It’s another year! What a weird year 2020 was. Helen and I started the year in Australia. We travelled back to the UK at the end of February thinking that we would move back to Sydney in July/August. Instead we got stuck in the UK because of the pandemic.
Post US Election
The U.S. election was a wild ride! It wasn’t the Democratic landslide that I was hoping. As predicted, however, the initial vote was skewed to the Republicans, and Trump tried to portray that as a Republican win. Over the course of days, the mail-in ballots were counted, and it became clear that Biden won.
The US Election
I hope Biden wins. I don’t think I can stand another 4 years of Trump.
Current State of the Pandemic in the UK
Here in the UK we have just had over 60,000 deaths from Coronavirus. Hospitalisations and deaths are ramping up again. I think that there is a very high possibility that this virus will become endemic, and our society will have to adjust to live with it. On the other hand, some countries in the Asia-Pacific region have very low case rates, and seem to be controlling the pandemic. I think that there is a definite possibility of a two-speed world economy, with much faster growth going to those countries that have managed to control the pandemic.
Brexit, no deal looming?
This morning the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, told the UK public to start preparing for a “No Deal” Brexit. Most commentators I follow on Twitter believe that there will be a trade deal - albeit a thin one. The Guardian has what I think is a good analysis of today’s analysis.
CakeWatch
I'm really enjoying the new (anti)-Brexit Podcast - CakeWatch. Chris Kendall and Steve Bullock deliver a lively discussion on the events of the week. It's amazing how many events around Brexit are happening every week! At the moment I'm listening to the CakeWatch podcast and The Guardian Brexit means... podcast.
Focusing on Maths, Programming and Science
It seems like the World is breaking down, with increased terrorism in Europe, Trump supporting Neo-Nazis in the US, and the insanity that is Brexit. I've decided that I need to ignore politics for my own peace of mind, and focus entirely on maths, programming and science!
The Weirdness of Equity Markets
Equity markets constantly surprise me. It's looking increasingly likely that the Eurozone will disintegrate - leading to potential bank failures, stagnant economic growth and increased unemployment - and the equity markets here in Europe are pretty much shrugging it off today. The FTSE100 is up over half-a-percent at pixel time.
Detroit - Ground Zero for Economic Collapse
Here is a video showing how badly Detroit has been affected by the collapsing housing market. Towards the end of the video you can see some amazing mansions in the worst-hit areas of Detroit that you can supposedly buy at a massive discount.
Financial Turmoil
This past week has been facinating in the financial markets. After a long slide downwards, the markets tumbled at the beginning of the week, and now they are bouncing back upwards.
Initially the market dive looked like it was triggered by worries over the problems with the Monoline Insurers.
The Fed responded by cutting interest rates by 75 basis points on Wednesday. This seemed to have little effect with various indices falling even further. It did however seem to have a dramatic effect on the probability that the US will go into recession.
On Thursday we found out that Societe Generale lost $7 Bln from trader fraud (leading the market wags to dub it "Shock Gen". This seemed to have little negative impact on the markets with the indices all shooting upwards. They are all up today, albeit not as much as yesterday. It looks like the momentum is leaving the bounce.
So could the massive falls be attributed to Soc Gen selling out of their positions and realizing their losses? Can some of the market euphoria be attributed to proposed monoline bail-out?
I guess we'll see how next week develops!