Brexit — What Does It Mean? The British electorate has chosen to leave the European Union. This will not be instantaneous, but will take a few years to be completed. Some people view this as a political issue: Britain is tired of strange bureaucratic regulations from Brussels. Others see it Read more
Polls, Polls, Everywhere, and Not a Drop of Certainty Markets are possessed by Brexit fears. The market selloff that began last week may have been prompted by dramatic poll data showing the “leave” vote pulling ahead of support by Brits to remain in the European Union. That’s prompting existential fears Read more
Time For Bargain-Hunting In Europe?On Sunday and Monday we heard about two new polls in the U.K. — both showing the “leave” vote pulling ahead of the “stay” vote in the contest to determine whether Britain will remain in the European Union. The momentum was visible also among the U.K.’s Read more
Executive Summary 1. Ordinary people aren’t very ordinary. Professor Deirdre McCloskey’s recent piece in The Wall Street Journal got us thinking about the roots of western prosperity — and suggested that current nervousness about populist movements around the globe may be missing the mark. Don’t be too alarmed by rising Read more
Executive Summary 1. Critically important to your investments: popular revolts against corruption around the world. This trend will last for decades, and upset many of the patterns we think we know. Corruption and cronyism have existed throughout human history, and ordinary people have usually accepted them with stoic resignation. But Read more
Market Summary A year ago, in our letter of April 30, 2015, we noted: “While we do not see a crisis as imminent, we believe that a global debt liquidation is becoming a more obvious eventuality sometime in the next two to three years.” Since then we have continued to Read more
Europe’s Banks Are Showing Cracks We’ve been expressing our worry about the health of the European banking system for years. Starting in 2012, many European banks relied on “CoCos” — contingent convertible bonds — in an attempt to shore up their balance sheets. Now, as market fear begins to price Read more
Sunnis, Shi’ites, and Surprises After almost five years of civil war, the conflict in Syria has spilled over to Europe in the form of an ongoing refugee crisis, and now through the terrorist attacks in Paris — which, according to Islamic State claims, came as retaliation for French airstrikes. Now, Read more
Overview of Europe — Good News? The slow-moving train wreck that is Greece is moving along with new developments. The Greek banking system is experiencing a run, and accordingly the European Central Bank (ECB) is continuing to throw them a lifeline of emergency liquidity. Eurozone bankers are trying to keep Read more
Investment Summary World economic optimism is rising, and as a result, demand for government bonds is receding. Inflation is starting to be felt in some Asian countries, especially India. We note that new jobs and higher wages are a trend in the U.S., and we expect this trend to gain Read more
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