Opinion Credit

Welshcake

Recent volatility has stemmed from worry about long-term changes central bank and geopolitical regimes may bring. But May is the month when the reality of this new phase will really kick in — and those quickest to adapt will be 2022’s winners.

The cult of celebrity is generally worthless, but this has been a bottomless trove of discoveries: how Depp lost his finger, his beginnings in film (although you might have guessed it was all Nicolas Cage’s fault), the lost art of fighting cupboard doors, a highly detailed exploration of borderline personality disorder, the downside to drinking 1,000 vodka Redbulls before picking up your wife to go to the airport, and why Depp may forever more check his side of the bed before getting in.

Given the pair got divorced in January 2017, one has to marvel that their denouement has enjoyed more life-cycle excitement than a Texan CLO.

A much better example to follow is that of Tyson Fury, the greatest boxer of the current era. After his victory over Dillian Whyte, Fury revealed he will retire from the sport despite being seemingly unbeatable. Whether he can resist its siren call is another matter, but Fury recognises that trying to hang onto glory as it slips from your gloves has brought tragedy to far too many boxing greats.

Of course, it’s easier to accept a chapter’s end if you have something shiny and new to replace it. That’s a tough prospect for financial markets, but volatility also means opportunity for those who are brave. Just ask the Welsh. Seeking divorce from England has so long been disregarded as a joke, yet increasing numbers of my accursed kind are turning their thoughts to the prospect. Those in support — mainly the younger demographic — look pretty similar in number to Scotland a year before its 2014 referendum.

Yes, we know how that went. But the difference is, Wales would be voting not just to leave the UK but to join the EU. That lure increases for us and Scotland as time marches on and the baggage of Brexit accumulates.

Future historians may well cast their minds back to origins in the mid-1960s and the forced flooding of the Tryweryn valley to provide a reservoir for Liverpool. That and other low points in our relationship with England prompted the revival and protection of the Welsh language, a cause that women championed in perhaps their biggest movement since the suffragettes.

The imagery of purposefully flooded valleys persists in the Welsh identity. I was surprised to find reference to another in the novel “Austerlitz” by WG Sebald, but then our folklore is awash with ghosts and skeletons from a previous world rising to thwart the new.

All things must pass — even QE

The US Federal Reserve meeting will be a starting pistol for the new economic regime, given it could put the country’s interest rate at between 0.75% and 1.00% and replace the phase of quantitative easing with quantitative tightening. It will then be reality not concept.