Grant Williams's Contributions

It would be difficult to imagine a simpler premise for a game than that of Barrel of Monkeys. The rules of the game, printed on the bottom of the plastic barrel in which the monkeys are contained, are simplicity itself...

Global investment banks stand convicted, Grant says, of taking the Hypocritic Oath. And will central bankers really be able to keep markets in line? Signs suggest otherwise.

The world is running on a sugar high, it seems, with a sugar crash in store. In a Willy Wonka world of chocolate QE rivers and pure imagination, Grant Williams asks, what happens when the Candyman runs out of candy?

Arthur Evans died in July of 1941 at the age of 90. A rather ordinary name disguised an extraordinary life during which the famed archaeologist made many notable discoveries, including the unearthing of the Minoan Palace at Knossos, the site of a famous Greek mythological tale.

Among the first things we learn in school are the rules of grammar — the building blocks of proper communication which underpin the English language.

The tiny island of Salamis in Greece was the birthplace, in 480 BC, of one of the three great tragedians of the Classical Athenian era. Aeschylus and Sophocles were the other two...

In the early 1960s, a new planet was discovered in the outer reaches of the universe, and it turned out to be a strange place, populated by some weird and wonderful characters. Originally the planet was a normal spheroid, but due to a peculiar set of events the planet is now cube-shaped.

Friday, April 11th, 2013, began like so many before it, with gold at $1561, about $5 above its opening price on the previous Monday, having traded as high as $1590 and as low as $1550. In short, it had been an uneventful week.

Many think Bitcoin is a bubble the likes of which we haven't seen since US housing or NASDAQ stocks or even tulips, while others think it is the future. Certainly, the behaviour of Bitcoin this past week has given the advantage to the naysayers, but to dismiss the virtual currency out of hand is to miss the point entirely.

On April 4, 2013, bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko's extraordinary monetary measures rocked the headlines. Grant predicts that day will live in Yenfamy, propelling Japan's economy toward an ever more certain reckoning.

There are intriguing parallel between the strategies employed by players and coaches to get around the NFL rulebook and the kick-the-can antics of Eurozone politicians.

Yes, I understand that, in nominal terms, money printing is good for stocks 'just because'; but sooner or later, reality is going to reassert itself (painfully, I might add).

The title of this edition of Things That Make You Go Hmmm..., however, comes from a scene in Jaws 2 that for some strange reason popped into my head during my recent travels. Fortunately, thanks to the miracle of YouTube, I was able to find the scene, watch it in its entirety, and transcribe the dialogue for the front cover.

The quote in question was uttered by the villain of the piece, Auric Goldfinger, in response to Connery's Bond, who, as he lay watching a laser beam slowly cut through a solid gold table toward his groin, asked what, under the circumstances, was a perfectly reasonable question: 'Do you expect me to talk?'

Nobody ever really wins at Thumb Wars, which makes the whole thing rather pointless; and, as it turns out, the same can be said about the subject of today’s discussion — Currency Wars — which seem to be erupting across the globe...

For some reason, talking about politics is a hugely divisive thing to do. People extrapolate what they want from your opinion, stick a nice, tidy label on you, and file you under the letter 'F' for either 'Friend' or 'Foe'. Once declared, your politics define you, and that is a great shame.