e are in Lugano, on a cold January afternoon. I am talking to a friend of mine, a forty years old gentleman who after many vicissitudes around the world has decided to settle permanently in this corner of Switzerland because, as he says, he wants "to put some order to his life and possibly get a family".

When Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein met, Einstein said: "What I most admire about your art is its universality. Don't say a word, but nevertheless the whole world understands you.

In the late afternoon of December 2, 1942, James Conant, chairman of the National Defense Research Committee, received a phone call from the famous American physicist Arthur Holly Compton.

And here we are again, for the third consecutive month, talking about the BTP Methuselah. The sensational race of the entire bond sector seems to be over and the driving effect on long duration fixed rate bonds is unstoppable.

Since the 1950s (particularly after the 1951 Agreement was signed which gave the FED the opportunity to implement counter-cyclical policies) this is one of the first things investors and young traders learned as they debuted on the Wall Street floor.

During a sultry spring afternoon, an Italian gentleman enters a bank in New York and asks to speak with the employee in charge of the loans. He explains to the official that he has to go to Italy for two weeks to find his family of origin and needs a loan of 5,000 dollars.

The Charging Bull in New York, the bronze statue of the sculptor Arturo Di Modica depicting a bull in charge, has become in a few years one of the most famous symbols of world capitalism, a true international icon of finance, visited and photographed almost as much as the Statue of Liberty.