Speak and Write like The Economist: Говори и пиши как The Eсonomist

Everyone is a capitalist these days. That means keeping a much closer eye on those who manage that capital.

Pushing down prices on one side of the platform may cause charges on the other side to rise, a bit like a waterbed.

"Cocaine," said Robin Williams, a comedian who was rueful about addiction, "is God's way of saying that you're making too much money."

Children are sometimes reassured that new siblings arrive via friendly storks. The reality is messier. Money creation is much the same. The "stork" in this case is the central bank; many think it transfers money to private banks, which act as intermediaries, pushing the money around the economy. In reality, most money is created by private banks.

In a recent report McKinsey, a consulting firm, looked at five measures of Africa's economic connection with the world: trade, investment stock, investment growth, infrastructure financing and aid. It found that China is among the top four partners in each of these.

Two hundred metric tons of gold would occupy a cube of a little more than two meters on a side – it would fit into a small bedroom.

Forget left and right. These days, it is often said, the real dividing line in politics is between open-door liberals and pull-up-the-drawbridge nationalists.

Unless you are a hermit, you own and consume things that have passed through the port of Rotterdam.

The arrival of mass democracy after 1918 was followed by a boom in the 1920s but then by the Depression, stockmarket collapse and abandonment of the gold standard.

Trade deals are started by liberals but finished by protectionists.

Valeant describes itself as "bringing value to our shareholders". While there is no indication of fraudulent or illegal practice, the company could end up joining a pantheon of corporate fiascos that includes Enron (which pledged to "create significant value for our shareholders"), Lehman Brothers, ("maximising shareholder value") and MCI WorldCom ("a proven record of shareholder value creation").

Teodoro Obiang, the president of Equatorial Guinea, and Teodorín, the most influential of his 42 recognised children, have expensive tastes. While most of his citizens live on less than $2 a day, the older Mr Obiang once shelled out $55 million for a Boeing 737 with gold-plated lavatory fittings. His son had at one point amassed $300m in assets, including 32 sports cars, a Malibu mansion and nearly $2m in Michael Jackson memorabilia. In 2014 the United States Department of Justice forced Teodorín Obiang to sell off a Ferrari, his Los Angeles abode and six life-size Michael Jackson statues in a money-laundering settlement. (He was allowed to keep one of the King of Pop's crystal-encrusted gloves.)

Slavery in America was not just wicked, it was lucrative: by 1860 the total capital that slave-holders had "invested" in captive human beings was three times larger than investment in manufacturing in the northern and southern states combined.

China produced more steel in two years than Britain since 1900.

The US is still the US, held together by credit cards and Indian names.

China's problems are so many, various and deep that it does indeed seem impossible that the Communist Party can survive. Yet it raises the opposite question too: what, then, has held such an improbable regime together for so long?

Creating pay structures that perfectly reflect performance is a mug's game. That hasn't stopped an entire industry of consultants and proxy advisers from trying. Setting detailed targets risks distorting behaviour.

The company that establishes itself early enjoys disproportionate rewards. First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.

One Western company urged its employees to "act like an owner" without realising that, in some cultures, acting like an owner means playing golf all day.

Bad money chases out good.

Authenticity is the secret of success; once you can fake it, you've got it.

There are more people in America who believe that Elvis is still alive than thought Obama's stimulus would create jobs.

Class identifying markers: occupation, address, accent and income.

That openness is evident across British life. The country's car industry is almost totally foreign owned (Tata has made a great success of Jaguar Land Rover); many of its biggest airports are in Spanish hands; chunks of its energy industry belong to French and Chinese investors; its football clubs make the United Nations look monocultural. Its central bank is run by a Canadian and the London Olympics were organised by an Australian. London's glitziest property developers are from Qatar and Malaysia and its stock exchange may soon be in German hands. In 2013 the proportion of shares in Britain's firms owned by foreigners zoomed passed the 50 % mark, to almost total public indifference.

What gets measured gets managed.

A country where shareholders with opinions have hitherto been about as welcome as skunks at a garden party.

Cost of capital is now king. The king seems to live in China.

What is poverty and when is a person poor? Does a family home have a dirt or dung floor? Does it lack a decent toilet? Must members of the household travel more than 30 minutes on foot to get clean water to drink? Do they live without electricity?

Lehman Brothers disaster would never have happened if it had been Lehman Sisters.

Walmart's 2.2m worldwide workforce is about the same size as China's army, excluding reservists.

We are born in a Pullman house, fed from the Pullman shop, taught in the Pullman school, catechised in the Pullman church, and when we die we shall be buried in the Pullman cemetery and go to the Pullman hell.

The wealth distribution in the world is equivalent to a world of ten people, in which one has $1,000 and the other nine has $1 each.

John Maynard Keynes still best describes the challenge facing the discipline today: "Economics is the science of thinking in terms of models joined to the art of choosing models which are relevant to the contemporary world."

Why didn't Sony invent the iPod?

The Busara Centre for Behavioural Economics in Nairobi, Kenya, runs experiments with participants from slums and rural areas. Its researchers looked at the results of a lottery-like scheme in rural Kenya, in which a random sample of 503 households spread over 120 villages was chosen to receive cash transfers of up to $1,525. The average transfer, $357, was almost enough to double the wealth of a typical villager. The researchers measured the well-being of villagers before and after the transfer, using a range of different methods: questionnaires about people's life satisfaction, screening for clinical depression and saliva tests for cortisol, a hormone associated with stress. There is an asymmetry in the way people compare themselves with others. We tend to look exclusively at those better off than us, rather than contemplate our position within the full range of outcomes. When the lot of others improves, we react negatively, but when our own lot improves, we shift our reference group to those who are still better off. In other words, we are never satisfied, since we quickly become accustomed to our own achievements. Perhaps that is what spurs people to earn more, and economies to grow.

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.

You can happily go through a day consuming nothing but the products of family concerns: reading the New York Times (or the Daily Mail), driving a BMW (or a Ford or a Fiat), making calls on your Samsung Galaxy, munching on Mars Bars and watching Fox on your Comcast cable.

He was a man of splendid abilities, but utterly corrupt. Like rotten mackerel by moonlight, he shines and stinks.

Koch Industries has also demonstrated a striking ability to reform itself. Prodded by the spate of legal suits in the late 1990s, the firm introduced a big safety programme. Charles's corporate mantra was "10,000 % compliance with all laws and regulations", by which he meant 100 % compliance from 100 % of employees.

Gold miners were supposed to be "believers" in gold rather than efficient managers out to maximise profits.

The best way to find Albany on a map is to look for the intersection of greed and ambition.

Simon Kuznets, a Nobel laureate, is supposed to have remarked: "There are four kinds of countries in the world: developed countries, undeveloped countries, Japan and Argentina."

The supply side sets the scene; the demand side provides the drama.

Facebook, Google and Groupon were all founded by people in their 20s or teens. Mark Zuckerberg, aged 27, will soon be able to count his years on earth in billions of dollars.

Relying on the import of money, workers and brains, America is a Ponzi scheme that works.

Managers who rely too much on their strengths may become hammers that see every problem as a nail.

Diamonds, famously, are a girl's best friend, graphite makes good pencil lead.

Walmart, the world's biggest retailer, has 1,500 employees in Silicon Valley trying to out-Amazon Amazon in areas such as logistics and making the most of social media.

Of the 7 billion people alive on the planet, 1.1 billion subsist below the internationally accepted extreme-poverty line of $1.25 a day. America's poverty line is $63 a day for a family of four.

When, as happened during the Napoleonic wars, a slaver's ship was captured by French privateers, the blacks aboard were often treated more carefully than the white seamen. The blacks were prized goods and their worth soared as commodity-based booms in the New World overwhelmed the sentiments of liberty, equality and fraternity. Once enslaved, the Africans were valuable as "investments (purchased and then rented out as labourers), credit (used to secure loans), property, commodities, and capital, making them an odd mix of abstract and concrete values."

Hundreds of jobs depend on Hollywood productions: blockbusters may require the help of as many as 1,000 firms. Producers need massages, assistants require stationery and starlets want scented candles and fresh roses; let alone what props managers, set-builders and costume departments will holler for.

Aluminium was once more costly than gold. Napoleon III, emperor of France, reserved cutlery made from it for his most favoured guests, and the Washington monument, in America's capital, was capped with it not because the builders were cheapskates but because they wanted to show.

The farthing was once made of silver, was steadily switched to cheaper copper, tin and bronze.

I am young and unemployed and face a lifetime on the dole. Why? This morning I collected my jobseekers allowance from my bank, where I have it paid directly into my account. I did not see a cashier, but withdrew money from a cash point. Then I went to the supermarket and bought French apples, German sausage and Danish bacon. I scanned the items at a self-service till, no need for a check-out assistant. I went home, switched on my Chinese computer and applied for jobs online. I do not send letters through the post; e-mail is more convenient. I then shopped online, I rarely use local shops. Who can I blame for the lack of jobs?

The original sin begins (depending on the chapter) in 1914, when the world suspended the gold standard at the start of the first world war; in 1933, when Franklin Roosevelt devalued the dollar against gold; in 1971, when Richard Nixon ended the dollar's convertibility to gold under the Bretton Woods system; or in 1987, when Alan Greenspan cut interest rates after the stockmarket crash.

What is the single most important price in the world? Popular answers are the price of oil, American interest rates or the dollar. Yet Chinese wages are, arguably, more important. China has by far the world's biggest labour force, of around 800m – almost twice that of America, the European Union and Japan combined.

In 1820, as some historians reckon and Chinese commentators like to point out, China's GDP was one-third of the world total. Then the reversals of the century of humiliation brought it low. By the 1960s, China's GDP had dropped to just 4 % of the world total. Now it has recovered to about one-sixth of the world's GDP – and at least 90 % of America's – in purchasing-power parity terms, according to the Conference Board, a business research organisation. Nationalists eagerly await the day when China's economy becomes once more the biggest in the world by any measure.

The super-duper rich are surprisingly unimaginative when it comes to dreaming up new ways to outdo each other. It includes such essentials as a mini-submarine, a hair salon and two helipads. Owning a yacht with only one helipad would be embarrassing – a bit like owning a football club that is only fourth in England's Premier League.

Over 1.2 billion people have to defecate in the open. Surprisingly, some of those who have to defecate in the open do not mind. Some rural men, and even women, quite enjoy a social squat in the bushes. Slum-dwellers in Nairobi have to pick their way through streams of sewage and take care to avoid "flying toilets", plastic bags filled with excrement that are flung with desperate abandon into the night. Nearly two-fifths of the United States' 25,000 sewer systems illegally discharged raw sewage or other nasty stuff into rivers or lakes in 2007–09, and over 40 % of the country's waters are considered dangerously polluted. Contaminated water lays low almost 20m Americans a year.

Cyprus never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

In Ghana the funereal send-off is as important as the life itself. But the costs, borne by extended families, can be punitive. Some 45 % live on less than $1 a day, 79 % on less than $2. Yet funerals tend to cost between $2,000 and $3,500. "Money measures the quality of the funeral and the family," says Sjaak van der Geest, an anthropologist. The more cash spent, the higher the reputation of the deceased and the family. Mr Okai died in hospital, then spent almost three months in the morgue, at a cost of $521: the longer your body is in the fridge, the more prestigious. The Ga king, recently buried in Accra, was on ice for 18 months; the Dagbon king, in northern Ghana, for a record four years.

Nobody knows how many homeless there are in Paris.

US Treasury Secretary Geithner's life in the trenches has produced its own vocabulary. Serious decisions are "consequential", good ideas are "cool", better ideas are "compelling" and the best ideas are at "the optimal frontier". During a crisis "plan beats no plan", jury-rigged measures in the face of unavoidable disaster are "foam on the runway", and bad outcomes are "dark". Managing public perceptions is called "theatre". "Fuck" also holds a prominent place in the Geithner lexicon, usually as an adjective, not a verb, as in "I have no fucking idea."

China's epic industrial boom will not be repeated; the days of making billions by shipping iron ore from Goa to Guangdong are over.

You have a decent job and work hard. You keep your nose clean, respect authority and have never joined a protest march. Suddenly you have the bad luck to face a cruel and seemingly impossible choice. Your superiors tell you to do something outrageous or unacceptable. Do you obey or, at grave personal cost, refuse?

China makes things you can drop on your foot. America merely designs, brands and peddles them.

As Fred Hirsch argued in his 1977 book, "The Social Limits to Growth", many good things in life are "positional". You can enjoy them only if others don't. Sometimes, a quick car, fine suit or attractive house is not enough. One must have the fastest car, finest suit or priciest house.

Consumers cannot compare what is legally produced in California with what is legally produced in Colorado – to say nothing of what is illegally sold in New York's Washington Square Park.

Ekhart, Indiana, is the RV capital of the world.

Until recently, Carrefour's supermarkets in France were run along Napoleonic lines. Strict orders emanated from its headquarters in Paris. Every store sold a similar range of products. If selling groceries were like marching an army over the Alps, this strategy would have worked brilliantly. But it isn't, and it didn't. At the big Carrefour in Monacoout went the racks of cheap luggage, of the sort chic locals would be embarrassed to see their servants carrying.

Mr Abe promised that Japan would enter trade negotiations to join the American-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – though he offered no promise to eliminate tariffs of up to 777.7 % on rice.

Big pickups are seen in the car industry as a leading indicator: rising sales point to Americans starting to build kitchens, fix roofs and hire contractors.

Family history has large effects that persist for much greater spans of time. Fathers matter, but so do grandfathers and great-grandfathers. Indeed, it may take as long as 300–500 years for high- and low-status families to produce descendants with equal chances of being in various parts of the income spectrum.

Some 3m wrecks pepper the ocean floors, according to the UN (though few contain riches). Finding them involves lengthy research and lucky breaks. Recovery can take months of work by specialist crews. Of 52 annual reports filed by publicly listed shipwreck-recovery firms since 1996, only five show a net profit.

Acquisitions can also be a form of financial engineering. This was a favourite game of the conglomerates of the 1970s and 1980s. A company with highly rated shares would bid for a group with poorly rated equity. Say Acme has 100m shares, earnings of $10m (earnings per share of 10 cents) and a share price of $2 (a price-earnings ratio of 20). Grotco has the same earnings and number of shares but its share price is just $1 (a p/e of 10). If Acme makes an all-share bid valuing Grotco at $1.20, it will need to issue 60m new shares. The combined group will have $20m of earnings, 160m shares and earnings per share of 12.5 cents. With the help of nothing more than maths, Acme's earnings per share will have jumped by 25 %. Merger booms usually peak with the kind of deal that resembles a Las Vegas wedding after an alcohol-fuelled night: both parties regret it in the morning.

Chairman Mao, as ever, had said it best: imagine the ping-pong ball as the head of your capitalist opponent, and each shot a point for the motherland.

Overall, the number without homes in the US is staggering. The number of homeless veterans of the Vietnam war is greater than the number who died in it. On any given night in America more than 640,000 men, women and children are forced to seek shelter, live in their cars, or sleep on the streets. Last year nearly 1.6m people used an emergency shelter.

A Polish Jew in an Episcopal graveyard in a largely Dominican neighbourhood. What could be more New York?

Obama sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China.

The average Swiss watch costs $685. A Chinese one costs around $2 and tells the time just as well (see chart). So how on earth, a Martian might ask, can the Swiss watch industry survive? Yet it does. Few can match the precision of a Nivarox ("Nicht variabel oxydfest" (G.) or "Non-Variable Non-Oxidizing") balance spring.

The euro needs French reform, German extravagance and Italian political maturity.

In happier days before the euro crisis, one government in Lisbon rebranded the Algarve as the Allgarve, hoping to appeal to English-speaking tourists. Now a Portuguese wit suggests rebranding the whole country as Poortugal.

The cult of the insider in Japan is rooted in its paddy fields, some scholars argue. To cultivate wet rice, villagers need to work together, sharing land, labour, water and gossip. Anyone not in the group is out of the loop. There is something of the rice paddy about Japan's capital markets, too.

"LVMH is like a mini Germany," boasts an insider. Like that country's Mittelstand, it has built a reputation for craftsmanship and quality that people are happy to pay extra for. The difference is, the Mittelstand makes unsexy things such as machine tools and shaving brushes, whereas LVMH makes champagne, handbags and other objects of desire.

The 1912 games were the last one where gold medals were made entirely of gold. Now they consist mainly of silver with a thin coat of gold. Winners in London are advised not to bite too hard on their medals, as they will have a gold content of only about 1.5 %.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote that: "In every big transaction, there is a magic moment during which a man has surrendered a treasure, and during which the man who is due to receive it has not yet done so. An alert lawyer will make the moment his own, possessing the treasure for a magic microsecond, taking a little of it, passing it on." Like so many novelists, he was talking bosh. No alert lawyer takes only "a little".