Daily Brief – Jackson Hole

Jackson Hole

This week’s annual gathering of top global economists and policy makers at the Wyoming resort will be more than usually closely followed by markets. The big event is on Friday when Fed Chair Powell will speak. Mostly the expectation is that Jerome Powell will adopt a less hawkish tone and will signal the long awaited confirmation of a 25 or even a 50bp cut in US interest rates in September. That would in part placate both POTUS and Treasury Secretary Bessent. However, there is a school of thought that suggests as Powell is self evidently toast, that he might just stick to his core belief which is that inflation is not tamed and that caution on rate cuts is the right policy. If he does indeed follow that latter course, expect fireworks both in the markets and from his two arch critics in particular.

EUR/USD 1.1703.

Global Leaders

This is a revealing table about persons aged 15+ from different countries nationals detailing their annual consumption of pure alcohol. As an introduction, the UK, Ireland, France and Australia are all towards the foot of the table of the top 25 at 10+ litres. At the very foot of the entire top 50 are Brazil, Argentina, Thailand, and Vietnam with 8 litres or below. Surprisingly, given the antics of their national football team’s supporters, the Netherlands is less than 9 litres while the USA and Switzerland are both around 10 litres. So which countries top the alcoholic consumption leaderboard? By a distance, it is Romania, with almost 17 with runners up Georgia (14), and Latvia(13). One conclusion that can be drawn: former Soviet satellites dominate the top 10 positions, having captured the first 9 of the top 10 slots and are joined by Austria at number 10 with 11.5.

GBP/USD 1.3554.

Migrant UK Hotels

An article in the normally reliable Spectator magazine last week suggested that tensions between migrants and their hosts in South East UK hotspots such as Epping and East London’s Isle of Dogs were to do with class rather than race. We beg to differ and seeing it at first hand, it is rather more to do with placing migrants in urban environments of which they have no experience and imposing those migrants on communities unsuitable to host them. Local authorities counter that by claiming that migrants are physically confined to their hotels which is both unnatural and unrealistic. At the end of last week in case it passed you by, a 20 year old male Afghan broke out of his hotel accommodation and into and the nearby flat of a blind pensioner near the Britannia Hotel in the Isle of Dogs which he proceeded to rob. The pensioner’s 22 year old daughter as retribution in turn broke into the Britannia Hotel intent on revenging herself armed with a meat cleaver. We suggest that the age old concepts of committing robbery and exacting revenge are nothing to do with either race or class.

EUR/JPY 172.18.

Northern Ireland

A further tale of dangers lurking in the shallows, this time on the beaches of Northern Ireland, where 15cm long deep yellow Weever fish often lie buried in the sand. The fish have sharp spines that pierce the feet of unwary bathers. This is not normally an issue in the traditional miserable cold wet weather of NI but this year Ulster’s bathers have shed their normal timidity and taken to the seaside with all that that brings. 

EUR/GBP 0.8636.

Wild Colonial Boy

This day in 1969 while filming Ned Kelly in Australia, Mick Jagger was accidentally shot in the hand. Things were fraught for the film makers since Mick and then girlfriend Marianne Faithfull were at odds which might not have been such a problem had she not been cast to co-star in the film with Mick. Then Marianne took an overdose of sleeping pills which meant she was hospitalised in Sydney and forced to pull out of the film. Mick sang this folk song and completed the film. Ned Kelly was far from being a commercial success and garnered universally negative reviews. It hardly mattered to Mick Jagger as the then shortly to be released album Sticky Fingers more than made up for that.

There was a wild colonial youth, Jack Doolan was his name

Of poor but honest parents, he was born in Castlemaine

He was his father’s only hope, his mother’s only joy

The pride of both his parents was the wild colonial boy

Come all my hearties, we’ll range the mountainside

Together we will plunder, together we will ride

We’ll scour along the valleys and gallop o’er the plains

We’ll scorn to live in slavery, bowed down in iron chains

In sixty-one this daring youth commenced his wild career

With a heart that knew no danger, no foeman did he fear

He held up the Beechworth mailcoach and he robbed Judge MacEvoy

Who trembled and gave up his gold to the wild colonial boy

One day as he was riding the mountainside along

Alistening to the little birds their pleasant laughing song

Three mounted troopers came in view – Kelly, Davis, and Fitzroy

And thought that they would capture him, the wild colonial boy

Discussion and Analysis by Humphrey Percy, Chairman and Founder

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