Сергей Кузнецов - Speak and Write like The Economist: Говори и пиши как The Eсonomist

Oil's well that ends well.

But if the history of gold is any guide, what goes up will come down – and then go up again.

Economists and psychologists talk about the "curse of knowledge": people who know something have a hard time imagining someone else who does not.

Migrants from the countryside in China numbered 282m at the end of last year, 4m more than in 2015 (an increase in just one year equivalent to the population of Los Angeles).

Bankers typically make money by charging a higher rate for loans than they pay to depositors: the so-called 3–6–3 model (borrow at 3 %, lend at 6 % and be on the golf course by 3pm).

Seeing more sedans than pickup trucks, for instance, strongly suggests that a neighbourhood tends to vote for the Democrats.

Build a better mousetrap, the saying goes, and the world will beat a path to your door. Find a way to beat the stockmarket and they will construct a high-speed railway.

Executives justify flying private on the grounds that they may need to get back to the office quickly in an emergency, and that confidential documents or company devices may be lost or stolen on a commercial flight. But when they enjoy that extra security, they are exposing themselves to another risk: private-plane crashes are a leading cause of death for CEOs, behind only heart attacks, cancer and strokes.

In cheap action films the bad guy is taken out by force. In the better sort, he falls victim to his own hubris. The great risk, though, is that Europe and Russia find themselves in a film noir, where the villain's plot fails but takes everyone down with it.

You make your money working in active management but invest the proceeds passively.

Being in the chemicals business is like swimming in a vat of sulphuric acid.

In trade as elsewhere, the new administration seems prone to using statistics as a drunk uses a lamppost – for support rather than illumination.

Like an errant husband, investors may proclaim their fidelity to democracy but are not averse to seeing someone else on the side.

There are many ways to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Malls were conceived in the 1950s by Victor Gruen, an Austrian immigrant, as a new enclosed version of a town square.

China has a history of hilariously inappropriate export brand-names, including Front Gate men's underwear, Long March luggage and, guaranteed to raise a laugh, Great Leap Forward floor polish.

It is impossible to know if a television viewer has gone to the bathroom during the commercials. Fraud is a peskier problem. Bad actors hide within advertising's supply chain, unleashing robots to "see" ads and suck money from advertisers.

In 2014 the International Energy Agency (IEA), a semi-official forecaster, predicted that decarbonising the global electricity grid will require almost $20trn in investment in the 20 years to 2035, at which point the process will still be far from finished.

Mr Xi is China's "COE", or chairman of everything.

The prices of good and bad tulips soared alike in 17th-century Holland, and in 2008 subprime debt was almost as valuable as Treasury bonds.

For investors the most dangerous words in the English language are "this time it's different".

Why don't fund managers look out of the window in the mornings? Because then they'd have nothing to do in the afternoons.

If all the nation's economists were laid end to end, they would point in all different directions.

The use of tractors in agriculture rose sharply from the 1910s to the 1950s, and horses were displaced in vast numbers. As demand for traditional horse-work fell, so did horse prices, by about 80 % between 1910 and 1950. As the numbers of working horses and mules in America fell from about 21m in 1918 to only 3m or so in 1960, the decline was mirrored in the overall horse population.

Acquirers only want the family silver, not the dross.

You can display your yacht in a way that you can't show off your house or hotel suite, because there is always the option of weighing anchor and taking it into the middle of the ocean where you don't have to socialise with anybody except the glitterati. Superyacht owners are always dropping in on each other as they criss-cross the seas, to compare not just their vessels but also their guest lists. When the Monaco Yacht Show started in 1991 there were just 1,147 superyachts (that is, yachts longer than 30 metres) in the global superyacht fleet. Today there are 4,473, with another 473 under construction.

To make or to buy is perhaps the most basic question in business.

It is hard to when bubbles will pop, in particular when they are nested within each other predict.

Politician + pump prices + poll = panic.

America's dynamic economy creates and destroys around 5m jobs each month.

Returns on rare coins over ten years to the end of 2016 were 195 %, easily beating art (139 %), stamps (133 %), furniture (–31 %) and the S&P 500 index (58 %). Coins are more portable than paintings or furniture, and boast a higher value-to-volume ratio. Stamps may be lighter, but, come doomsday, cannot be melted down. Today, global sales of rare coins are estimated at $5bn–8bn a year, with 85 % of the market in America.

An authoritarian government can provide certainty, at least in the short term. In 1922, when Mussolini took power in Italy, its equity market returned 29 % and its government bonds 18 %, according to Mike Staunton of the London Business School. Hitler's accession in 1933 saw German shares return 14 % and bonds 15 %.

If you want to get rich, goes a Chinese saying, first build a road.

The bond market looks about as intimidating as a chihuahua in a handbag.

One calls him the best possible pilot of the worst possible aircraft.

Notes such as one with a face value of 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollars are worth much more now as a novelty on eBay (where they sell for about $45) than they ever were in shops in Harare.

Like politicians, financial regulators know that late on a Friday is a good time to slip out bad news.

The National Resistance Movement in Uganda bribed voters with hoes, saucepans, seeds, sugar and salt.

Richard Nixon saw China's potential in 1971 ("Put 800m Chinese to work under a decent system – and they will be the leaders of the world"). But, before he died in 1994, he came to fear that "we may have created a Frankenstein".

Everyone is a capitalist these days. That means keeping a much closer eye on those who manage that capital.

Pushing down prices on one side of the platform may cause charges on the other side to rise, a bit like a waterbed.

"Cocaine," said Robin Williams, a comedian who was rueful about addiction, "is God's way of saying that you're making too much money."

Children are sometimes reassured that new siblings arrive via friendly storks. The reality is messier. Money creation is much the same. The "stork" in this case is the central bank; many think it transfers money to private banks, which act as intermediaries, pushing the money around the economy. In reality, most money is created by private banks.

In a recent report McKinsey, a consulting firm, looked at five measures of Africa's economic connection with the world: trade, investment stock, investment growth, infrastructure financing and aid. It found that China is among the top four partners in each of these.

Two hundred metric tons of gold would occupy a cube of a little more than two meters on a side – it would fit into a small bedroom.

Forget left and right. These days, it is often said, the real dividing line in politics is between open-door liberals and pull-up-the-drawbridge nationalists.

Unless you are a hermit, you own and consume things that have passed through the port of Rotterdam.

The arrival of mass democracy after 1918 was followed by a boom in the 1920s but then by the Depression, stockmarket collapse and abandonment of the gold standard.

Trade deals are started by liberals but finished by protectionists.

Valeant describes itself as "bringing value to our shareholders". While there is no indication of fraudulent or illegal practice, the company could end up joining a pantheon of corporate fiascos that includes Enron (which pledged to "create significant value for our shareholders"), Lehman Brothers, ("maximising shareholder value") and MCI WorldCom ("a proven record of shareholder value creation").

Teodoro Obiang, the president of Equatorial Guinea, and Teodorín, the most influential of his 42 recognised children, have expensive tastes. While most of his citizens live on less than $2 a day, the older Mr Obiang once shelled out $55 million for a Boeing 737 with gold-plated lavatory fittings. His son had at one point amassed $300m in assets, including 32 sports cars, a Malibu mansion and nearly $2m in Michael Jackson memorabilia. In 2014 the United States Department of Justice forced Teodorín Obiang to sell off a Ferrari, his Los Angeles abode and six life-size Michael Jackson statues in a money-laundering settlement. (He was allowed to keep one of the King of Pop's crystal-encrusted gloves.)

Slavery in America was not just wicked, it was lucrative: by 1860 the total capital that slave-holders had "invested" in captive human beings was three times larger than investment in manufacturing in the northern and southern states combined.

China produced more steel in two years than Britain since 1900.

The US is still the US, held together by credit cards and Indian names.

China's problems are so many, various and deep that it does indeed seem impossible that the Communist Party can survive. Yet it raises the opposite question too: what, then, has held such an improbable regime together for so long?

Creating pay structures that perfectly reflect performance is a mug's game. That hasn't stopped an entire industry of consultants and proxy advisers from trying. Setting detailed targets risks distorting behaviour.

The company that establishes itself early enjoys disproportionate rewards. First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.

One Western company urged its employees to "act like an owner" without realising that, in some cultures, acting like an owner means playing golf all day.

Bad money chases out good.

Authenticity is the secret of success; once you can fake it, you've got it.

There are more people in America who believe that Elvis is still alive than thought Obama's stimulus would create jobs.

Class identifying markers: occupation, address, accent and income.

That openness is evident across British life. The country's car industry is almost totally foreign owned (Tata has made a great success of Jaguar Land Rover); many of its biggest airports are in Spanish hands; chunks of its energy industry belong to French and Chinese investors; its football clubs make the United Nations look monocultural. Its central bank is run by a Canadian and the London Olympics were organised by an Australian. London's glitziest property developers are from Qatar and Malaysia and its stock exchange may soon be in German hands. In 2013 the proportion of shares in Britain's firms owned by foreigners zoomed passed the 50 % mark, to almost total public indifference.

What gets measured gets managed.

A country where shareholders with opinions have hitherto been about as welcome as skunks at a garden party.

Cost of capital is now king. The king seems to live in China.

What is poverty and when is a person poor? Does a family home have a dirt or dung floor? Does it lack a decent toilet? Must members of the household travel more than 30 minutes on foot to get clean water to drink? Do they live without electricity?