Having slipped slightly out of synch due to holidsays etc, the latest Market Thinker post is up at CitiWire. In it I look at the ‘early’ theme of robotics and automation, noting how it is shifting from hardware to software with a hat tip to my ex colleagues over at Axa Framlington.

The enduring image for many of the hypocrisy of the ruling elite in the Soviet Union was the Zil lane – the fact that Politburo members were whisked in Zil limousines past the ‘peasants’ stuck in the very traffic jams that were the consequences of the ‘elite’s’ own planning failures was the defining expression of ‘Us versus them’.

Or two. First, that the Medical Industrial Complex is going to push its agenda to the maximum in the U.K. ahead of the much delayed ‘dropping of restrictions’ on Monday. Second that the opinion polls will be wrong. Again.

The fundamentals remain intact; the Covid-Policy Induced Economic shutdown is clearly behind us, with Asia (ex Hong Kong) and the US leading the return to normality while Europe and the UK still lag. Temporary demand supply/imbalances are spiking commodity prices but this still looks more like reflation than inflation.

The last year has seen an extra-ordinary suspension of logic in a lot of policy announcements, with Governments seemingly requiring positive proof from those opposing their Covid restrictions that their (often random) policies don’t work, rather than the Government having to prove that they do.