Говори и пиши как The Eсonomist

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 $lm 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 Jed- dah, 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.