So why did Ed Miliband stop his brother being leader of the Labour Party? As each month of his uninspiring leadership passes, it becomes more of a puzzle. In today's Guardian interview, we learn that he can solve a Rubik's Cube in 90 seconds. Perhaps David Miliband took two minutes, leaving Ed to regard him as being intellectually inferior. The rest of the interview shows Ed trying to ro...

There is something about this story about bank debt buybacks that I don't quite understand, although I have only had two cups of coffee as of the time of writing: "European banks are turning to buying back their own debt in order to raise some of the billions in extra capital required by regulators. At least six major banks have launched debt buybacks in the last two weeks and investment bank...

The legal and practical impediments to a possible return to the drachma look daunting – but so does the prospect of ever harsher austerity

The negotiations increasingly resemble a game of 20-dimensional chess, with the interests of the White House, the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses all diverging

Is there more to the story of the Anthony Weiner resignation than meets the eye? Quite possibly as an article from Josuapundit describes it (article excerpt below)! Is it possible that all of the pieces to a very strange Anthony Weiner puzzle that includes his wife Huma had to be assembled before he stepped down? Pieces that include the future ambitions of Huma (an interesting persona in her own r...

Why is Libya less controversial among MPs than Iraq?

You need to cut the deficit to get growth. No, you need growth to cut the deficit. That was today's Parliamentary equivalent to the "which came first?" - the chicken or the egg - puzzle. More illuminating I thought was what two heavyweights said in the TV studios. Former chancellor Ken Clarke told the Daily Politics today that the pain might go on for two or three years and accepted that ther...

Something of a puzzle this post. It is Guido who complains bitterly when newspapers pick up his posts and research, isn’t it?

Well, yes, quite. The solution for people who are bankrupt is for them to go bankrupt. This applies to countries just as much as companies or individuals. But as countries do not in fact go bankrupt, then bond defaults and investor haircuts all round are the only way to do it. It does rather puzzle me that those so

And it is a puzzle. I simply do not understand how he can hold violently contradictory views like this: On the other hand it taxes its companies on a completely perverse territorial basis – so that profit earned outside the US is not taxed until remitted from abroad……..The answer is very obvious: the US