Recent Posts

The dream of cheap nuclear power is over now

  For much of my life, I loved the idea of nuclear power. The science was so cool, futuristic and complicated, the power plants so vast and majestic. I devoured science-fiction novels like “Lucifer’s Hammer,” where a plucky nuclear entrepreneur restarts civilization after a comet almost wipes us out. I thought of accidents like Three Mile Island and even Chernobyl ...

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India’s bad bank plan would be a $60bn mistake

  With most of its state-run lending businesses resembling one giant bad bank, it’s puzzling why India keeps toying with the idea of setting up a new one. The government’s annual assessment of the economy even invokes Sherlock Holmes to make a fresh case for an asset reconstruction company within the public sector. Other schemes have not worked, years have ...

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Deutsche Bank’s Russian scheme isn’t needed now

  Deutsche Bank, for which fines have become almost a routine expense, has agreed to pay $630 million to end US and UK investigations into a scheme that helped wealthy Russians move $10 billion out of Russia. But those clients have little need for such a channel anymore: Capital outflow from Russia has slowed to a trickle. Between 2012 and ...

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