Blain's Morning Porridge, submitted by Bill Blain of Shard Capital

“Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!”

As it’s a Friday I am contractually entitled to have a rant and whine about whatever I want to write about. Which, today, isn’t really the cut and thrust of markets.

To be brutally frank - we all know what the problems are: Too much money in the markets pushing up the prices of market assets. The fact is too much of that too much money is owned by too few people who use their too much money to buy all these financial assets. These too few people who own all the financial assets get richer everyday as their too much money makes their too many financial assets even more valuable. And these too few people get even richer by getting even more too much money to put into the already too expensive financial markets by “persuading” central banks to keep rates low, to buy financial assets through QE, and get their in-the-pocket politicians to enact tax cuts so their too much money is even more too much money…

With me so far??

Meanwhile, politicians pay for the too much money they give to too rich people, by taking it away from the much more numerous too many too poor people through Austerity. The too many people who don’t have any assets and owe any money they have to the people who have too much money and too many assets – aren’t happy. They blame society, they blame governments and as they get even more unhappy they get angry. These too poor too angry people then get very angry and start blaming people, which is what is happening across the globe.

Still there?...

Ultimately, it gets messy. The too many poor people set up a very sharp razor in the centre of a square in the capital of their country and start teaching the too few people with too much money and too many assets, that these are essentially worthless if their heads are cut off…

You get the drift?

I could go on, but I think I’ve said enough about UK, US, European or anywhere else’s politics, trade wars, or pondering why bond yields are too low and stock prices too high, why unicorns are doomed, why everything is pants and everything is marvelous, or other such fripperies like rising income inequality or the iniquity of the Gig Economy.