Albert Edwards: “At This Point You Realize Something Has Gone Very Wrong”
In his latest note published last week, SocGen’s Albert Edwards – never at a loss subjects that inspire his outrage – rages on the topic of Brexit, and specifically the often repeated assertion (discussed here as well), that post-Brexit referendum UK has lost 2% of its GDP output, or about £800m a week.
We won’t dwell on that for a simple reason: as UBS’ chief economist Paul Donovan put is best last week, “A few things have happened in the EU-UK divorce. Does anyone care? No, they do not.”
Another reason why Brexit is largely meaningless despite resulting in countless, pound-moving newswire headlines each hour: the final outcome is clear – with Theresa May a remainer, and with both sides seeking to perpetuate the status quo by delaying and delaying and delaying some more until it appears that it’s the public’s desire to reverse the outcome of the 2016 referendum, it is just a matter of time before the entire idea of Brexit is scuttled.
Instead we will focus on an anecdote that Edwards brings up in relation to his now 30-year-old son, Newcome, who was 10 back in 1999, and was reportedly stealing Albert’s Financial Times “to look at Nasdaq share prices:”
It was at that point that I realised the tech bubble was really getting out of hand (I have reproduced part of this weekly explaining what happened, at the end of this note).
As Edwards further explains, “discovering my 10 year old son looking at Nasdaq share prices alerted me to the extent of the madness that had gripped the markets by end 1999. Similarly there are moments in this job when something you hadn’t been following particularly closely is highlighted to you and you stagger back in shock. At that point you realise that something has gone very wrong.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
