I must admit that I went on many travels abroad before I recognized the general value of Financial Times and asked for it in a plane. I think it wasn’t before I had engaged in some stock trading as part of my pension savings that I dared to open Financial Times.
But ever since Financial Times has been my favourite ‘on plane newspaper’, and I often keep parts of it for future reference. It is true that Financial Times brings a lot of information about business, corporate companies and the stock market around in the world. But for me the real value of Financial Times has been the newspaper’s thorough reports and reviews of what is going on around the world. In general Financial Times brings rather neutral information and evaluation reports of the situation. Sometimes with a very critical approach fitting to real professional journalism.
I interpret this level of seriousness as a part of the function of Financial Times as an important source of information for decision making of big business. Fake information or biased news about the situation in a country could not only mislead the reader but be a catastrophe for some decisions related to big business.
Honestly, many American politicians would be much better informed about the world outside US if they took the time to read Financial Times daily. I don’t dare to recommend Financial Times to the general American, as many Americans unfortunately aren’t reading a daily newspaper but are just trusting television news.
The television news and especially the most popular ones aren’t that trustworthy, especially not their information about the rest of the world. To say it mildly I guess the world would look much different if more Americans were informed at the level of Financial Times as a background for their political stand and views on the world.
My original motivation for opening my first Financial Times was my personal interest in how the stock market was doing. It was the year before the dot.com collapse and through my early warnings of that catastrophe for many stocks related to IT and the so-called new economy I was able to avoid any serious loses.
So, also for the more common man who cares for his own future the reading of Financial Times would be a good investment of time – and then at the same time the important benefit to achieve a much deeper understanding of how the world is working and how the life is going on around in our beautiful but fragile world.
