🧠 There aren't enough experts. We still hate them.

🧠 The Big Brain
Fink hasn’t had enough of experts

Still remember when Michael Gove (UK politician for non Bri’ish peeps) said that British people have had enough of experts.

A country full of academics & intellectuals (who’ve dedicated their lives to expertism) lost their collective minds..

He wasn’t entirely wrong though. See, there are ‘experts’ & EXPERTS.

Here’s a little trick to identify which is which…

If they seem really confident about the subject, they’re ‘experts’.

If they know all kinds of esoteric details, can explain how something works and why, but don’t sound totally confident, then they’re EXPERTS.

And when it comes to big picture stuff like the dollar and its role in global trade flows and investment, there’s (unfortunately) a bull market in ‘experts’.

Usually claiming that the dollar is on the precipice, everything’s about to change and the world will never be the same again…

Obviously, they’re wrong. Yet they still get way more attention than they deserve. Even worse, many of them sound really intelligent, like the offspring of a super brainiac and a thesaurus…

Which often leaves the listener/reader wondering…

Am I missing something?

The answer? Only the time you spent listening to them…

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⚡ The Spark
Metro Bank Saved (For Now)

The bank with all the branches lives to fight another day.

The story has a long way to run. The rescue deal is a bitter pill for existing Metro Bank backers:

• Share dilution: 150 million in new shares issued at 30p per share, a steep discount to last weeks closing share price of 45.5p

• Refinancing of £600 million debt: some bondholders taking a hit of 40% or more

• Adding another £175 million in debt: some with 12-14% interest rates

• Sell £3 billion of mortgages

• Spaldy Investments: putting in £102 million, bringing their total holding to a 53% stake in the bank

Colombian billionaire Jaime Gilinski now holds the controlling stake in the bank.

That interest rate is punitive.

The deal is like throwing a drowning person a punctured lilo.

It keeps them afloat for a while, but only prolongs the inevitable…

Metro Bank can ditch the branding that got it here.

No more your local bank, branches in every town, open 7 days a week etc which will likely see it lose customers…

What’ll they do?: Use the repaired balance sheet to ramp up risky lending again, and try to increase their returns.

Increasing risky lending always ends well, so this should be a wonderful success story for the bank.

GFC?: In fact, if you struggle to get finance elsewhere, Metro could be the place to go!

💡 The Lightbulb
Rise Of The Right

We try not to talk politics too much, but sometimes it’s unavoidable.

To be clear, our stance is entirely neutral, we hold no political allegiances.

However, the rising popularity of right wing parties and/or policies is unmissable in many Western nations.

Many will disagree, but this isn’t an inherently bad thing.

The entire reason left and right wing politics exist is as a counterbalance to each other.

It’s pretty rare to end up in left or right wing political extremes for very long.

Anyhow, voters seem to be exhausted by liberal inaction on issues that matter to them, so the alternatives are growing more popular.

Like the Alternativ Für Deutschland result in Germany’s regional elections over the weekend:

Numbers: The right-wing AfD recorded strong gains and will be the second-largest party in Hesse and third-largest in Bavaria.

New roots: As political parties evolve, they leave gaps in the voter base. New parties inevitably form to fill the void.

Take the current UK Labour party as an example. It’s unrecognisable as the workers party of the old days.

Much of their voter base is now reasonably affluent, middle class SINO’s (Socialist In Name Only)…😉

UKIP gained prominence because the voters didn’t feel like anyone was listening on issues such as immigration and putting Britain’s interest first.

AfD is gaining popularity in Germany for similar reasons.

Politics is in a state of flux. Voters are becoming more vocal, and a few more ‘surprises’ wouldn’t actually be that surprising.

Volatility: as we have seen over the weekend, volatility can come from anywhere at any time.

Do not be surprised if the German political situation uncovers some nasty surprises.