Friends of ours are celebrating their daughter's wedding over the weekend, so my wife and I decided to make a holiday out of it. As much as possible, we stay away from American politics; it makes good sense when you are a foreigner. I would dislike having Americans tell me how rotten the UK political system is.
It's actually hard to watch the games being played in Washington. "Permanent tariffs" are being discussed as transitory -- the news is directly from the President himself. Every day, there's more activity from Washington with the American President acting more and more like a dictator.
Do we care? Not really, for foreigners, America's democracy is not real, as far as they (we) are concerned, certain groups have total power over our stay here. So we take the whole thing with a grain of salt and watch from the sidelines.
One big change this year is that my wife and I have agreed on signals when the conversation takes a bad turn, only reasonable to back down from the crazies, we have no skin in the game. Aside from that, we are enjoying a wide range of cultural activities in the city -- the Magic Flute tonight...and tomorrow, Glengary Glen Ross. Lots of fun.
On a more serious note, watching from the sidelines, the breakdown in institutions is shocking. The White House's indication that they are ignoring the Supreme Court is an indication of what is happening.
I am still of the opinion that the tariff announcement of last week was entirely driven by a plan to allow certain insiders to make a fortune overnight. The decline and rise of the market, if well timed, gave a few people hundreds of millions in profits.
If done in the option market, virtually untraceable...
Comments