I am spending an increasing amount of time on Substack. It features some excellent content and a diverse range of perspectives. Something that is valuable for any investor seeking non-consensus views and opinions.

A recent favourite of mine has been The Brawl Street Journal, a source that posts on “second-order thinking on Europe’s markets, energy, and the collision between regulation and reality.”

The man behind this blog holds a PhD in international economic law, with a background in World Trade Organisation (remember them?) dispute settlements, and has worked with an international law firm.

He also advised banking clients on sanctions law following Russia’s invasion of Crimea.

He then worked in various economic and regulatory roles within Germany’s civil service, giving him a front-row seat on how subsidies, regulations, and political priorities work in practice.

The Brawl Street Journal was launched last year to help investors question the consensus, which its creator believes has been infiltrated by propaganda, as defined by the French sociologist Jacques Ellul, who wrote a book of that name in the 1960s.

We discuss how propaganda is often an emergent phenomenon of well-intentioned people, rather than the simplistic, malign, authoritarian means of control we usually envision.

We discuss how net zero has become one of several propaganda myths of the established European consensus that have weakened the EU and wider European economies.

We also discuss the potential for a net-zero-induced crisis, similar to the global financial crisis and what the prospects might be for Europe to avoid this outcome.

As always, what you are about to hear is not any kind of advice, but for your information and hopefully entertainment. Please take personal financial advice before investing a penny of your money in these crazy markets.

With that, please enjoy my conversation with the maverick behind The Brawl Street Journal.

Brought to you by Progressive Equity.

Time Blindness: Thursday, July 13th, 2023