Exchange Invest Weekend Festive Edition 2547: Part II
PLY: It is sublime watching Britain’s blob blow the country up while blamestorming the virgin government of PM Truss.
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Saturday Special: Feel Free to Share with colleagues and friends.
So that was 2022, where Exchange Invest during the week informatively kept our readers well ahead of the curve all year long (we were for example calling FTX as “in trouble” a long, long - and lonely - time ahead of anybody else…we have some outstanding calls on who hits trouble soon too as I type this intro).
We also had time for a laugh too, for instance when we invited in a guest correspondent, the late Ian Fleming to opine on matters via his canon of work / often through the eyes of his alter ego James Bond when we marked the 60th anniversary of the big screen debut of Dr No: EI 2478: James Bond Special.
As per last weekend, we mark Saturday with a selection of some key stories from this year’s Weekend Editions. After last week’s crypto theme, this week it’s a broader look around the world - enjoy!
(and don’t forget it’s last call to join our daily subscription ranks at $299, reply to this message to sign up now - it’s $349 per user / year for “The Exchange of Information” from January 1st 2023)
20 years on from the first fintech bestseller “Capital Market Revolution!"... "Victory Or Death" is a must read book for anyone interested in the intersection of Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and FinTech as part of the whole future of finance.
We lived behind the Iron Curtain like zombies. Covering our eyes and ears, reciting meaningless slogans in unison that none of us believed. That’s why I had to take a chance and leave when I could. It’s also why freedom of expression is not just another “freedom,” to be listed alongside others. The ability to speak one’s conscience and to debate ideas openly is the cornerstone of all freedom.
PLY: I am not sure which is more poignant, that Thomas Peterffy reminds us of the squalor of socialism or that indeed his argument has to be made at all in what ought to be surely enlightened times?
PLY: Fresh from 1952 when her Britannic Majesty took her part of the deal and ran with it - “Long to reign over us” as the British national anthem notes, has been effected to record-breaking levels by the magnificent Queen Elizabeth II.
Update PLY: And how sad it was to mourn Her Majesty’s passing only months later.
PLY: “ The trouble with weather forecasting is that it's right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it.” - Patrick L Young
Singaporeans invested US$1.1 billion in Ng Yu Zhi’s Envy Group. They thought it was trading nickel, but it wasn’t. He’s now accused of running the largest financial scam in the city state’s history.
PLY: Civilisation is nearly upon us again as I can readily attest from recent travels and it is clear the Swedes got it right where everybody else in their haste to become North Korea got it horribly wrong, making barely if any statistical difference to Covid cases while plunging every aspect of civilisation into cold storage and applying a wrecking ball to the economy at the whims of a scientific establishment which was given way too much power by the political pygmies.
PLY: A brilliant innovation from the wondrous Icelandic people, an opportunity to “outhorse” your email while on holiday with some quality nags trained in corporate buzzwords who can take care of digital communications while you enjoy a break…
Despite the ironclad economic rule “There is no such thing as a free lunch,” people tend to forget.
One other thought comes to mind: You end up with a very different product when financial people deploy technology than when technology people roll into finance.
PLY: Barry Ritholtz ‘s My Worst Trades articles notes: “Robinhood’s 2015 seed round: “That is the dumbest investment idea I have ever heard.””
PLY: I am no great fan of Polish PM Morawiecki but he hits the right note. Poland sees a future for itself where western Europe promotes decline from a tired elite. Likewise, the USA has difficulties (by far the least competent administration in living memory - quite.
PLY: A magnificent insight from the perma-thoughtful Lord Ridley, explaining how (as ignored by the MSM) the collapse of Sri Lanka’s economy is in many ways a salutary tale of the haste to green endorsement being a road to national penury.
PLY: It’s rebirth time for Britain. Against a challenging background there is an outbreak of government (and it believes in liberty, free markets and other giddy concepts unseen for at least a generation in UK politics). The new era of King Charles has catapulted the UK to the top of the soft power standings after that simply incredible Royal funeral.
It’s time for Britain to move forward…
PLY update: See, we don’t only trumpet our successes, clearly this one didn’t go the way we reckoned…
The way the UK government fell should worry all who support democracy.
The precipitous fall of former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss’s government has been widely credited to the objective discipline of financial markets. Her misguided policies, the logic goes, elicited such a negative reaction that she had no choice but to backtrack and resign.
I see a very different story. Markets didn’t oust Truss, the Bank of England did — through poor financial regulation and highly subjective crisis management.
PLY: Narayana Kocherlakota, a former Minneapolis Fed President spells out a worrying fact that is amongst many missed by the mainstream media of late when writing (unfairly) Truss administration obituaries. The role of the Central Bank whether as incompetents or insurgents against political will needs to be examined after a decade where the UK Central Bank has failed to demonstrate any merits to its being politically independent (AKA where it has endlessly sought to influence politics through Brexit and into the recent Gilt market debacle).
Kocherlakota’s column ends ominously: “The prime minister was seeking to fulfill her campaign promises. She was thwarted not by markets, but by a hole in financial regulation — a hole that the Bank of England proved strangely unwilling to plug.”
PLY: It is sublime watching Britain’s blob blow the country up while blamestorming the virgin government of PM Truss. Even more bizarre is how the EU is taking this as a sign they can survive. For all the talk of American downfall, it is Europe that is determined to be doomed inside and outside the EU it seems. Alas.
If you take this seriously, it implies that two percentage points have been knocked off growth every year by the sheer amount of regulation. Due to the nature of compounded growth, the median household would have $185,000 if we did have an extra two percentage points for just over half a century.
Last Word
And a very Happy New Year everyone, have a great time tonight however you view your Hogmanay and all the very best to you and yours for a healthy, peaceful and prosperous 2023!
- Patrick
Exchange Invest is "the exchange of information" in market structure worldwide.Exchange Invest Daily is the benchmark newsletter about exchanges and market structure, read by the leading figures in the 'parish' across the world.Patrick L Young wrote the original fintech book, "Capital Market Revolution!" (FT PH 1999) and has, alongside many entrepreneurial endeavours, been an exchange CEO.
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