The Blood Economy
The US supplies most of the world's blood plasma. Yet its policies raise hard questions about exploitation, dignity, and what happens when payment for plasma is banned.
8 min read
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August 2026
Markets Macro The Week the Rate-Hike Narrative Collapsed
Payroll shocks and tame inflation managed to undo a month of Fed hawkishness. The economy just got worse, but Wall Street just got happier.
8 min read
Markets The $3 Trillion Bet: The Private Credit Surge, the Forces Driving It, and the Doubts Ahead
Private Credit is one of the most rapidly expanding industries within private markets, with the Bank of England estimating a four-fold rise from 2015 to 2024. With the pressure of increased competition and potential reductions in interest rates, there is increased uncertainty around the future of the booming industry.
8 min read
Macro The Fed Isn’t the Only One Setting Interest Rates
Why the bond market may have become America’s biggest macroeconomic problem
9 min read
Markets Everyone Wants to Go Second: Private Equity's Push Into Big Law
Offshore law firms have already sold stakes to private equity. US Big Law is watching, waiting for someone else to go first. The legal industry's long immunity to outside capital is ending, but the terms remain deeply uncertain.
11 min read
Markets Not All Gold Glitters: Making Sense of the Gold Market
Paper-market distortion; central bank hoarding; mercurial retail frenzies; and shifting macroeconomic tides. The modern gold market is driven by a tangle of contradictory forces meaning that making sense of this historic safe haven requires looking past the spot price to unravel the forces actually moving the metal.
7 min read
Markets The Semiconductor Selloff: Correction or Warning Sign?
Semiconductor stocks have recently fallen despite resilient commercial demand, raising questions about whether the selloff is a temporary correction or an early warning of a broader economic slowdown.
7 min read
Macro The Economics behind Catastrophe
Drought on the Danube has forced nuclear plants in Hungary and Romania to cut output. Chernobyl and Fukushima show why the economic damage from a disaster travels far beyond the site, through budgets, supply chains and expectations, and why it lasts.
13 min read
Markets Hollywood's Most Profitable Hero
Sony brings the money, Marvel brings the vibes and Peter Parker gets caught in the middle of Hollywood's most profitable frenemy saga.
9 min read
Student Spotlight From Passion to Profit: The Rise of Private Equity in Football
Private equity is quietly rewriting football-club ownership. Chelsea and AC Milan offer two versions of the same wager, and raise the question of whether financial discipline and success on the pitch can ever sit comfortably together.
7 min read
Policy No.10 North: Is London Shrinking?
New Prime Minister Andy Burnham has big plans to decentralise his government from London, but how will he do this, and what difference could it make?
12 min read
Policy Why Every Child Needs a Political Education
Democracy only works if the people inside it understand how it works, yet a postcode lottery in political education means most young people never get taught how it works at all.
9 min read
Markets The AI Infrastructure Arms Race: Tomorrow's Economy, or Yesterday's Bubble?
Big tech is on track to spend up to $690 billion on AI infrastructure this year alone. History suggests the technology can still win even as many of today's financiers lose everything.
8 min read
Markets The Won's Great Reversal: How Chip Cash and a Rate Hike Rewired Korea's Currency
The won went from one of Asia's worst-performing currencies to one of the world's best in a matter of weeks, as chipmakers' overseas earnings came home, foreign equity selling eased, and the Bank of Korea ended a three-year rate freeze.
8 min read
Macro The World's Factory Has Run Out of Customers
For decades China was constrained by what it could produce. It is now constrained by what its households will buy, and the surplus it exports instead is reshaping trade policy across the world.
7 min read
Markets Sainsbury's Recovered Most of Its Money on Argos. It Still Lost a Decade
Sainsbury's got most of its money back from Argos, and the integration did roughly what management said it would. The problem is what the capital earned in the meantime: Argos now makes a 0.2% margin.
10 min read
Markets The New Rules of Pharma M&A
Big Pharma is acquiring earlier and accepting greater scientific risk for unproven drugs. The driver is not confidence in the science but the fear of a rival securing the next blockbuster first, as a $300bn patent cliff bears down on the industry.
8 min read
Policy The Price of Intelligence
AI data centres promise growth, but infrastructure constraints are creating political and economic resistance.
7 min read
Markets Why EQT Is Racing to Sell Private Equity to Individuals
The retail push looked like growth. It was really the industry building a capital base that does not depend on selling anything.
7 min read
July 2026
Macro Six to Three: A Divided Hold and the Curve the Bank Does Not Believe
Three of nine voted to raise Bank Rate. The Bank's own Report then said the market curve is steeper than policy needs to be, and that most of its slope is not a rate expectation.
14 min read