Occasionally big news breaks at an inconvenient moment for a weekly publication. Just after 1.30pm in London on October 20th Liz Truss, who the day before had vowed in Parliament to be a fighter not a quitter, stood in Downing Street to say that, on second thoughts, she was quitting. That was just the latest U-turn of her remarkably brief time in office. She is gone as leader of the Conservative Party and will be replaced, within a week, as Britain’s prime minister. Not long ago we observed that she had the political shelf life of a lettuce. In fact it proved rather shorter than that.
 
We couldn’t include the news in our new weekly edition, but the meltdown of the British government has been under way for some time. Our Bagehot column on Jeremy Hunt, the powerful chancellor of the exchequer, is a good place to start to get a sense of the woes. Our cover leader, meanwhile, compares what is happening in Britain to the troubles faced by Italy. The comparison is inexact, but it captures something real. Britain has moved much closer to Italy in three ways. Both countries are under the thumb of the bond markets. Britain’s low-growth problem has become entrenched. And the political instability that used to mark out Italy has now fully affected Britain. Welcome to Britaly. 

Elsewhere our cover highlights the coming house-price slump. Its underlying cause is soaring interest rates. If your wealth is tied up in bricks and mortar it is time to get nervous. House prices are now falling in nine rich economies. As inflation and recession stalk the world a deepening correction is likely—even estate agents are gloomy. Although this will not detonate global banks as in 2007-09, it will intensify the downturn, leave a cohort of people with wrecked finances and start a political storm.

Russia once again pounded Ukraine with waves of cruise-missile and drone attacks, aimed at the country’s electrical infrastructure in the hope of freezing Ukraine into submission. Russia seems to have acquired huge stocks of cheap Iranian drones. But Ukraine has been able to shoot down many of the drones and missiles and has so far been quick to restore power to affected areas. Overall capacity is suffering though, so rationing seems increasingly likely.

A raft of earnings from America’s big banks showed a decline in profits as rocky markets took a toll on their lucrative investment-banking business. But at Goldman Sachs, where net income was down by 43%, year on year, another problem is its expansion into retail banking. Its boss, David Solomon, announced another reorganisation of the bank, splitting up its consumer business by rolling its savings and wealth products into asset-management and putting lending into a new division called Platform.