Why we have lost faith in capitalism

Probably the best financial journalist ever, and certainly the funniest, is Christopher Fildes, the former editor of Euromoney, former City Editor of the Daily Mail and former Business Editor of The Spectator, among many other things.

If this sounds like the beginning of an obituary, I can assure you the old boy is still going strong.

His successor at the Speccie, Martin Vander Weyer, might agree with my assessment, while perhaps observing that he took over from Fildes in 2006 and that at the admittedly tender age of 66 is just about getting the hang of it.

My favourite Fildes joke goes like this: “Giving capital to a bank is like giving a gallon of beer to a drunk: you know what will come of it, but you can’t know which wall he will choose.”

Vander Weyer writes in that spirit and has done so in books including Falling Eagle: the Decline of Barclays Bank (2000), and Closing Balances: Business Obituaries from the Daily Telegraph (2006).

He has a new one out called The Good, the Bad and the Greedy: Why We’ve Lost Faith in Capitalism.

He hopes to restore it, I assume.

My own, short, effort to do the same came in TB on 5th November 2019.

I had a nine-point plan of which my favourite was: “Stop the endless woke bullshit. We are seeing company strategy dictated by a woke 28-year-old in the CSR department, terrified of upsetting halfwit millennials on Twitter.”

I think Vander Weyer might agree, but would like to ask him.

He joined Roxhill for a webinar to talk about the book. You can access the replay here, and are missing a trick if you don’t.