The taxman cometh

Governments around the world are on the prowl to hunt down extra cash, says John Stepek. Investors should beware.

The US government has shut down. Leaders across Europe are locked in terminal bickering. And as Matthew Lynn notes, our politicians are vying to offer the most ridiculous bribes to voters before the 2015 election (they never remind us that they are bribing us with our own cash, of course).

Much of this turmoil is a direct result of politicians handing responsibility for economic management to the world's central bankers.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.