2023-09-08 Markets

For the past few months the basic story (I should say ‘theme’ but I hate the word) in the markets has been the same, causing rising discomfort pretty much everywhere. In the US, growth has been more resilient and yet less threatening on the inflationary front; in the Far East (China), things have gone mostly in the wrong direction, with hints of possible financial strains appearing stronger by the day; and in Europe, as always in the middle of where the real action takes place, the statistics have once more shown the risks of a noticeable shift towards East of the economic linkages. The resulting performances in various currencies reflect this state of things, though you have to ask yourself if it makes sense to pay so much for earnings given all of the above. 
     We tend to focus on the horrific cost some leaders impose on their own and other people when waging war, but rarely think of the perhaps equally obscene costs imposed by other leaders when they willingly fail in the proper management and governing of their economies. Venezuela, whose pattern of economic performance is portrayed above, is not the only case of gross mismanagement – think Zimbabwe, or Cuba, or Russia and China in their respective ‘revolutionary’ phases.
     [Note – I’m Italian, so make of this what you wish.] In the category of ‘who cares?’, Swiss drivers seem to have a very sporadic use of signaling when they intend to change direction: often they signal when they’ve already turned, even more often they skip signaling when in a turning lane, and finally they think signaling gives them precedence when they want to pass on a highway irrespective of who’s coming on the passing lane and at what speed. In this latter case they are beaten, oddly, by the Germans, even though in many of their highways they have no speed limits.
[Cover: Semafor]