E If Markets Get Goose For Thanksgiving

If markets get goose for Thanksgiving – might they get turkey for Christmas instead? Given how extended things are, that’s always possible (especially in the wake of what will likely have been the most-anticipated nominal Fed move in history), given how a ‘favorable’ response to a hike is so discounted. Aside that, this remains geopolitically or financially; a sort of pate foie gras market. 

Without excessively focusing on global terror; the ongoing events of this past week certainly imply that, despite the equity markets managing to generally hold up at a high range (the area either side of S&P 2100 is a ‘battle-zone’ we have approached from either side multiple times this year), ‘business or even fiscal and monetary’ policies are likely to be influenced by success; conversely impeded further (meaning even slower recovery efforts that won’t respond to a new round of stimulus) should the series of terror attacks not be throttled by a robust round of security measures that not only deter, disrupt, neutralize, or deflect; but somehow forestall ‘radical Islamic extremist’ own growth plans. 

We all believe this enemy would use such WMD’s if given the chance, and I suspect that any leader knows we’d have no choice but to ‘level’ them if that happened. There’s a logic too, for being proactive and shutting this terror movement down as we probably should have several years ago before it mushroomed. 

For too many years, Muslims and especially many Europeans, have been too soft on Islamism, ‘as if’ it were the old political pro-Palestinian bias many had. They failed to see that the real challenge (another variation of what was done in the Middle East for years by blaming Israel in efforts to deflect inadequacies in their own Islamic countries) was not involving Palestinians or political; but an accumulation of Islamist’s whose goal is more akin to ‘reverse colonization’in Europe, and of course creation of a caliphate that sticks it’s fingers into the Eurozone, much as it did historically in the Balkans or the Iberian Peninsula.

Now let’s talk about the markets; but let’s keep in mind that Brussels, contrasts with Paris, as the cancer there has already metastasized to the point where it was so dangerous, they had to shut it down. Perhaps we’ll eventually know the details. In the meantime, have one or two more ‘actual’ shutdowns or alerts as we move into the Holiday season for Judaic-Christian countries (as they are; a reference to Hungary’s Prime Minister being quite correct with his observations so many viewed as ‘politically incorrect’ a couple months ago), and business in addition to travel, with slow notably beyond the sluggish levels already seen.