Buttonwood's notebook

INDUSTRIAL policy via Twitter is a new development in economics but we may all have to get used to it over the next four (or eight) years. Donald Trump's tweets on the car industry (and his planned cuts to corporate income tax) may or may not have persuaded Ford to keep a plant in Michigan, creating 700 jobs. But the problem with such headline-grabbing is that there are thousands of companies in America, and jobs are being created or destroyed every day; intervening in all these situations is impossible. Even in cars, for example, GM has recently announced 3,300 lay-offs, almost five times greater than the Ford additions.  

SOME time soon, the Dow Jones Industrial Average seems likely to break through the 20,000 barrier, an event that will be greeted with banner headlines and a sign that capitalism is flourishing again. In fact, the Dow is a flawed measure, which uses the odd approach of weighting its component companies by share price. The biggest stock in the Dow is Goldman Sachs and despite its prominence on the campaign trail (and among Donald Trump’s new team), it is hardly the most important company in America; its weight depends on its near-$240 share price.

SOMETIMES an analogy strikes you on the head with the force of a plummeting cricket ball. On Radio 4 yesterday, Hamish Johnson, editor of physicsworld.com, had the brilliant insight to explain the British government’s policy in terms of physics; Schrödinger’s Brexit.

The poor cat is stuck in a box with a radioactive substance and a poison; when the substance decays, the poison is released. Since it is impossible to predict when the substance will decay, the cat may be deemed simultaneously alive and dead. The only way to know is to open the box.

CENTRAL bankers are under fire. In America, President-elect Donald Trump said that the Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen should be "ashamed of herself" for keeping rates too low; in Britain, Mark Carney of the Bank of England has been criticised for his views on the economic risks of Brexit; and in Europe, Mario Draghi has faced attacks from critics in Germany (for being too lax) and Greece (for being too tight).

In a new paper Ed Balls, who played an influential role in making the Bank of England independent, has teamed up with James Howat and Anna Stansbury to try to think through the role and wider responsibilities of the central bank.

CONVENTIONAL wisdom gets turned on its head quickly in the financial markets. Although many on Wall Street were gloomy about the prospects under a Trump presidency, the markets have performed a sharp U-turn after the overnight decline on election day.

So many people (including The Economist) had warned of the crazy policies of Donald Trump that there was always going to be a market for contrarians to say that he won’t be that bad after all. Especially among white, prosperous financial commentators there is a willingness to “normalise” Mr Trump—to tell the groups he has insulted and threatened to get over their fears.

GAMBLERS seem to think Donald Trump is a 3-1 outsider to win the election on Tuesday. The Predictit market has Hillary Clinton on 77% (where 100% is certainty). But what does that really tell us? On June 21, two days before the British referendum on the EU, Betfair was implying odds of 75% for Remain and 25% for Leave. This was despite quite a large number of polls that showed Leave ahead. As we know, Leave won 52% to 48%.

The idea of looking at betting markets is that “smart money” can assess all the information far more efficiently than opinion pollsters or newspaper columnists. It’s efficient market theory for politics. But what are the gamblers assessing?

YESTERDAY’s decline in the American stockmarket, on news of a narrowing in the poll gap between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (under two points according to Real Clear Politics), confirms the argument made in last week’s column. A combination of Mr Trump’s adverse policy proposals on trade, foreign policy and the Federal Reserve, and uncertainty about how much of this agenda would get through Congress, would hit equities hard were he to be elected.

But what about the dollar? The picture is far from clear.