The Long Hot Summer

A weird prelude to a turbulent fall and winter season, globally

It’s nice to be on the road again and take a break from a number of things which is why you haven’t heard from me over the last two weeks. However I do plan to get into regular updates and analysis again shortly: there simply is too much going on.

Take the last few months which I consider to be an unusual summer in many ways. The expected post-Covid travel boom has run into serious capacity constraints at airports around the world, resulting in chaos everywhere. The summer in Europe is extremely hot and dry this year, accelerating the climate debate. The markets are all over the place because economic numbers keep pointing us to conflicting and often unprecedented trends. One number is consistently high: inflation, and it is eroding purchasing power everywhere while warnings over high energy bills this winter are making non-stop headlines. The war in Ukraine rages on while the world has now set its eyes on the emerging crisis around Taiwan. All that against a continuing backdrop of political turmoil in the United States with Trump’s residence being raided by the FBI and Liz Cheney being kneecapped by the GOP base. Israel is heading to the polls again in November and the journey there is once again, sadly, littered with the blood of innocents. And if all of that weren’t enough, the combination of these and other things is putting extreme political pressure on most western leaders. All of them face extremely divided nations while navigating some very difficult files: Justin Trudeau (energy, economy), Olaf Scholz (energy, Ukraine), Mark Rutte (energy, farmers, asylum seekers), the once popular Jacinda Ardern is running out of steam while Italy is prepping itself for a new female right-wing prime minister. And it is still a question mark as to who will take the keys to 10 Downing Street early September, Liz or Rishi? The only person who can finally claim some measure of success, miraculously given his performance over the past year, is Joe Biden. It goes to show you just how fickle politics is these days.

But, it almost feels like everyone is staking out a position for a turbulent fall and winter season where the explosion in energy prices can no longer be avoided, where the need for a ceasefire in Ukraine will become a real and pressing matter and where we will see some game changing elections that will reflect deep concerns and a shift to populist leaders channelling the omnipresent discontent. So enjoy what is left of the summer, we are in for a bumpy ride into uncharted territory.