Expats in Saudi Are Feeling the Pinch
ARAB NEWS: JEDDAH, 12 April 2008 — The effect of the Saudi riyal being pegged to the weakening US dollar is posing a dilemma to several expatriate workers in the Kingdom, who are either silently suffering the erosion of their incomes or quitting their jobs and going back to their native countries.

Abdul Haq Al-Tazi, a Moroccan accountant working in a private company, said he almost decided not to return after his vacation. He has been forced to reconsider the move because of the dwindling exchange rate of his riyal-based income compared to the currency in his home country.

The SR1,000 he used to send to his family in Morocco used to have an exchange value of 3,000 Moroccan dirhams. Today that SR1,000 fetches only about 2,000 dirhams, Tazi said.

“This fall in my income is because of the euro to which the currency of my country is linked while the value of US dollars, to which Saudi riyal is pegged, is falling. Now I have to send home almost SR1,500 every month to compensate for the shortfall,” Tazi said. He added that his employer did not raise his salary to compensate for the loss that began to be largely noticeable over the past several months. “Since the situation is getting worse I am thinking of leaving for my country where I can at least live with my family,” Tazi said.

Tazi is not the only Moroccan who is considering leaving Saudi Arabia due to the weakening currency and the refusal of employers to raise salaries to compensate for the current problems caused by the riyal-dollar peg. Anas ibn Zaydoun, another Moroccan working in a tourism firm in Jeddah, said he has decided to leave. Expats Feel Bite of Weak Dollar >>> By Galal Fakkar, Arab News | April 12, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback - UK)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback - UK)

Foneshield’s Mobile Phone Insurance Is Shari’ah-Compliant
THE INQUIRER: HOT ON the heels of the Archbishop of Canterbury's remarks about Sharia law becoming more prevalent in the UK, Foneshield is launching what it claims is the first Sharia compliant mobile phone insurance policy.

The company claims that the policy will appeal to ethically aware consumers, not just upwardly-mobile European Muslims. Mobile phone insurance to comply with Sharia law arrives: Not just aimed at muslims By Tony Dennis | April 9, 2008

Hat tip: Dhimmi Watch

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback - UK)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback - UK)

Saudi Arabia, Al-Yamamah Contract and Corruption: The Serious Fraud Office Acted Unlawfully
The judges had harsh words for the attitude of the SFO and the Blair government in never even considering the option of telling the Saudis their threats would be ignored.

"No one suggested to those uttering the threat that it was futile, that the United Kingdom's system of democracy forbad pressure being exerted on an independent prosecutor whether by the domestic executive or by anyone else; no-one even hinted that the courts would strive to protect the rule of law and protect the independence of the prosecutor by striking down any decision he might be tempted to make in submission to the threat."
THE GUARDIAN: The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) acted unlawfully in dropping an investigation into alleged bribery in an arms deal between BAE Systems and Saudi Arabia, the high court ruled today.

In a stunning victory for the activist groups that launched the legal challenge, the two judges said Tony Blair's government and the SFO caved in too readily to threats by Saudi Arabia over intelligence sharing and trade.

Lord Justice Moses and Justice Sullivan, using some scathing language, rejected the SFO's argument that it was powerless to resist the Saudi threats.

"So bleak a picture of the impotence of the law invites at least dismay, if not outrage," they said.

"Had such a threat been made by one who was subject to the criminal law of this country, he would risk being charged with an attempt to pervert the course of justice."

To give in so easily, the judges said, "merely encourages those with power, in a position of strategic and political importance, to repeat such threats, in the knowledge that the courts will not interfere with the decision of a prosecutor to surrender".

Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and Corner House Research had sought a review of the decision by the SFO director, Robert Wardle, in December 2006 to drop the investigation into allegations of bribery and corruption over the £43bn Al-Yamamah arms deal, agreed by the Thatcher government in 1985.

"No one, whether in this country or outside, is entitled to interfere with the course of our justice," Moses and Sullivan ruled. SFO Wrong to Drop BAE Inquiry, Court Rules >>> By Peter Walker and agencies | April 10, 2008

THE GUARDIAN:
The Complet High Court Judgement

Summary of High Court Judgement

Cartoon

FINANCIAL TIMES:
UK ‘Unlawfully’ Scrapped BAE Probe: ”No-one, whether within this country or outside, is entitled to interfere with the course of our justice,” Lord Justice Moses told the court. “We intervene in fulfilment of our responsibility to protect the independence of the director and of our criminal justice system from threat.“ By Megan Murphy, Law Courts Correspondent | April 10, 2008

BBC:
SFO Unlawful in Ending BAE Probe

Cross-posted at A New Dark Age Is Dawning

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback)

Turkish Politics Take an Economic Toll
SPIEGELONLINE INTERNATIONAL: The fight over secularism is dimming the economic prospects of the republic: Growth has slowed, inflation is up, and the lira is down.

The political drama in Turkey this spring may turn out to be a rite of passage for Turkish democracy. After an intense year of infighting between the country's powerful secular establishment and the popular Islamist-rooted government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, matters have come to a head with the March 31 decision by the nation's Constitutional Court to hear a lawsuit seeking to abolish Erdogan's party for undermining the secular nature of the republic.

If the court decides against Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), the organization could be outlawed and both the Prime Minister and President Abdullah Gül, who also hails from the AKP, could be banned from politics for five years. Although most observers think that outcome unlikely, the mere possibility has thrown Turkey into turmoil and cast a shadow over its economic prospects.

It may be difficult for outsiders to understand the stakes—or even to imagine the scenario. After all, nobody has tried to sue the Republican Party in the US for violating the separation of church and state because President George W. Bush is an avowed Christian. But the entire history of modern Turkey is staked on the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who led the battle for Turkish independence after World War I and founded the Republic in the 1920s on secular principles. Growth Forecasts Lowered >>> By Michael Kuser

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback)

IMF: ‘Largest Financial Shock Since Great Depression’
THE GUARDIAN: America's mortgage crisis has spiralled into "the largest financial shock since the Great Depression" and there is now a one-in-four chance of a full-blown global recession over the next 12 months, the International Monetary Fund warned today.

The US is already sliding into what the IMF predicts will be a "mild recession" but there is mounting pessimism about the ability of the rest of the world to escape unscathed, the IMF said in its twice-yearly World Economic Outlook. Britain is particularly vulnerable, it warned, as it slashed its growth targets for both the US and the UK.

The report made it clear that there will be no early resolution to the global financial crisis.

"The financial shock that erupted in August 2007, as the US sub-prime mortgage market was derailed by the reversal of the housing boom, has spread quickly and unpredictably to inflict extensive damage on markets and institutions at the heart of the financial system," it said. IMF Says US Crisis Is 'Largest Financial Shock Since Great Depression' >>> By Heather Stewart in Washington

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback)

Pound Falls to All-Time Euro Low
BBC: The pound has touched a fresh all-time low against the euro, hit by market expectations that the Bank of England will further cut UK interest rates.

With the Bank widely tipped to trim rates to 5% from 5.25% on Thursday, one pound was worth as little as 1.2500 euros in early Wednesday trading.

Sterling later strengthened slightly, with one pound worth 1.2552 euros.

Interest rate cuts generally encourage investors to switch to other currencies that have a higher rate of return. Pound Falls to All-Time Euro Low >>>

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback)
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Mayoral Candidates Unite in Call for Illegal Immigration Amnesty
THE INDEPENDENT: Today, all four major candidates in London's mayoral election join religious and business leaders in proposing a radical solution for illegal immigrants

A formidable coalition of businessmen, politicians, religious leaders and community workers will pledge their support tonight for an amnesty for illegal immigrants who have been resident in the UK for several years and can pass strict tests to prove their contribution to British society.

All four of London's main mayoral candidates – including, against the official policy of his party, the Tory candidate Boris Johnson – will back the campaign to offer undocumented workers the chance to be integrated into mainstream society and obtain papers allowing them to work and pay taxes legally.

In an unprecedented move that will exert even more pressure on the Government to heed calls for an amnesty, they will be joined by an array of influential figures from outside the political world, including Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, leader of the Muslim Council of Britain and Stephen O'Brien, one of the City's leading businessmen.

"Enormous untapped potential and appalling waste is taking place right in front us," Mr O'Brien, chairman of the lobby group London First and former chief executive of Business in the Community, said yesterday. "Business leaders recognise that the case for an amnesty is both principled and pragmatic. The economic and moral case for liberating this army of workers from the underground economy is irrefutable." Mayoral Candidates Unite in Call for Illegal Immigration Amnesty >>> By Amol Rajan | April 9, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback)

Jihad with Money
THE SPECTATOR – Melanie Phillips: Alex Alexiev on National Review Online sets out the reasons why sharia finance — described by Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi as ‘jihad with money’ — is a serious threat to the west:

The legitimization of sharia in the West and its gradual imposition in Muslim communities and beyond is a key objective of sharia finance, and there is no doubt it has already made huge strides. …

Notably, for those Muslims who cannot engage in physical jihad using force of arms, sharia requires that they support jihad financially. This is what sharia finance is all about.

Far from being a legitimate investment vehicle, sharia finance facilitates religiously sanctioned support for terrorist organizations — as well as providing radical Islamists with highly paid sinecures as sharia-finance board advisors in the sanctum sanctorum of capitalism, all the while that they are pursuing a subversive campaign to destroy it.

Predictably, none of this is even remotely disclosed by any of the dozens of Western banks promoting sharia finance today, which obviously exposes them to huge non-disclosure risks ranging from fraudulent misrepresentation, to material support for terrorism.

And not disclosed either by Gordon Brown, whose stated ambition is to make London the global centre of Islamic banking (reported to be yet another brilliant wheeze from Ed Balls). Of all the manifestations of the Islamisation of the west (see this piece by Dan Rabkin on the acceleration of Londonistan) sharia finance is perhaps the most deadly, because it effectively sells the west to Islam, and the most difficult to stop — because for the financiers and politicians in the west who are thus selling it, all they can see are the trillions of dollar and pound signs being dangled enticingly before their eyes. [Source: Jihad with Money By Melanie Phillips]

Cross-posted at A New Dark Age Is Dawning

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback)

Unruhe in Ägypten wegen steigenden Preisen des Grundnahrungsmittels
NZZ Online: Bei landesweiten Protesten gegen steigende Preise in Ägypten ist es am Sonntag zu Auseinandersetzungen mit der Polizei gekommen. Rund 150 Personen wurden laut offiziellen Angaben festgenommen, darunter prominente Gewerkschafter. Etwa 50 Personen wurden verletzt.

(ap) In der nordägyptischen Industriestadt Mahalla el Kobra, wo sich die grösste Textilfabrik des Landes befindet, schleuderten 2000 Demonstranten Ziegelsteine auf Polizisten, die mit Tränengas gegen die Protestierenden vorging.

Preise für Grundnahrungsmittel fast verdoppelt

Die Regierung hatte die Bevölkerung vor einer Teilnahme an Streiks oder Demonstrationen am Sonntag gewarnt. Dennoch blieben tausende Ägypter der Arbeit fern oder liessen Seminare an der Universität ausfallen. Der Streik war ein Versuch von Oppositionsgruppen, zwei Tage vor Kommunalwahlen den wachsenden Unmut über steigende Preise und sich verschlechternde Arbeitsbedingungen in der Bevölkerung zu kanalisieren. Landesweite Proteste gegen steigende Preise in Ägypten: 150 Festnahmen und 50 Verletzte >>>

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback)

Jihad Comes to Wall Street
"Sharia finance" does exactly what it promises, financing the spread of sharia — and terror. - Alex Alexiev
NATIONALREVIEW ONLINE: If you’ve seen Geert Wilders’s film Fitna, you may not have noticed a single headline amongst all the bombings, beheadings, and earnest expressions of Islam’s eventual world domination: Halal-fund: investments for Muslims. But the investment vehicles referenced are an essential part of radical Islam’s efforts to insinuate itself into Western societies in order to destroy them from within. And Wall Street, barely out of the woods from its disastrous run-in with sub-prime mortgages — and having lost one of its historic investment houses, Bear Stearns, in the process — is now chasing the very kind of "sharia finance" against which Wilders's movie warns, a business line that may eventually wind up being even more calamitous than the subprime-mortgage fiasco.

For the growing army of its acolytes, who salivate at the prospect of tens of billions of dollars in transaction fees from the burgeoning industry, sharia-compliant finance is seen as little more than a cuddly Islamic version of socially conscious investment — with ethical strictures forbidding usury and sin industries, and emphasizing charity. Indeed, a conference on the subject last Fall co-sponsored by the Wall Street Journal was titled just that: "Islamic Ethical Investment." According to this rosy interpretation, sharia finance is a windfall for capital markets — allowing Wall Street to skim some foam off the ocean of petrodollar liquidity in the Middle East, and put it to good use.

Other interpretations are possible, of course. Critics see sharia finance as a massive subversion campaign by radical Islam designed to legitimize sharia in the West, to undermine our markets, and ultimately to imperil our free-enterprise system and national security — all the while exposing banks to financial risks that make the sub-prime fiasco look like a walk in the park. For its proponents and ideological enablers — such as the well known suicide-bombing advocate, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi — sharia finance is nothing less than "Jihad with money." As al-Qaradawi explains, "God has ordered us to fight enemies with our lives and with our money." Unfortunately for Wall Street, it’s hard to argue with the good sheikh on that score. Far from being a guide to ethical investment, sharia finance is indistinguishable from sharia itself.

Sharia is a reactionary-to-the-core medieval Islamic doctrine that claims control over every aspect of every Muslim’s life. It imposes such "ethical" mandates on Muslims as the obligation to discriminate against women and non-Muslims; to kill homosexuals, adulterers, and apostates; to establish and maintain Muslim rule around the world; and to carry out violent offensive jihad against infidels. Notably, for those Muslims who cannot engage in physical jihad using force of arms, sharia requires that they support jihad financially. This is what sharia finance is all about. Jihad Comes to Wall Street >>> By Alex Alexiev

Hat tip: Revereridesagain

Cross-posted at A New Dark Age Is Dawning

Mark Alexander

BAE Systems Feels the Pinch
THE TELEGRAPH: Britain's biggest manufacturer, aerospace giant BAE Systems, is to shed almost 600 jobs at two military factories due to a slowdown in work.

Trade unions vowed to fight any compulsory redundancies at the factories, which work on the Hawk and Nimrod aircraft

Trade unions said they were shocked at the scale of the cuts and vowed to fight any compulsory redundancies at the factories, which work on the Hawk and Nimrod aircraft. Some 450 posts will be eliminated in Brough, near Hull, after BAE lost out last year on a contract to supply Hawk training aircraft to the United Arab Emirates. The rest of the cuts will hit BAE's site at Woodford, south of Manchester, which has shifted operations away from design and development to aircraft maintenance. BAE to Shed Jobs after Sales Slowdown >>> By Russell Hotten, Industry Editor | April 4, 2008

Mark Alexander

Cubans Finally Join Consumer Revolution
TIMESONLINE: Something remarkable is happening in Cuba this week. Ordinary citizens are queuing outside electrical shops to buy DVD players and microwaves. They are venturing into fancy hotels and on to beaches previously reserved for western sun-seekers. Soon they will be able to buy mobile telephones.

Under Fidel Castro all such activities were banned. Cubans were second-class citizens in their own land, forced to watch as the cash-strapped regime allowed foreign tourists freedoms it denied its own people.

But five weeks after Raúl Castro, 76, succeeded his ailing elder brother, Cuba's new president is implementing reforms that, though they hardly amount to a Cuban perestroika, would have been scarcely imaginable under El Comandante.

To boost agricultural production small private farmers have been invited to plant coffee, tobacco and other crops on unused state land. More than half of Cuba's agricultural land lies fallow.

On Monday it quietly lifted the much-resented ban on Cubans using tourist hotels, renting cars or enjoying some of the Caribbean island's finest beaches - what human rights groups labelled "tourism apartheid".

From Tuesday it relaxed controls on the purchase of consumer goods, allowing shops to sell computers, motorbikes, flat-screen televisions and a range of home appliances previously unattainable except on the black market.

Raúl Castro's Government has also lifted its ban on the private ownership of mobile telephones, though they have yet to appear in shops. Cuba is one of the few countries in the world where the trill of a mobile is still rare. Cubans Finally Join Consumer Revolution >>> By Martin Fletcher | April 4, 2008

Mark Alexander

Bernanke Should Use the ‘R’ Word
TIMESONLINE: Is Ben Bernanke in a state of denial? Despite the almost daily deluge of bleak US economic news, the Fed Chairman insisted yesterday that he was still "not ready to say" that the world’s biggest economy faces recession.

He should get ready to say it. Mr Bernanke’s reluctance to use the "R" word may be understandable, given his need to offer reassurance to markets and consumers, yet almost every serious commentator now accepts that recession is already a reality for America, the only question being how deep and prolonged the condition will prove. Commentary: Bernanke Should Use the ‘R’ Word >>> By Gary Duncan

DAILY MAIL:
Three Million Families ‘Will Be Plunged into Negative Equity within a Year’ By Becky Barrow

Mark Alexander

Save Your Souls You Greedy Bankers!
Photo of Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali courtesy of The Times
THE SUNDAY TIMES: Britain's richest men and women must curb their greed and begin sharing their wealth to save their souls, one of the Church of England’s senior bishops has warned.

Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, singled out high-earning City traders such as hedge fund managers as the kind of people who must swap their desire to “make a quick buck” for a commitment to “share [their] wealth generously”.

He said the crisis gripping the world’s money markets was “almost certainly” due to amoral forces pursuing their own wealth-creating agenda and warned that without action the less wealthy might suffer disproportionately from the fallout.

“What is required is a change of heart, of disposition, of attitude,” he writes in his Easter message, published in The Sunday Times today.

“From possessiveness we need to move to gratitude for what we have, from ‘cutting corners’ to make a quick buck to that integrity for which business in this country was celebrated, and from mere accumulation of wealth to a generosity of spirit.

“When that happens, hedge fund managers and directors of companies can, indeed, go into the kingdom of heaven ahead of the chief priests and elders.” Bishop of Rochester: Save Your Souls You Greedy Bankers >>>

Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)

Slump Moves from Wall Street to Main Street
NEW YORK TIMES: In Seattle, sales at a long-established hardware store, Pacific Supply, are suddenly dipping. In Oklahoma City, couples planning their weddings are demonstrating uncustomary thrift, forgoing Dungeness crab and special linens. And in many cities, the registers at department stores like Nordstrom on the higher end and J. C. Penney in the middle are ringing less often.

With Wall Street caught in a credit crisis that has captured headlines, the forces assailing the economy are now spreading beyond areas hit hardest by the boom-turned-bust in real estate like California, Florida and Nevada. Now, the downturn is seeping into new parts of the country, to communities that seemed insulated only months ago.

The broadening of the slowdown, the plunge in home prices and near-paralysis in the financial system are fueling worries that what most economists now see as an inevitable recession could end up being especially painful.

Indeed, some economists fear it will last longer and inflict more bite on workers and businesses than the last two recessions, which gripped the economy in 2001 and for eight months straddling 1990 and 1991. This time, these experts say, a recession in which economic activity falls over a sustained period and joblessness rises across the board could even persist into next year. Slump Moves from Wall St. to Main St. >>> By Peter S. Goodman | March 21, 2008

Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)

Radio Show: The Weekly Gathering Storm Report
For those who couldn’t listen in to yesterday’s Weekly Gathering Storm Report Radio Show with Always and WC because of time constraints or simply because it was broadcast in your country at an inconvenient time, here’s a direct link to the show:

Walid Shoebat and Yours Truly as Guests of Always and WC
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)

Dollar erstmals weniger als einen Franken wert
NZZ Online: Der Dollar ist am Freitag erstmals weniger als einen Franken wert gewesen. Am Nachmittag kostete ein Dollar vorübergehend 0,9986 Franken. Auch gegenüber anderen Währungen kam er wegen schlechten US-Wirtschaftsnachrichten stark unter Druck.

(ap) Erstmals in der Währungsgeschichte ist der Wert des amerikanischen Dollars am Freitag unter einen Franken gefallen. Ein Dollar wurde zeitweise zu 99,86 Rappen gehandelt. Der Euro, gegen den sich der Franken ebenfalls stärker zeigte, buchte mit 1,5690 Dollar einen weiteren Höchstwert.

Der Absturz des Dollars begann kurz nach 14 Uhr. Um 15 Uhr 05 landete er bei 0,9986 Franken, dem bisher tiefsten Kurs aller Zeiten. Am späteren Nachmittag stand er bei 1,0048 Franken, verglichen mit 1,0145 Franken am Vorabend. Die US-Währung sackte nicht nur gegen die Schweizer und die Europa-Einheitswährung ab, sondern auch gegen den japanischen Yen, gegen den er mit 99,56 Yen den tiefsten Stand seit rund 13 Jahren erreichte. Dollar erstmals weniger als einen Franken wert: Amerikanische Währung auf historischem Tief

Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)

Dollar Nosedives
THE TELEGRAPH: The dollar has plummeted against all major currencies on dire US retail sales and fears that the Federal Reserve may need to slash interest rates further to stop the downward spiral in the credit markets.

The greenback broke below 100 yen in a day of wild trading, setting off alarm bells at Japan's Keidanren industry lobby. It touched a record $1.5620 against the euro and came within a whisker of parity with the Swiss franc for the first time in history.

The plunge came amid an investor flight into commodities, seen as a way of insulating wealth from the dollar's decline. In the US, crude oil reached a record $111 a barrel despite rising inventories. US Dollar plunge sets off global alarm bells >>> By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard | 14/03/2008

Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)

United Kingdom: House Prices Are Falling at a Record Rate
DAILY MAIL: House prices are falling in many parts of the country at their fastest pace since records began in 1978, a report has warned.

Across England and Wales, prices are dropping in every region.

And the speed of the decline is at record levels in East Anglia, the South-West, Yorkshire, Humberside and the East Midlands.

The report, from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, is the latest to confirm that the decade-long house price boom is over.

Soaring numbers of homes are being put up for sale but failing to find a buyer.

The average estate agency has 92 homes on its books, the highest level for a decade. Over the last year, the average number of unsold properties has risen 49 per cent.

Potential buyers are being put off by the fear that a property which they buy today will be worth less tomorrow.

Other would-be buyers are struggling to find a mortgage as banks and building societies introduce more stringent lending criteria. House prices are falling at record rate confirming the end of 10-year boom >>> By Becky Barrow

Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)

You Don't Have to Invent Things or Industries to Become the Richest Man in the World
THE INDEPENDENT: The bad news for Bill Gates is that, after 13 years at the top, he has just lost his ranking as the richest man in the world. The good news is that he has been overtaken by his bridge partner. That man is Warren Buffett, a friend of the Microsoft boss since 1991, when they began to play bridge together – and also to discuss business a little.

In a way, their friendship is an obvious one. As Buffett told the Wall Street Journal eight years ago: "It's hard to have friends when everybody around you wants money. Bill hasn't sold me a computer and I haven't sold him candy. Neither one of us wants anything from the other."

Bill did get something from Warren, however. In 2006, Buffett, then 76, announced that he would be giving almost his entire fortune – which now stands at $62bn (£30.8bn) – to the medical foundation set up by Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda. It is a bequest of almost unimaginable scale, more mindboggling still when added to what was already the world's largest charitable foundation.

The bracketing of Buffett with Gates now seems complete. Yet as businessmen they are very different – and Buffett is much the more unusual type of multi-billionaire. Bill Gates, although in his own way unique, is more typical of the sort of businessman who makes (rather than inherits) a gargantuan fortune.

Such people tend either to develop some entirely new industrial process – or, at the very least, a better form of mousetrap. If they can add to their technological creativity the nerve and courage to retain financial control of their industrial process, then the money just cascades into their pockets faster than they can count it.

For Gates, the process was the mass use of digital language. For John Rockefeller, it was the vertically integrated oil industry, from well-head to end-user. For Henry Ford, it was the mass production of motor cars. Yet Warren Buffett has invented nothing, not even a slightly better mousetrap. All he does is invest in other people's businesses – but with a skill unmatched in the long and turbulent history of capitalism.

Buffett has expressed this more bluntly than anyone else could (or would), saying: "I was born at the right time and place, where the ability to allocate capital really counts. I'm adapted to this society. I won the ovarian lottery. I got the ball that said 'capital allocator--United States'."

This is characteristically modest of the unassuming Mr Buffett. The allocation of capital is an immensely competitive business, yet he has stayed at the top of the investment tree for more than 40 years. Others may flame out but old Warren keeps steaming on, beating the Dow Jones average for year after year... after year.

The reason for the astounding durability of Buffett's success at investment is also something which distinguishes him from almost all other people who are thought of as hotshot money managers. Warren Buffett is almost pathologically risk-averse. As he puts it: "I don't look to jump over 7ft bars. I look around for 1ft bars that I can step over."

Typically, he will spend months – or longer – scrutinising the balance sheets of mature and unfashionable companies. When he has finally decided that the stock market has greatly undervalued them, he moves in – with cash and on a vast scale.

Thus it is that his holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, has significant percentages of such emblems of middle-of-the-road America as Coca-Cola, Gillette, Procter & Gamble, American Express, Kraft and The Washington Post. You will look in vain through the immense Buffett portfolio for any hi-tech stocks – although for sentimental reasons he has retained 100 shares in Microsoft. Towards the end of the last century, Buffett was widely ridiculed for shunning the dotcom frenzy… >>> By Dominic Lawson

Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)