Buttonwood’s notebook

The last post
So long, farewell

Three worries and three signs of hope in the final blog post

Overpaid, over-important and over-geared
The flaws of finance

The sector is essential to the economy. But it is rewarded too highly and imposes wider social costs. The penultimate in a series of farewell blogs

Affording retirement
Hope I save before I get old

Although we will probably spend 20 years or more in retirement, we don't think about it enough. The third in a series of farewell blogs

Black and white and read all over
The best books on finance and economics

A great book from the late Hans Rosling heads the list. The second in a series of farewell blogs

Long-term investing
Six precepts every investor should remember

The first in a farewell series of blogs

Technology and the economy
The smartphone and the toilet

Technological change has brought great benefits that aren't captured in GDP. That's not new

The market outlook
An update from Jeremy Grantham

Fixing America's pensions
A plan that needs more money

Topping up Social Security is a good idea but 3% contributions won't be enough

Democracy and economics
We have seen the future and it twerks

Leadership may be divided into the entertainment figurehead and the policymaking experts

Godzilla escapes
Markets think trade war is good for “absolutely nothing”

It may turn out to be bluster but it makes the world riskier anyway

The mulligan rule of investment
Beware of performance figures

Most funds fail to beat the index. But a lot of funds say they have. There is a simple explanation

The soaring cost of old age
The real problem with pensions

The big problem with DC schemes is that contributions aren’t high enough