If you were a hedge fund manager facing serious allegations of sexual assault, you might think you’d have more important things to do than pontificating on matter macroeconomic to a journalist. Making plans for a decade in prison, perhaps, or ensuring that your deified chickens do not want from your absence. Then again, you probably also thought that Crispin Odey couldn’t do anything to make himself even more unlikeable.
On both counts, you’d be wrong.
“The gap between the rich and the poor has reached an inflection point. The feeling that state schools are victimised by the marking procedure for the academic results, the feeling that coloured people are victimised, and I could go on closer to home,” he said using a term that both the Merriam Webster Dictionary and Oxford Dictionary describe as dated and offensive.
It’s often said that what distinguishes President Trump from other, quainter Republican racists utterly devoid of empathy is that he says the quiet parts out loud. Luckily for Prime Minister Boris Johnson and House of Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg, their dear friend Crispin does it for them, in interviews that conscientiously fail to mention the criminal allegation of “indecently assaulting a woman over the age of 16” two decades ago.
In truth, though, Odey has a bone to pick with his buddies. As he sees it from Cluckingham Palace, it’s their fault that the social and racial lessers are getting uppity, because they haven’t allowed enough of them to die and the survivors to suffer sufficiently.
In the UK, the combination of the coronavirus lockdown and government spending has totalled £350bn. But Odey reckons based on a potential death toll of 500,000 people only £12.5bn should have been spent on preventative action….
“Nothing comes to an end for this cycle until inflation starts to limit central bank activity and once bond yields start to rise, then these sky high valuations will have nowhere to go but down.
“When does this happen? My point is look around you. Travel on the train. Try enjoying inner cities. These are empty playgrounds, subsidised by government money. The money keeps on coming until the government cannot borrow and they cannot borrow until inflation has made bonds very unattractive….”
“All of this historians will ascribe to the unwillingness of the authorities to allow a recession which would have allowed a rejuggling of the pack, for those that were young or poor to change places with those that were rich and old etc. etc.”
Crispin Odey hits out at Boris Johnson overspending on Covid-19 measures [Portfolio Adviser]