It is a curious coincidence that Gordon Brown, Labour's most successful chancellor of the exchequer, hails from and represents the town where Adam Smith, generally regarded as the founder of modern economics, was born. Given that Smith is seen by many as a right-wing icon, this coincidence is potentially embarrassing. Brown has sought to turn the accident of history to advantage by explaining that Smith was actually an early West [...]

The defeat that the shareholders of GlaxoSmithKline recently inflicted on the company's remuneration report suggests that an extraordinary era in business history is coming to an end. Fifteen years ago Gordon Gekko, the anti-hero of Oliver Stone's film Wall Street, announced that "greed was good". The phrase, and the character of Gekko, were drawn partly from Ivan Boesky, who once told an audience of students at the University of California, [...]