Crude oil prices are up again today despite a pledge by Saudi Arabia to boost production.

Traders focused instead on disruptions to Nigerian supply and heightened Middle East tensions — namely Iran’s threat of a “devastating” response to any attack on its nuclear sites by Israel.

On Friday, Pentagon officials said a large-scale Israeli military exercise in the eastern Mediterranean early this month may have been a dress rehearsal by Israeli forces for an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

I’m reading a strange little book this week. It is called The Fall of Northern Rock and is written by an ex-employee of the now nationalised bank called Brian Walters. I’m not quite sure why Walters was the one commissioned to write the book, for the simple reason that he doesn’t seem to have any more inside knowledge into the affair than the rest of us.

When gold was going for $300 an ounce and oil for $25 a barrel, it was easy to know where to put your money.

It’s all doom and gloom in the British residential property market. By contrast, farmland values are rocketing at a record pace.

The latest data from the eurozone “looks like a resounding confirmation” of the single currency area’s resilience, said Unicredit.