About Those E-mails …

Today was a big day for campaign news, in that nothing happened. Clinton was not indicted for her mis-handling of emails, nor did we learn anything new. It’s all over but the ranting, so we’ll pause for a moment so that you can get your share in.

[ shouting, sharing of angry memes, deep sighs, et cetera ]

Feel better? Be sure to wipe off the screen when you’re done. Because whether you believe this was purely one more witch hunt or evidence of a rigged system, you probably are better off getting it off your chest. Better in the sense that you’re probably wrong – there was something to this, but it was never going to end up in an indictment.

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Big Ideas Fall Apart

The dust continues to settle after the Brexit earthquake. US markets stabilized today, but it appears to be a “dead cat bounce” or a technical upturn as short positions are covered. It comes from the saying that even a dead cat will bounce up one story after falling off a ten story building. It certainly feels like that kind of week, especially if you think about whatever dead animals might account for the ridiculous hair of Donald Trump and/or Boris Johnson.

Then again, it hasn’t been a week yet.

For all the comparisons between this vote and the Trump phenom, they still don’t do this situation justice. People all over the world are recoiling from opening up markets and generally moving closer together. The threat to the EU is far from done as “euroskeptics” on the continent will certainly be emboldened – as will globalskeptics around the world. What has gone wrong?

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Brexit Blowup

The vote went for Brexit. The hounds of chaos have been unleashed. Is this a harbinger of a Trump victory in November? Political trends in the US have first shown in the UK before, with Margaret Thatcher predating Ronald Reagan and Tony Blair arriving before Bill Clinton. More importantly, the polls were as wrong on Brexit as they were on Cameron’s big win in the last Parliamentary elections. Is this a sign?

The short answer is “Yes”, but the long answer is “No”. This has a long way to play out before the US votes, and we don’t yet know what will happen. There will be a lot more anarchy in the UK and the final lesson is far from written.

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Dump Trump?

There is little question that Trump will not be elected President. The only question remaining is how terrible the damage will be to the Republican Party. It’s a big question because in order to limit that damage the odds that Trump will not survive the convention in July are increasing daily.

It’s not just the horrifically bad poll numbers. It has nothing to do with his campaign manager being fired – that may have been a good thing. Skip over Moody’s analysis that he’d throw us into recession.  It has everything to do with his May campaign finance report which demonstrates that there is no functional campaign. There is no money, and a fifth of what was spent went to Trump related businesses.

If there was ever any doubt that this guy is a total fraud, it’s been erased.

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“Brexit” Turns Violent

Jo Cox, MP, was killed today in Birstall, West Yorkshire. She was leaving a “surgery”, the British term for what we in the US call a “town hall”. The attacker was reported to have shouted, “Put Britain first!” a reference to the referendum in one week on whether the UK should leave the European Union (EU).

If you were thinking the whole world has gone mad, you are right.

While we in the US are shaken by a horrific attack on ordinary citizens, the UK now has to contemplate political violence – something it has not seen since the end of the IRA’s campaign in 1990. There is no comparison between terror inflicted on the public and on the political system, as each is horrible in its own way. But we can reasonable expect there will be more of each until something dramatic happens.

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