Fear of unpredictable geopolitical events seems to provoke a collective desire for experts who can reassure with their wisdom. And there is never a shortage of volunteers to satisfy these needs. They rush in like hopeful lottery ticket buyers ahead of a rollover.
COVID – DISEASE EXPERTS
I suppose that this has been building for a long time but the Covid-19 panic jolted it into a higher gear. When Boris Johnson said in June 2020 that a cricket ball was “a natural vector of disease” he inspired not howls of derision but rather an implicit challenge to say something even more uninformed and ludicrous and to claim a spurious authority for having done so.
Governments all over the world engaged in competitive dictatorship to see what restrictions, including travel bans and curfews, they could place on their citizens. And they came for the children too.
In 1984 Orwell wrote:
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.”
In my mind this apocalyptic image has been replaced by that of infant school pupils wearing masks and for hours recycling their own breath back into their lungs. According to experts, this was for the greater good of their grannies and, let us not forget, their teachers. In the US, teachers demanding the closure of schools staged their own mock funeral processions. As if school children were inadvertent assassins.
RUSSIA – WAR EXPERTS
As this lunacy subsided, Russia invaded Ukraine. A mad man with nuclear weapons and a grudge was threatening to start World War III. Help!
Fear not. Help was indeed at hand. In fact, many of the old experts were the new experts.
“Ukraine will win. I’ve never been more certain”
Boris Johnson
It is the two year anniversary of the invasion. I have lost count of the variations in the expert narrative. Quickly out of the traps was the story that the end of Ukrainian wheat exports would cause havoc, particularly in countries like Turkey and Egypt that have diets of which bread is a large part.
The price of wheat rocketed to US$450 per ton but is now at US$187. What happened? It seems that Ukraine is now managing to produce and export almost as much grain as it did before the war. The EU dropped tariffs on Ukrainian agriculture exports in 2022 and now Polish farmers are protesting about the competition. If any of the experts forecasted that, I missed it.
In the US the Democrats are trying to push through another $60 billion of aid for Ukraine. As seen in the video above it is important to them to maintain the expectation that Ukraine will win and, unfortunately, this includes discouraging any negotiated settlement. Occasionally highly questionable motives slip out. Such as the idea that the aid finds its way back as orders for US armament manufacturers. And the comment that if Ukrainian troops are not funded to do the fighting and, of course, the dying, US troops will be next in line as “World War III” develops.
The EU is not blind to the promise of aid boomeranging back as orders for defence companies. It has recently declared that investing in defence companies is compatible with ESG rules. Really, you have to laugh.
PALESTINE – INTERNATIONAL LAW EXPERTS
On October 7th 2023 a conflict that distresses people immeasurably kicked off. Finding a line on which all reasonable experts can agree is elusive, but striding with super confidence into the spotlight are experts on international law. If you don’t know exactly what that is, you may be no wiser after listening to the experts but it appears to be ‘more honour’d in the breach than the observance’. In other words, international law is recognised only when a state is accused of breaking it.
Think about when you really need experts. Brain surgeons, airline pilots, electricians and plumbers may genuinely be said to need some expertise in order to be merely adequate.
The fact that self-proclaimed or frankly fraudulent people have been trying to sell you feelings of safety over Covid, Russia, Palestine and other lurking perceived threats (Artificial Intelligence, “hate speech”) seems somewhat deranged. Fortunately, we can turn to financial markets for a rational verdict, in so far as we know that money always tries to flee danger.
FINANCIAL MARKETS – THE CURIOUS INCIDENT IN THE BACKGROUND
There is a “nothing to see here” verdict from stock markets and government bond markets. In the two years since the Russian invasion the US S&P Index is up 17%. The German stock market, a supposedly near-post industrial economy with a huge energy headache, is somehow +22%. Rather humiliatingly, the FTSE 100 is up by a feeble 2%. The Russian stock market fell 7% over the period but it has performed a U-shaped journey and, had you jumped in in October 2022, perhaps during peak “Ukraine will win” season, you would be 74% to the good.
Government bond yields have risen significantly over the period indicating that central banks and investors seem to be more worried about overheating than recession. Buy shares and bonds if you wish, but don’t buy the experts’ bull…