UK Politics

The Owen Patterson fiasco is unbelievable. The Conservatives have had an internal coup in which a small band of Brexit fanatics have taken control of the party. In any party that cared about electoral success, Paterson would have been thrown to the wolves, but he is a true believer and so must be saved. I would be amazed if the party did not implode at the next election. 

Boris seems to be utterly under the control of Carrie, whom the rest of the party despises. His green policies will backfire, as people start to understand how much worse off they will be as a consequence. They call her Carrie Antoinette.” It will not age well.

Mao

I’m reading Henry Kissenger’s “On China.” I am not sure how much of it he actually wrote. The early part is a competent but unoriginal history of China from its earliest origins.  I’ve got to the point where he’s talking about Mao. He describes Mao as a master strategist, updating Sun Tzu’s philosophy to triumph in the modern era. Everything I know about Mao comes from reading the bio by Jung Chang, who paints a picture of him as a monster who caused the deaths of tens if not hundreds of millions of innocent people. A sociopath, if not a psychopath. Anyway, it’s interesting to read contrasting accounts of the same person.

For what it’s worth, I think that Mao operated a reign of terror, as well as a personality cult. The suffering which resulted from his hare-brained schemes was vast. Collectivization of agriculture was a disaster, and caused a famine that resulted in fifty million deaths. No wonder Xi Jing Ping is tolerated so well.

Wrap

Markets continue to drift aimlessly. Yields don’t know whether to go up or down, so all other markets mark time, waiting for some sort of decisive move in one direction or another. The Fed might or might not be helping the economy, but it surely is harming price discovery, as this price reflects a balance of ‘real’ demand from economic actors and a central bank that has a hundred programs to swap Treasuries for money.

Some bubble stocks are definitely looking flakey. I am not a believer in the Dark Arts, but this chart looks very unhappy to me: