”, says John Crace in The…

Despite Joe Biden’s commanding poll leads (see main story), the betting exchanges seem to be largely unchanged in their assessment that Trump, although likely to lose, still has a significant chance of victory. With £128m now matched on Betfair, Biden’s odds are only slightly shorter at 1.5 (66%) than President Trump’s at three (33%). SpreadEx has slightly increased its spreads on Biden’s electoral college votes to 320-330, with Trump down to 208-216. Rival spread-betting firm Sporting Index is slightly less bullish on Biden (pictured), putting the spreads on his electoral college votes at 318-324. My view is that it is very hard to see how Trump can win, although obviously it is not impossible. He has a hard core of supporters, but a majority of people dislike him, making a…

Members of Parliament are looking forward to receiving an extra £3,360 on top of their £81,932 annual salaries from next year, says Esther Webber in The Times. The Commons watchdog, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), has proposed that MPs’ pay should be linked to the average rise for public-sector workers as it undertakes its consultation on salaries. That means next year’s pay rise is expected to be based on October’s public-sector three-month annualised growth figure of 4.1%. The watchdog defended the decision “given the huge economic uncertainties arising from the pandemic”. MPs have already been given an extra £10,000 expenses allowance to meet homeworking costs. Jeremy Hutton, policy analyst at the TaxPayers’ Alliance pressure group, told The Sun: “IPSA must be tin-eared if it really thinks a pay rise…

Consider what “the easy route to a successful portfolio in 2020 would have been”, says Jonathan Ruffer, the founder of the £20bn asset manager that bears his name, in his latest letter to investors. First, hold firms such as Amazon “where Covid-19 has blown a mighty following wind”. Second, recognise “that pressure on central banks to cut interest rates further would be irresistible” and buy government bonds before they did so. If you did either, you had a very good year. “But a change in a single variable will sideswipe both those asset classes at the same time. Their dynamics feel very different, but actually, they are not.” In the eyes of the market, the long-term earnings power of tech stocks has become “more and more valuable” when “discounted at…

■ Investors in UK equity income funds are suffering a “double whammy” of reduced dividends and little or no capital growth, says Mark Atherton in The Times. In the five years to the start of October, UK income funds have produced an average total return – dividends plus capital gains –of just 3.1%. More than half have lost money. The situation’s no better with income investment trusts: many large trusts with “a lot of loyal investors” have posted double-digit losses. This isn’t just due to coronavirus – these funds are “dependent on old industries that may have limited prospects, such as oil, gas and financials”. It’s time to look more widely. Global income funds have returned 54.7% over five years, led by the Baillie Gifford Global Income Growth fund (88.1%).…

Small businesses in England that are ordered to close for a period as the government imposes local lockdowns will have access to two different types of financial support. Firstly from 1 November, when the existing furlough scheme closes, firms across the UK will be able to take part in the revamped Job Support Scheme. If a business has to close for seven days or more, the state will cover the cost of two-thirds of each employee’s wages, up to a maximum of £2,100 a month. Employers do not have to top up this contribution – though they are free to do so – but they will still be required to pay pension and national insurance contributions. In addition, businesses in England hit by a local lockdown will be entitled to…

This has been a good fortnight for my four long tips, all of which appreciated. Industrial and construction-equipment rentals firm United Rentals increased from $176 to $199. Media group and broadcaster ITV went up from 65p to 73p. Cruise ship operator Carnival Corporation climbed from $15.10 to $15.21. Homebuilder Bellway advanced from 2,360p to 2,691p. As a result, my long tips are making overall profits of £3,572, mainly owing to a £3,276 profit from United Rentals. The short positions were a slightly different story, with two out of the three moving against me. Online health-insurance firm eHealth rose from $75 to $83. Electric-truck manufacturer Nikola went up from $19.30 to $24.15. However, the good news was that online furniture retailer Wayfair fell from $300 to $293. Online education provider GSX…

Greencore (LSE: GNC) is a convenience-food maker whose products include Marks & Spencer’s sandwiches. The group expects sales for the final quarter of its financial year, which ended on 25 September, to be 19% below last year’s level. It has been a casualty of the lockdown, when commuters stayed at home and city centres were empty. Full-year sales are likely to have fallen by 14%. Earlier this year the company cancelled its half-year dividend and said it is not planning a final 2020 or an interim 2021 payout. The stock has fallen by 53.8% in a year.…

Last year, a drawing of young cartoon reporter Tintin carving a propeller from a tree trunk sold for $1.1m with Dallas-based Heritage Auctions. It was special because it was the original artwork used for the first published magazine cover to feature Tintin in February 1930. It was a fitting illustration because the market in artwork by Tintin’s Belgian creator, Georges Rémi, known as Hergé, has truly taken off in recent years. The current price record was set in 2014, when a signed page of drawings from 1937 fetched €2.6m with Artcurial. The Parisian auction house boasts that eight out of the ten most expensive works by Hergé at auction have gone under its hammer. Tintin’s faux pas On 21 November, that number looks set to become nine when the initial…

The first issue of MoneyWeek came out on 4 November 2000. Back then, the iPhone didn’t exist. No one had heard of shale oil – the biggest energy story looming on the horizon was the threat of “peak oil”. As for bitcoin – we were all still struggling to wrap our heads around the idea of paying for purely digital goods, let alone using a purely digital currency. Britain was thinking of joining the euro, which wasn’t yet in circulation. The Bank of England interest rate was 6% – imagine trying to pay your mortgage at that rate today. Chancellor Gordon Brown was in the process of selling off half of Britain’s gold reserves at an average price of about $275 an ounce – a bargain (for the buyers). Amazon’s…

The UK stockmarket’s performance relative to the global average over the past 12 months has been “the worst in over 40 years”, says a Morgan Stanley note. A bungled pandemic response and ongoing Brexit uncertainty aren’t helping. Yet the key issue is the FTSE’s sector mix. This has been the year of the technology stock, but out of 15 major world markets, only Australia and Switzerland have a lower technology weighting than the UK. Our indices are heavy on unfashionable commodities and financial stocks. The FTSE 250 is down by 18% so far this year, while the FTSE 100 has shed 21%. The FTSE 100’s cyclical sectoral composition – “consumer discretionary, energy, materials and financials” – means it is badly hit when the economy tanks but also poised to outperform…

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index remains around 40% off its 1989 record peak. But the little-known Nikkei 500 index has just eclipsed its 1989 high, marking an impressive comeback for corporate Japan. This index is arguably a better gauge of the economy, as it “better reflects changes in Japan’s industrial structure and the economy’s shift to the service industry”, says livemint.com. It includes stocks such as videogame maker Nintendo, factory-automation specialist Keyence and furniture-store chain operator Nitori. Yasuo Sakuma of Libra Investments notes that the Nikkei 500’s run shows that the market is now driven by firms that can grow earnings without a weaker yen. The 225 is skewed towards the old economy and exporters.…

The Philippines saw its biggest initial public offering (IPO) in four years this week as Converge Information and Communications Technology Solutions raised 25.3 billion pesos ($523m), says Ian Sayson on Bloomberg. It sold 1.51 billion shares at 16.8 pesos each. Converge is the largest and fastest-growing high-speed fixed broadband operator in the Philippines. A third of the proceeds will go towards funding capital expenditure and helping to speed up its fibre-network rollout throughout the country. The group has benefited from the increased use of the internet throughout the pandemic as most people stayed at home. Profits rose by 53% year-on-year in the first half of 2020.…

Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group is attempting to take advantage of investor appetite for both special-purpose acquisition companies (Spacs) and technology shares, says Tim Culpan on Bloomberg. The Spac will comprise money from public investors, SoftBank’s flagship Vision Fund and funds from selling additional debt. The resulting pool of capital can then be used to buy private companies. The new vehicle will mark the first time that private investors will be allowed to participate directly in SoftBank’s venture capital investments; they won’t be obliged to suffer “a massive conglomerate discount” by investing in the wider company. “Nothing screams ‘bubble’ in the technology sector louder than a SoftBank Vision Fund Spac,” says Liam Proud for Breakingviews. But SoftBank’s decision to explore this route is also a mark of the company’s “waning influence”.…

Everybody hates oil stocks. Income seekers are scared by the dividend cuts. Sustainable investors don’t like the pollution. Momentum traders aren’t interested in anything that’s not tech. And everybody else looks at the red ink in recent results and steers clear. So it’s understandable that most of the oil majors – BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Eni, Equinor (formerly Statoil), ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell and Total – are down 40%-60% this year. “The five biggest firms generated $1.5trn, but reinvested four-fifths” With yields of 5% or more even after cuts, these firms look cheap if the oil price recovers once Covid-19 passes. Crude is $40 per barrel now, but was $60-$70 last year, at which point the majors are very profitable. The strongest argument against them is that oil is on its…

It’s time for a post-Covid solidarity tax Philip Aldrick The Times In the three months to June, the household saving ratio in the UK hit a record 29.1% – in other words, in that period, on average, people saved as much as they usually would in one year, says Philip Aldrick. The earnings of 8% of households have risen during the pandemic. Yet many others, particularly those in low-wage hospitality work and the young, have suffered. It’s a similar story in business. Nightclubs are in trouble while food retailers thrive. When the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, comes to balance the books, he needs to bear this in mind. Britain’s wartime experience is instructive. The idea then was to target armaments makers and other industries that benefitted from the war effort. In…

UK equities performed dismally in both absolute and relative terms in the first half of the year with the FTSE All-Share index returning -17.5% while the MSCI World index gained 0.5% in sterling terms. The performance of small caps was even worse; the Numis Small Cap index (excluding investment trusts), which represents the bottom 10% of the UK market by value, returned -25%. Explanations for this included the greater domestic focus of smaller companies, the exodus from UK active funds – nearly all of which are overweight mid and small caps – and the relentless move to passive investing, which favours large caps. Few expected or even noticed a dramatic turn-around in the third quarter. The All-Share index still performed poorly, returning -3.8%, but the Numis index returned 4.7%. Small-cap…

The US presidential election has been one of the most bitter and contentious in living memory. With 3 November now less than three weeks away, you may be tempted to go and lie down in a dark room until the dust settles. But that could be a mistake. We have often pointed out that people tend to overestimate the impact that politics has on investment portfolios; in America’s case, the economic cycle is generally far more important than the election cycle. But this contest could prove an exception to the rule – especially since there is a chance that the result may not be clear for some time. So it is worth reviewing what a victory for Joe Biden or Donald Trump could mean for your portfolio, and what impact…

When it is time to renew your insurance policies you may be in for ashock. The pandemic has prompted arise in premiums for several types of insurance. Here’s how to hunt down the best deals. “A DIY boom during lockdown has been partly blamed for the price of home insurance increasing by 7% this year, from an average premium of £239.10 to £255.79,” says Jessica Beard in The Daily Telegraph. Aviva noted “a rise in claims for DIY disasters” during the summer. “Travel insurance premiums for European trips are up by 9% since March” If your home insurance is due for renewal, shop around using price-comparison sites. And only get the cover you need. For instance, make sure your buildings insurance covers the rebuild value of your home – you…

The Small Business Commissioner (SBC) may be handed new powers amid growing concern about a spike in late payments during the pandemic. Ministers have launched a consultation on proposals to allow the SBC to fine companies that fail to pay small businesses on time and to force such companies to share confidential information about their business practices. The body may also be allowed to launch investigations into firms’ payment practices even when it has not received a specific complaint. The SBC was launched in 2017 to help small businesses tackle late payment problems, but has had only limited success so far, securing around £7.5m of overdue bills for firms that have complained to it. That represents a drop in the ocean given that the government itself reckons small firms are…

The V-shaped recovery in Asian equity markets suggests that the region has fared relatively well compared with others. That may ring true given the lower infection rates, fewer deaths and less economic damage incurred by North Asian economies such as Taiwan, Korea and China, but the experience of these countries is not comparable to those of Southeast Asia and India, which have had less success in containing the virus. We think the best approach is to invest in companies that are worth more than the market believes. We are looking for new stocks trading at significant discounts to our estimate of fair value, with deep discounts currently available in more cyclical areas of the market, where there is less confidence in the pace of recovery. The companies below interest us…

Going… Around 440 rare cinema posters are heading for auction with the Prop Store in London on 5 November. Together, they are expected to fetch at least £180,000. The top lot is a Dr. Noposter from 1962, featuring the famous “007” gun logo for the first time. It is expected to sell for at least £8,000. An Australian Mad Max poster from 1979, considered the “holy grail” of posters for this film, has been valued at between £3,000 and £4,000. And a Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) poster is estimated to fetch from £2,500. But “the auction is suitable for fans with a variety of budgets”, says MSN.com. At the lower end of the price spectrum, a poster advertising Jurassic Park, from 1993, has a price tag of…

• Milton Friedman – an economist influential in the Eighties – believed that “the primary – and pretty much only – duty of a businessman is to his shareholders”, says Ruth Sunderland in the Daily Mail. The financial crisis shook that philosophy to its core and the pandemic “may be its death knell”. Banks, for example, “having taken billions of rescue cash” in the financial crisis, were revealed as ownerless corporations with no one capable of keeping “greedy incompetents” such as Fred Goodwin (pictured) in check. Now, in the pandemic, businesses have again been helped with hundreds of billions of pounds. Thankfully, many businesses have responded “brilliantly”, proving they are “not soulless profit machines but part of the communities they serve”. Fifty years on, “it’s time to leave Friedman behind”.…

In last week’s Pence-Harris showdown the most serious threat to the US and its people was not even mentioned. There was nothing about how the country might get out of its doomsday debt debacle. The federal government now owes $27trn that it can’t pay. The country as a whole, including the private sector, owes $80trn that it can’t pay. And the government has promised America’s 76 million baby-boomers (and others) $210 trn in unfunded “entitlements” – pension, medical, and social-security benefits – that can’t be paid either. Rather than man up and cut back on spending, both parties are committed to covering these unpayable debts by printing money – a policy that always leads to bankruptcy, poverty, depression and inflation, as well as social and political chaos. “Economies are complex…