Author: James Buchan

Money

To give money to a woman – and here I must speak as a man – is to deny her special quality her irreplaceability and reduce her unique amiability to a commodity. Money takes away her name while transforming her lover into a nameless customer of a market of appetites.

James Buchan

To give money to a woman – and here I must speak as a man – is to deny her special quality her irreplaceability and reduce her unique amiability to a commodity. Money takes away her name while transforming her lover into a nameless customer of a market of appetites.

Money

Because bankers measure their self-worth in money and pay themselves a lot of it they think they're fine fellows and don't need to explain themselves.

James Buchan

Because bankers measure their self-worth in money and pay themselves a lot of it they think they're fine fellows and don't need to explain themselves.

Hope

For all their current prestige Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers are still regarded in all but the most desperate districts of Gaza or Peshawar as romantics with little chance of more than symbolic victories however bloody and brutal. That gives both the Middle East and the West a small and distant hope of security.

James Buchan

For all their current prestige Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers are still regarded in all but the most desperate districts of Gaza or Peshawar as romantics with little chance of more than symbolic victories however bloody and brutal. That gives both the Middle East and the West a small and distant hope of security.

History

Bulls don't read. Bears read financial history. As markets fall to bits the bears dust off the Dutch tulip mania of 1637 the Banque Royale of 1719-20 the railway speculation of the 1840s the great crash of 1929.

James Buchan

Bulls don't read. Bears read financial history. As markets fall to bits the bears dust off the Dutch tulip mania of 1637 the Banque Royale of 1719-20 the railway speculation of the 1840s the great crash of 1929.

History

Cause and effect the riddle of all history is a particular devil in financial history and never more so than today where entire classes of security are collapsing not on public exchanges and stock-tickers but because there are no markets to establish prices this side of nothing.

James Buchan

Cause and effect the riddle of all history is a particular devil in financial history and never more so than today where entire classes of security are collapsing not on public exchanges and stock-tickers but because there are no markets to establish prices this side of nothing.

History

One of the consequences of the Iranian revolution has been an explosion of history. A country once known only from British consular reports and intrepid travelogues is now awash with historical documents letters diaries grainy video weblogs and secret police files of questionable authenticity.

James Buchan

One of the consequences of the Iranian revolution has been an explosion of history. A country once known only from British consular reports and intrepid travelogues is now awash with historical documents letters diaries grainy video weblogs and secret police files of questionable authenticity.

History

The year 2008 was a reminder to those who had forgotten that there is such a thing as history and that the cycle of famine and feast in commerce first identified in antiquity and well understood in the Middle Ages was not suddenly abolished in modern times.

James Buchan

The year 2008 was a reminder to those who had forgotten that there is such a thing as history and that the cycle of famine and feast in commerce first identified in antiquity and well understood in the Middle Ages was not suddenly abolished in modern times.

History

The truth is of course that history is not completed in modern commerce any more than philosophy is perfected in political economy. In other words there is nothing timeless or God-given about filling stations and penicillin and plastic bags.

James Buchan

The truth is of course that history is not completed in modern commerce any more than philosophy is perfected in political economy. In other words there is nothing timeless or God-given about filling stations and penicillin and plastic bags.

Future

For 50 years nuclear power stations have produced three products which only a lunatic could want: bomb-explosive plutonium lethal radioactive waste and electricity so dear it has to be heavily subsidised. They leave to future generations the task and most of the cost of making safe sites that have been polluted half-way to eternity.

James Buchan

For 50 years nuclear power stations have produced three products which only a lunatic could want: bomb-explosive plutonium lethal radioactive waste and electricity so dear it has to be heavily subsidised. They leave to future generations the task and most of the cost of making safe sites that have been polluted half-way to eternity.

Future

In rising financial markets the world is forever new. The bull or optimist has no eyes for past or present but only for the future where streams of revenue play in his imagination.

James Buchan

In rising financial markets the world is forever new. The bull or optimist has no eyes for past or present but only for the future where streams of revenue play in his imagination.

Environmental

Nature is not simply a technical or economical resource and human beings are not mere numbers. To suggest that one can somehow align all the squabbling institutions of science environmental management government and diplomacy in an alliance of convenience to regulate the global climate seems to me optimistic.

James Buchan

Nature is not simply a technical or economical resource and human beings are not mere numbers. To suggest that one can somehow align all the squabbling institutions of science environmental management government and diplomacy in an alliance of convenience to regulate the global climate seems to me optimistic.