Speak and Write like The Economist: Говори и пиши как The Eсonomist - страница 14
The latest rally has been led by a small namber of stocks, sometimes dubbed the FAANGs (Facebook, Amason, Apple, Netflix and Google's parent, Alphabet) and sometimes FAAMG (replacing Netflix with Microsoft).
Should guests really expect authentic affection from staff whose weekly wage is less than their minibar bill?
Sometimes when you make a step forward you step in shit.
It is amazing how little $25m buys you these days.
Winston Churchill famously said America would always do the right thing after exhausting the alternatives.
If bullshit was currency, he would be a billionaire.
Slave ships could be smelled from miles away.
My watch costs more than your car… that's who I am.
Putting your man in charge is one thing, putting money on the table quite another.
Consultants steal your watch and then tell you the time.
Ford famously said that car-buyers could have any colour they liked, as long as it was black.
Rise early, work hard, strike oil.
They say that money can't buy happiness, but I would like to find out for myself if that's true.
Adam Smith spotted that economics has problems valuing nature. "Nothing is more useful than water: but it will purchase scarce anything; scarce anything can be had in exchange for it. A diamond, on the contrary, has scarce any value in use; but a very great quantity of other goods may frequently be had in exchange for it," he wrote.
"For a moderate fee," jokes Deirdre McCloskey, an economic historian, "an economist will tell you with all the confidence of a witch doctor that interest rates will rise 56 basis points next month or that dropping agricultural subsidies will increase Swiss national income by 14.8 %."
Haier and higher!
Britain had a window tax in the late 17th century, well before it introduced an income tax.
Pay the gas bill first, in other words, and then think of the world cruise.
The economic forces driving high-flying legal eagles into the bargain bin are no mystery.
The typical chief executive is more than six feet tall, has a deep voice, a good posture, a touch of grey in his thick, lustrous hair and, for his age, a fit body.
Running US Steel at the turn of the 20th century, Charles Schwab was perhaps the first person in America to earn a salary of $1m a year. What made him so successful? Was he a genius? No. Did he know more about steel than other people? Certainly not. So how did he get ahead? Schwab knew how "to make people like him".
At present the tallest is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which was completed in 2010 and, at 828 metres, shot past the previous record-holder, the 508-metre Taipei 101 tower. The Mecca Royal Clock Tower in Saudi Arabia, completed in 2012, is now, at 601 metres, the second-tallest. The Freedom Tower in lower Manhattan, built near the site of the World Trade Centre's twin towers (417 metres and 415 metres) that were destroyed by al-Qaeda in 2001, had its spire added in May to reach 541 metres. But work has now started on the Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Its exact proposed height is still a secret, but it will be at least a kilometre.
Scratch the surface of the planet and the chances that hydrocarbons will spew forth appear to grow by the day. This week America's Energy Information Administration (EIA) released new estimates of the amount of gas in the world's shale beds. It reckons that there are 7,299 trillion cubic feet, 10 % more than its 2011 estimate. The EIA's estimates for shale oil, not included in the 2011 numbers, are a staggering 345 billion barrels, adding a tenth to the world's total oil resources.
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