Britain would have left the EU even if it had voted Remain September 5, 2016 Counterfactuals are the ugly stepsister of political risk analysis, neglected and scorned in equal measure because – as they deal with events that have never occurred – they can never be definitively assessed. We find this all more than a little amusing, as the first rule of any world-class analyst is humility, that nothing (good [...]
Forget Norway: Canada-plus is the best Brexit deal Britain can achieve August 30, 2016 “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.” – Book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3, Verse 1 Theresa May’s policy of slowing down the post-Brexit train through the determined tactic of vagueness has been skilful, but it has now served its purpose. By resolutely refusing to invoke Article 50 [...]
A Global Free Trade Alliance should be Britain’s stunning post-Brexit future August 22, 2016 “You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’” – George Bernard Shaw If the EU isn’t Britain’s future, then what is? Surely, part of the answer lies in the Drakean vision I have put forth in previous columns, forging far closer economic ties with the [...]
Who owns America? Why Donald Trump will lose – but not by much August 15, 2016 To put it mildly, by any terrestrial standards Donald Trump has not had a good week. Be it seeming to threaten Hillary Clinton with assassination or stubbornly refusing to back down on his Oliver Stone-like claim that President Obama is the founder of Isis, Trump has stretched the already fraying bonds of American credulity to breaking point. [...]
Voting for Hillary Clinton is the last thing I ever thought I’d do. But this is our moral test. August 8, 2016 “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Edmund Burke Every time I come to London, my good friend Dan and I make a point of seeing one of the city’s peerless museums together, as an enjoyable way to break up the monotony of the endless meetings I [...]
What to expect in 2015: Europe down and crunch time for Japan and Mexico December 14, 2014 THERE ought to be a special circle of hell reserved for my colleagues – sadly a majority – who work so extra hard to never say much of anything. All too often, analysts, fearing being wrong to the point of never trying to be right, describe rather than analyse, and go along with conventional wisdom [...]
The drunken gambler syndrome: Why the West never learns from its failures December 7, 2014 Let's call it the drunken gambler’s theorem. It’s the reason casinos in Las Vegas stay in business, no matter what the economy does. “Just one more bet: this time will be the one to do it.” Gamblers delude themselves that, rather than throwing money away, they are making investments, and they’re certain to win because [...]
The oil war has begun: The Saudis are using crude tools to hobble their rivals November 30, 2014 “Paranoia is knowing all the facts.” – Woody Allen Venezuelan foreign minister Rafael Ramirez certainly believes in my Saudi oil conspiracy theory. With his horribly-run country requiring a break-even oil price of at least $121 per barrel to balance its budget, and with the global price of crude already down 30 per cent since July [...]
Iran nuclear crisis: The sharks are circling and war is not impossible November 25, 2014 IF THE conventional wisdom of the mainstream press could sum up the current state of the Iranian nuclear talks in one headline, it would absurdly read “Optimism as talks fail to end”. Even by their standards, this fails to pass the laugh test analytically. Instead, an alarmed pessimism must be the correct response. For after [...]
Japan needs its Thatcher moment or Abenomics is destined to be a failure November 23, 2014 Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan is halfway there. After two decades of stagnation, matched by a consistently underwhelming political response to this seminal challenge, there is no doubt that Abe is at least aware of the true extent of the problem: that his legacy is wholly bound up with ending Japan’s “Lost Decades”. In [...]
