Knowledge can only be volunteered, it cannot be conscripted. We only know what we know when we need to know it. In the context of real need, few people will withhold their knowledge. Everything is fragmented. Tolerated failure imprints learning better than success. The way we know things is not the way we report we [...]

THERE are two radically different tales doing the rounds about HSBC, Europe’s biggest lender by market value. The first says that HSBC, deep down, is still an emerging-markets operation run by rugged types who disdain the sorcery of modern finance. Under the temporary grip of an evil spell in 2003 they bought Household, an American [...]