Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business
‘Why do we care what the markets think?’ asked the comedian Jeremy Hardy on Radio 4’s News Quiz last Friday. Whingeing leftie though he may be, Hardy had a point. ‘The markets’ were identified by spokesmen of all three political parties as the invisible presence at their secret post-election negotiating tables. A solution would have to be found ‘before markets open on Monday’ — and when it wasn’t, markets would still have to be reassured ‘very soon’. The real truth was that markets weren’t terribly interested in who was winning Nick Clegg’s favours during the four-day dance-athon before Tuesday’s denouement, because they were too busy watching the stitching-up in Brussels of a plan to prevent the whole southern eurozone following Greece into the abyss. Swedish finance minister Anders Borg set the tone by warning of the markets’ propensity to behave like a ‘wolfpack’ which could ‘tear the weaker countries apart’. And yet what really happened was that the markets behaved more like a truckload of stolen Dalmatian puppies, weeing themselves with fright on Friday, jumping for joy and licking the hands of EU officials on Monday, then emitting little squeaking noises on Tuesday as euphoria receded, share prices slipped back and, as the FT put it, ‘the euro returned to its well-trodden downward path’.
No, markets are never the place to look for measured judgment or foresight, and they are only ‘in control’ of political events in the most anarchic, incoherent sense. Let me offer two more metaphors from the natural world, both borrowed from Niall Ferguson’s The Cash Nexus. The author himself compares markets to shoals of plankton: ‘But to say that financial markets rule the world is to say that the plankton rule the sea.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in