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

Of course, successfully picking the leader of a big public company has always been tricky, because the job requires at least two quite different skills. Like the fox, a chief executive must know lots of little things, must manage successfully the key day-to-day aspects of the business. But like the hedgehog, he must also know one big thing: every three or four years, he will have to take a substantial strategic decision, which may mortally wound the business, if he gets it wrong. Plenty of giants, such as Cable & Wireless and AT&T, have had leaders who passed the fox test but failed the hedgehog one.

The Chinese dragon's coils encircling the world are getting tighter by the day.

In business, as in photography, it pays to stay focused.

The number of people in the United States living in poverty increased last year to 39.8 million – the highest percentage of the population in 11 years, the Census Bureau said Thursday. The number equals 13.2 percent of the country's population and is 2.5 million more than were living in poverty in 2007, which is defined by the agency as a person making less than $10,991 or a family of four making less than $22,025.

This new elite is not just a breed apart. It lives apart, in bubbles such as Manhattan south of 96th Street (where the proportion of adults with college degrees rose from 16 % in 1960 to 60 % in 2000) and a small number of "SuperZips", neighbourhoods where wealth and educational attainment are highly concentrated. These neighbourhoods are whiter and more Asian than the rest of America. They have less crime and more stable families. They are not, pace Mr Gingrich, necessarily "liberal": plenty of SuperZips voted Republican in 2004. But they are indeed out of touch.

The have-a-nice-day stuff of Walmart in Germany went down like a lead Zeppelin with employees and shoppers alike.

Hopkins was the most flamboyant advertising genius of the early 20th century – the man who convinced millions of women to buy Palmolive soap on the basis that Cleopatra had washed with it, and got the world talking about puffed wheat with the claim that it was "shot from guns" until the grains puffed to eight times their normal size.

Every company starts out as a shell. Just lb 349 ($560) buys you a company in the Seychelles, with no local taxation, no public disclosure of directors or shareholders and no requirement to file accounts. Prices rise to lb 5,000 for more sophisticated corporate structures in places like Switzerland and Luxembourg. Two firms handle two-thirds of all Delaware companies: CT Corporation (part of Wolters Kluwer of the Netherlands) and CSC.

There is no limit to human ingenuity in finding new ways to go bust.

Before the crisis many central bankers believed that all they needed was a "hammer" (interest rates) to strike a "monetary nail" (consumer-price inflation). But not every problem is a nail. Policymakers also need a full set of "macroprudential" tools, from wrenches to duct tape E.

Mr Murray starts by lamenting the isolation of a new upper class, which he defines as the most successful 5 % of adults (plus their spouses) working in managerial positions, the professions or the senior media. These people are not only rich but also exceptionally clever, because America has become expert at sending its brightest to the same elite universities, where they intermarry and confer on their offspring not just wealth but also a cognitive advantage that gives this class terrific staying power.

The best time to invest is when there is blood in the streets.