With President Trump reportedly casting acquisitive glances toward Canada and Greenland, the world has been reminded of a long-lost genre of geopolitics: the real estate brochure. Borders, it turns out, are just zoning suggestions, and sovereignty is merely a lease agreement waiting to be renegotiated by someone with enough confidence and a very large Sharpie. […]
Tag: USA
The Cost of Combining Politics and Business
Politics and business, for a number of reasons, do not make good bedfellows! Take Elon Musk for example: While he and his minions are running havoc cutting (or more likely ‘slashing’) costs within the US government, sales of his Tesla cars have hit the rocks. In Switzerland in January 26.6% fewer Teslas were registered than […]
The Rise of Global Powers: Challenges for Europe
The world increasingly is revolving around three major powers: the United States, Russia and China. And with all three blocs being led by autocratic personalities and governments, a degree of confrontation is pre-programmed: America seeks to take control of the Panama Canal, would like to accept Canada as the 51st state and wants to buy […]
$370’000 per hour
That lawyers among other professionals can charge exorbitant hourly rates for their work is nothing new. But what the three law firms representing Richard Tornetta, the Tesla-investor who while holding 9 shares only in 2018 successfully sued the company over Elon Musk’s $56 billion compensation package now claim is nothing short of outrageous! In total […]
Divided We Stand: Navigating Political Polarisation
As elections in Britain and the United States are upon us (and all of a sudden also in France), it is time to look at the political landscape and how it has evolved. Once upon a time in the United Kingdom there used to be the Conservatives and the Labour Party – and to a […]
Presidential Past, Criminal Present
The announcement on 30 May was not quite unexpected I suppose: a New York jury found former president Donald Trump guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records. So the former and aspiring POTUS is now a convicted felon. This means, should he get re-elected in November, that the most powerful democracy in the […]
Blowing the whistle on whistle blowing?
Wouldn’t it be great to receive a $114 million payout? One lucky chap in the US actually in October 2021 was awarded exactly this amount by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and another agency for blowing the whistle on some shady business business practices by his financial markets employer. As a matter of fact, […]
Shoplifting
Shoplifting, large and small, tends to rise during times of crisis. As inflation makes things harder for more families, retail theft data will be a telling gauge for consumer distress. With prices rising exponentially, expectations are that this will become even more of a problem as long as high inflation persists. And it is’t just […]
How to hook your customers early
Tesla has many grownup fans around the world, and their cars are admittedly among the most popular EVs sold. And as any marketing guru would tell you, better get your customers hooked early: and that is exactly what Tesla is doing. The famous manufacturer of cars and batteries has launched – wait for it – […]
Swiss diplomacy
That the USA and Iran are not exactly on best terms is a well known fact, and the events of the last few weeks certainly have not helped deescalate the situation. What is less well known, however, is that since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the US and Iran use a secret back channel through […]
The grumpy older man 