The price of everything

Know what you know

“Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle. Some things are within your control. And some things are not.”

- Epictetus.

 

Readers are invited to delve into the archive of the State of the Markets podcasts – interviews about the financial markets with interesting people. If you would like to nominate a guest for a future episode, simply contact this correspondent via our website.  

 

So one inauspicious date – that of the UK’s official departure from the EU on Halloween – has been replaced by another. Absent some highly unusual activity in the House of Lords, the country will learn the identity of its new Prime Minister on Friday 13^th of December. Of all the various options available, a Boris Johnson premiership and a majority Conservative government might finally, and perversely, allow a process of national healing after three-and-a-half-years of increasingly intense Brexit psychodrama. If the bogeyman turns out to be Jeremy Corbyn, or some coalition of the dismal, the long national nightmare will in fact have only just begun.

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One good scare

“I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass.. and I’m all out of bubblegum.”

- Apparently adlibbed by Roddy Piper in the John Carpenter dark economic satire They Live.

 

“You know, it’s Halloween. I guess everyone’s entitled to one good scare, huh ?”

- Brackett (Charles Cyphers) in Halloween.

 

Readers may be interested to hear our recent interview with the entrepreneur Toby Baxendale in the latest State of the Markets podcast.

 

The film Halloween is not just a cracking atmospheric piece from the early career of its director John Carpenter, but at the time of its release was the most successful independent film ever made. Made on a shoestring budget of $320,000 it managed to gross over $40 million. This correspondent has always been a fan of John Carpenter, from an early enough age to crowbar ‘Die Filme von John Carpenter’ into his German O-level oral exam, and even the not-so-great releases have always had something intriguing about them. Halloween 3, for example, narratively unrelated to its two predecessors, managed to briefly snare the creator of Quatermass, Nigel Kneale, as its scriptwriter, before a spat about overly graphic effects severed the connection. Notwithstanding the season we’re now in, given the economic and political climate, two other Carpenter sci-fi / horror classics seem more than usually relevant: The Thing, and They Live.


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FT: Fatuous Trots

Hell hath no fury like an elite ignored. Readers wishing to tear their faces off may be interested in reading the latest effort by the FT’s pompous-sounding ‘Editorial Board’. The FT seems to be taking a leaf out of The Economist’s book by imposing anonymity on a growing number of its articles. Not wanting to be held accountable for the piece in question is entirely understandable. The article is titled ‘How to build a more responsible capitalism’. What follows is exactly the sort of squishy, virtue-signalling, socially fashionable bandwagon-squatting that has caused more experienced FT readers to abandon the publication in droves under Lionel ‘Légion d’Honneur’ Barber’s editorship. This correspondent only retains his subscription for the inadvertent comedy value. Low taxes ? Light regulation ? How tasteless.

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Balls

“People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table.”

- Max Beerbohm.

 

*Readers may enjoy our recent State of the Markets podcast with Professor of Economics at the Université d’Angers, Guido Hülsmann, recorded at the end of September 2019*

 

Well, since you ask, it was a dream last week about a casino, and a roulette table. Your correspondent bided his time, placed his chips on the number 3.. and won. This being a dream, we then all went off to celebrate by splurging our winnings on a cheese sandwich. Just the one. Perhaps Beerbohm was on to something.

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Spooky

Autumn naturally lends itself to a mixture of retrospection and introspection. The bright and sunny certainties of summer are replaced by the cloudier anticipations of the winter to come. As the crops are gathered in, the days darken, and chill. And as animal spirits start to wane with the weakening sun, problems that swelled up during the heat of summer – Thomas Cook; Ireland’s growing political hostility to the UK; the prospect of global trade wars; socio-economic stability in China – start finally to decay and reveal themselves. As readers will be well aware, Halloween 2019 happens to coincide with Britain’s putative departure from the EU. This year, expect a degree more fear and a degree less certainty during the mistier days of the month, as decades’ worth of the market’s and politicians’ shadowy errors start to walk abroad.

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