The shortage of semiconductor microchips keeps getting worse. Why can’t we just make more? Bloomberg explains…

War risk is “consistently underestimated by money people” says FT commentator John Dizard following the escalation of tensions between China and Taiwan. The latter runs itself as a highly successful independent nation, but China insists it is a breakaway province that it is determined to recover.

Emerging markets offer many attractive firms that offer growth regardless of conditions in their domestic economies, say New York asset managers Jennison Associates.

The US government is pumping money and credit into the economy on a mindblowing scale equated with a war-time splurge. The excuse is that it needs to counter the damage done by the pandemic, but the Biden administration views it as an opportunity to pour money into its favoured interests – voters, welfare, public services.

The way governments have acted to deal with the pandemic has come as a shock to all of us. A big shock. They have thrown money at the problem on a scale rightly compared with that of fighting a world war, abandoned any pretence of thrift in public affairs, and ordered about their citizens like schoolchildren. With hardly any opposition.