Sublime

The Oil Fund is arguably modern Norway’s greatest single achievement—the ultimate expression of Nordic self-discipline and control, and a paragon of responsible fiscal stewardhip. This brilliantly managed, tightly controlled wealth fund is the envy of every oil-producing nation—not to mention every non-oil-producing nation—in the world. The man ult

For sheer grit and audacity, Harriman had few rivals, and he now proceeded on a daring, even reckless corporate raid that would shake Wall Street to its very foundations. Since Morgan and Hill had stonewalled his request for a one-third holding in the Burlington, he would proceed to attack them from the rear. He would, instead, stealthily buy contr

(As his predecessor John Pierpont Morgan had said about a banker’s reputation at the Pujo hearings in front of the House Banking and Currency Committee in 1912, “[It] is his most valuable possession; it is the result of years of faith and honorable dealing and, while it may be quickly lost, once lost cannot be restored for a long time, if ever.”)

Government was exercised by a council of nobles headed by a Regent,

The UK’s first-past-the-post voting system of ‘winner takes all’ is not conducive to pragmatic cross-party deals that are common in many European countries.

The problem with the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy lay in the fact that it was so alluring that it naturally attracted other well-heeled suitors. Indeed, at this very moment it attracted the man who was about to become Jim Hill’s archrival, Edward H. Harriman, of whom it was once said that he feared neither God nor J. P. Morgan.

ambitious young man of thirty-seven with a high forehead, thick,