In response to the text of a speech given by the FT editor Lionel Barber in Japan, published on 14th January 2016, entitled 'Globalisation 2.0 - an optimistic outlook'
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3dffc316-bad3-11e5-b151-8e15c9a029fb.html#ixzz3xIrHbnhm
"As an editor, I have come to appreciate the value of the “scoop of interpretation” — the insightful story which connects the dots for the savvy reader and investor"
And yet a large proportion of FT analysis is a regurgitation of the mainstream narrative that the great recession is over, the financial crisis has been fixed, and we're moving into a new period of slower, but nevertheless, renewed growth. It isn't, it hasn't and we're not.
We are exiting the eye of a great storm that broke in 2008 after 15+ years of easy money policy. The great moderation was in reality a great con. It unraveled, as tales of hubris always do. Nothing has been fixed since, indeed the mountains of debt have gotten higher on all continents except Antarctica, because thus far the penguins appear to have resisted any notion that it is possible to print fish.
The inevitable collapse of the global monetary system that was duck taped together after the collapse of Bretton Woods in 1971, would be the 'scoop of interpretation'. However, that idea is highly unpopular with the central planners and the global elites, and the FT has missed it. The failure to engage with this global shift falls on a scale with 'confirmation bias' at one end, 'willful blindness' at the other.
We are entering the trailing edge of the storm, and in a couple of years this speech will be an embarrassing reminder of how the FT, in company with the rest of the mainstream, was asleep at the wheel.
The dots are there to be joined but none of the 'big beasts' of the financial world are joining them.