Powell’s Black Monday

The recent sell-off in equity markets is a timely reminder of how inherently unstable the financial system is. The trigger, a larger than expected increase in Average Hourly Earnings in the US, cannot itself explain such a violent gyration. In fact, US Treasury yields have been steadily raising since the summer, when macro data clearly … Continued

2018: The end of financial history?

On the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Francis Fukuyama wrote his famous essay “The End of History?*”, where he argued that the seemingly unstoppable spread of liberal democracy was signaling the endpoint of history whilst understanding the latter as an evolutionary process of a socio-cultural nature. A parallel can be drawn between … Continued