This post came about in the light of Holocaust Remembrance Day and the Trump administration’s recent ban on immigration to the US for people of certain nationalities despite them holing valid US visa or green cards – which both fell on the same day past weekend. As the descendant of European refugees, many of whom died … Read More →
Terracotta Warriors Group, Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, California This is a book I’ve been quite excited to read. I follow Gideon Rachman’s columns in the Financial Times and posts on Twitter regularly as he is one of the eminent foreign policy journalists today. Of course, he is also a Western journalist so even though he has travelled through most parts of the world and lived … Read More →
It took me much too long to write this post, but as they say ‘better late then never’. On December 10th, I was – like almost every week – at Lincoln Center. Beethoven’s 3rd piano concert, which is among my favourite 25 or so pieces in classical music, was to be played by Kun-Woo Paik in the … Read More →
When it comes to technology, I can get pretty geeky. Sometimes, I encounter issues or bugs in software that drive me mad but after going through the roof about them for a sufficiently long time, I am eventually sane enough to realise that this probably just affects me and one other person in New Zealand and … Read More →
Dr. Angelica Kohlmann speaking at IE Business School with Chair Guillermo de la Dehesa Romero and Dean Santiago Iñiguez de Onzoño. Transcript: Buenas tardes estimados estudiantes, en la última clase, después de un año en Madrid y antes de recibir el diploma del Master, me gustaría de testar su español… No, don’t worry, no Spanish test today – I’ll, continue in English! Dear Santiago, dear Faculty, dear Parents, Relatives, Ladies and Gentlemen, and most importantly, dear … Read More →
Outside the European Parliament. Here, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the European Union on October 12, 2012, an institution currently wracked by crisis but credited with bringing more than a half century of peace to a continent ripped apart by World War II. (AFP PHOTO / FREDERICK FLORIN) Brexit – It seems like no-one expected this to happen despite the various pre-referendum polls that put the odds of a Leave win at about 50%. The financial markets priced Brexit in with about a 10% probability. Then, just before the ballots started to be counted, the pound went up against the dollar, David Cameron … Read More →
Joshua Bell with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, at David Geffen Hall. Credit: Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times Every now and then there are those memorable moments. In late March, I was invited to a such a very special musical evening in New York. The day after the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields performed Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major (Op.35) at David Geffen Hall, there was a small cocktail reception at the … Read More →
It only needs four thought experiments to get you from the fact that the speed of light is always constant to the famed formula E=mc2. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ilb4M9MWmlc?rel=0&w=1280&h=720]
Extremely low interest rates and record high stock markets (now returning after a sharp correction in the second half of 2015 and at the beginning of this year) are bringing back a cyclically returning question: Is another financial bubble imminent? The simple answer is, of course, that we have no idea. There are so many … Read More →
In 1930, Senator Carter Glass proposed several versions of a bill which aimed at the separation of investment and commercial banking. It was the beginning of the great depression – a period right after the “roaring twenties”, a time when ‘there was so much alpha in the markets, you had to be an idiot not … Read More →
