By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management
“We are trying to understand America, Americans,” said the soft-spoken Scandinavians, financial market pillagers.
“America has been the world’s moral authority. And okay, so perhaps you have not always lived up to that. But you have tried. And it has been this way for our whole lives.” I nodded.
“You have stood as the protector of global trade. Free trade. Democracy. And what is right versus wrong. America has defended the weak.”
One of the many wonderful rewards of travel is to see yourself reflected in foreign eyes. Throughout today’s Scandinavia, America’s reflection looks the same.
“It has been this way for many, many of your Presidents. And now it seems that this has all changed.”
Scandinavians are trying to make sense of the changes happening in America. They’re not alone. Americans are trying too.
I explained that we had reached a tipping point,driven by income and wealth inequality,amplified by income insecurity,in a technologically disrupted world transforming faster than at any time in human history.
And instead of voting for more of the same,we voted for change. Real change. A redistribution of economic spoils between capital and labor. A redefinition of our relationship with foreigners; neighbors, friends, enemies.
And in the pursuit of these things, we’re attacking orthodox thinking on every front. NATO, trade, immigration, climate change, free speech, economic stimulus, deficit spending, central bank independence.
We have also decided to slow China’s ascent.
And while no one knows where this will lead, surely it will change the trajectory of the trends that dominated recent decades.
“Well, we see that America has now begun to use its economic and military might to take what it wants. And this returns the world to something we have not seen for a very, very long time – where might makes right. To the law of the jungle.”
