Gold

At the end of each year I pull out most of the New Year’s resolutions I’ve ever made — I now have them going back nearly two decades. They make for curious reading: some years they seem less like an account of what I intend to do with my life than what I don’t. I never took voice lessons, or wrote an original song for the guitar given to me six years ago by my wife, or even learned how to play that guitar. I never learned Spanish, or how to cook. I didn’t write that book about Obama, or create a television drama about Wall Street, or swim a 50-metre

Ann Summers chief executive Jacqueline Gold has been credited with transforming the lingerie company into a more female-friendly business – and in the process has become Britain’s 16th richest woman, according to the latest Sunday Times Rich List. So what was the key to her success? Gold believes that identifying a gap in the market was what turned Ann Summers into such a recognisable brand. ‘I knew that women were desperate to buy sexy lingerie and sex toys, but there wasn’t anywhere they could do that which offered a female-friendly, safe environment.’ she explains. ‘I spoke to friends and saw that we could replicate the popular concept of ‘at home’

Spectator Money is out, with ideas on how to make it, spend it and even how to be seen spending it. Freddy Gray looks at the ‘social economy’ – think tax loopholes for financiers of politically favoured endeavours; while Camilla Swift peruses credit cards such as Kanye West’s ‘African American Express’ and the Dubai First Royale, ‘studded with diamonds. Bring it on, Sheikh Sugardaddy.’ Spare a thought, though, for the inconspicuous consumers – or at least, the wannabes. This segment took a hit last week in a joint operation dubbed ‘Onymous’, in which the FBI, Europol and friends arrested 17 alleged web-administrators and vendors and shuttered dozens of sites peddling child pornography, weapons, fake Danish passports, hacking services and so on. ‘Cash, drugs, gold and silver

Unless you bet your life savings on gold some time in the past three years — after its price had passed on the way up the level to which it has now fallen back — there’s no need to be distressed by headlines about a ‘gold rout’, nor even the prospect of a ‘bear embrace’. The impulses behind this sudden downward lurch are positive for expectations of economic revival. Gold is the timeless safe haven for those who distrust governments and fear inflation, so a stampede of sellers — on Monday there seemed to be virtually no buyers — indicates an ebb tide in those sentiments. In the US in