1 Aug

Sandridge Energy and Baytex Energy

Bison Interests are keen on these two. Highly geared, but benefiting from rising demand. You’ll have to listen to the lastest episode of the Market Huddle to get the detailed thesis. Or search for Josh Young on Seeking Alpha.

House prices, globally, showing how powerful central banks can be

This was a lead story in the FT, and other places. The evidence is everywhere.

Manipulating the political agenda

The media is full of stuff about trans-gender athletes. There is a huge amount of coverage of green issues. Feminism, especially the sort that says women are people who are born with a vagina, is now very controversial. Islamophobia, antisemitism, racism, mental health are all major issues for the left. But nobody talks about economic policy issues any longer: redistribution, wealth taxes, carried interest exemption, capital transfer taxes, estate taxes, bankruptcy of banks, enforcement of tax collection, competition policy, eminent domain etc. etc.

It’s almost as if the 0.01% control the policy agenda.

This post was influenced by the fact that I have just finished ‘Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few’ by Robert Reich. I plan to write a review of it on GoodReads. In many ways it echos themes in [Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists].(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saving_Capitalism_from_the_Capitalists) The core point is that the world is moving further and further away from the capitalism of (Adam) Smith, Stanley Jevons, Alfred Marshall and Milton Friedman, as the elites learn to undermine the role of the state as an umpire in the game of commercial competition.