15 September 2008
Dead cat bounces
While I'm far from being an expert, all this investment banking panic seems to present an market opportunity. I still think the FTSE100 will bottom out at 4,500 (give or take 10% - see, I told you I'm no expert...), but this Lehman nonsense will cause an overselling today and maybe tomorrow. That generally provokes a bounce. If I wasn't neck deep in National Savings, I'd be buying the FTSE at 5,000 and looking for 5,500 as a sell-out point before the bear run continues...
14 September 2008
And so, a return
Been a long time, but even now it's not business, management and finance I'm keen to commit to posterity. It's politics, and in particular the art of winning elections. This more than anything seems to be at the heart of the malaise that afflicts us - leaving us with lacklustre politicians and an intellectually crippled electorate.
Once politicians - actually, the political ecosystem - embraces "electoral strategy", it loses any need to deliver innovation or leadership. Skilled politicking becomes the chief decider of any election. It's easy to blame the media, and in particular press barons who fancy they wield true power by deciding who to back. In reality, I suspect politicians are only too ready to resort to crude electioneering as a substitute for winning over an electorate. The media are simply their means of expressing this baseness.
Was it ever so? I'm too poorly read in political history to judge. I'm sure Churchill was something of an expert in electioneering. But he had the fortune to practice politics at a time of polarisation - not least, of course, during the war. Radical polar opposites require politicians to take a line and stand by it, even if they sell their expertise with spin and polish.
Now, however, the famed "end of history" has left us with nothing but the spin. We're all agreed on liberal democracy, regulated capitalism and social equality. And politicians have seemingly stopped making judgments about genuine right and wrong; and/or they have decided that conventional wisdom is much more important than enquiry. Why bother investigating the drugs problem from the bottom up, say, when the top-down conventional wisdom is so well entrenched that nothing is likely to shift a majority from their ill-informed positions? After all, even if you accepted that a reformed drugs policy might deliver social, financial and personal improvements, such a policy would (at best) require a huge effort of leadership - and at worst, render the proposer electorally unviable for some time.
So we end up at the logical end-game: politics for its own sake. Professional campaigners defining not just the election itinerary or the billboards or the PPB - or even the manifesto (gahhhd - last time politics defined a mainstream manifesto, it sunk the party, Labour 1983). They define... everything. At all times.
We get David Cameron and George Osborne. (We should salute Tony at this point, a true pioneer being the first pure "electoral strategy" PM.) We get Sarah Palin. We get no idea of what we're voting for, because the electoral strategists know that standing for anything really definitive gives the opposition something to target. When politics is all about mud-slinging, why give the other side something to aim at?
Some people - Danny over at Times Comment Central sadly falls into this category - worship electoral strategy. They see it as the high art of politics, the definition of "clever". Purpose, vision, direction - they seem lost, or at least painfully naive in the face of clever politicking. And the solution? There is none. Oh, the Lib Dems can shout into the wilderness, but they exhibit plenty of the wrong attributes, too. And why wouldn't they? There's only so long you can fight the good fight before low blows and steroid abuse wear you down and you think the only way you can beat them is to join them.
I loathe it. And perhaps that's the only hope. If enough of us loathe it enough... perhaps things can change. But I fear catastrophic failure of our system and exposure of the pathetic games-players in the high offices of political parties will get us even close.
Once politicians - actually, the political ecosystem - embraces "electoral strategy", it loses any need to deliver innovation or leadership. Skilled politicking becomes the chief decider of any election. It's easy to blame the media, and in particular press barons who fancy they wield true power by deciding who to back. In reality, I suspect politicians are only too ready to resort to crude electioneering as a substitute for winning over an electorate. The media are simply their means of expressing this baseness.
Was it ever so? I'm too poorly read in political history to judge. I'm sure Churchill was something of an expert in electioneering. But he had the fortune to practice politics at a time of polarisation - not least, of course, during the war. Radical polar opposites require politicians to take a line and stand by it, even if they sell their expertise with spin and polish.
Now, however, the famed "end of history" has left us with nothing but the spin. We're all agreed on liberal democracy, regulated capitalism and social equality. And politicians have seemingly stopped making judgments about genuine right and wrong; and/or they have decided that conventional wisdom is much more important than enquiry. Why bother investigating the drugs problem from the bottom up, say, when the top-down conventional wisdom is so well entrenched that nothing is likely to shift a majority from their ill-informed positions? After all, even if you accepted that a reformed drugs policy might deliver social, financial and personal improvements, such a policy would (at best) require a huge effort of leadership - and at worst, render the proposer electorally unviable for some time.
So we end up at the logical end-game: politics for its own sake. Professional campaigners defining not just the election itinerary or the billboards or the PPB - or even the manifesto (gahhhd - last time politics defined a mainstream manifesto, it sunk the party, Labour 1983). They define... everything. At all times.
We get David Cameron and George Osborne. (We should salute Tony at this point, a true pioneer being the first pure "electoral strategy" PM.) We get Sarah Palin. We get no idea of what we're voting for, because the electoral strategists know that standing for anything really definitive gives the opposition something to target. When politics is all about mud-slinging, why give the other side something to aim at?
Some people - Danny over at Times Comment Central sadly falls into this category - worship electoral strategy. They see it as the high art of politics, the definition of "clever". Purpose, vision, direction - they seem lost, or at least painfully naive in the face of clever politicking. And the solution? There is none. Oh, the Lib Dems can shout into the wilderness, but they exhibit plenty of the wrong attributes, too. And why wouldn't they? There's only so long you can fight the good fight before low blows and steroid abuse wear you down and you think the only way you can beat them is to join them.
I loathe it. And perhaps that's the only hope. If enough of us loathe it enough... perhaps things can change. But I fear catastrophic failure of our system and exposure of the pathetic games-players in the high offices of political parties will get us even close.
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