Financialisation

In 1982, the Financial Times adopted a new corporate slogan: “No FT, no comment.” The slogan was an immediate and lasting success. Perhaps proving that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, it quickly passed into general usage and even achieved a certain notoriety in one of the most frequently quoted sayings in late twentieth-century British politics, albeit by an entirely fictional politician. The central character in Michael Dobbs’s novel and subsequent drama series House of Cards, the scheming and malevolent Francis Urquhart, parries every awkward question with the same enigmatic remark: “You might very well think that: I could not possibly comment.”