Weekend Reading #381

This is the three-hundredth-and-eighty-first weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 12th September 2026.

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What we're thinking.

The market is trying to decide whether its next move is up or down. As bond yields spike globally, there is much focus on U.S. fiscal policy. But the real place where fiscal policy is an issue is in Europe and the UK. These countries don’t have the luxury of printing infinite money to get themselves out of it and their societies are breaking down. So for all the focus on the dollar we must remind ourselves that FX is a relative game. The markets have been quite choppy in this environment and despite Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, explicitly stating he doesn’t want people to read much into his comments and to remove forward guidance as a policy, the market is hanging onto every word. Every time he mentions the word inflation fed rates futures spike. Is the market doing his job for him? Next week we will see what the committee votes. Between Druckenmiller, Bessent and Warsh they are doing a good job discombobulating everyone which is probably the plan. The thing is that the next move is rather binary and price actions tells us the market is very close to a decision. We wait patiently to see which way it wants to go!

What we're reading.

This week a rather fascinating paper was released by Dr Michael Levin, one of the world's foremost researchers into bioelectricity or the relationship between electricity and our bodies. I had listened to him before on Tim Ferris when he spoke about some fascinating research that suggests that some of the ingredients of consciousness are available to simple lab cells despite it being impossible according to our understanding of biology and physics. This new paper aims to further this claim. This research suggests that intelligence or consciousness is available to laboratory-created concoctions which had no previous connection to "life".  Is this research evidence of consciousness being primary and that our bodies are more like antennae tuning into this consciousness field versus generating it from the brain? The paper itself is of course quite technical and filled with jardon but Grok did a great job of breaking it down for me in simple terms. As regular readers will know, the nature of consciousness is something I think about a lot. If it is primary and we are indeed tuning into it rather than creating it ourselves via our brains, there is also the possibility that machines we create could tune into the same field once constructed correctly. Maybe we would even do it by accident. Maybe we have already. In a week where more insiders are speaking out against the risks of AI killing us all, we would do well to think about this study very carefully. DC

A hilarious phenomenon has developed in the past week on Twitter, with a huge furore erupting around the selection of a new mascot for Japan Rail East’s travel card, Suica. The Suica penguin is retiring in March 2027, and the new candidates that were put up for a vote are as follows:

Suffice to say, the initial reaction was mostly “why change from the current penguin?” and that no change was the best. But then the internet doing the internet started to say “maybe B and C look so bad in order to make us choose A, so let’s go for B.” And that’s where things have started to go awry. Armed with AI video tools of various kinds, “B” (as the internet now calls it), branded the creepiest of them all, is starring in anything from a horror flick to an anime supervillain. The irony would be that creepy “rabbit” gets picked as a result, and if the people of Japan have to live with that as the mascot for years to come, maybe the old penguin cards actually become collectors’ items! And who ever thought putting auto translate on Twitter and breaking the geographical segregation was a bad idea?
 
An equally fascinating account called @25YearsAgoLive on Twitter replays the events of 25 years ago as a reporter embedded in history. Started in 2022, it’s been posting fascinating perspectives looking backwards in time. But this week, 25 years ago, was Sept 11 2001 and the coverage of that fateful day even with hindsight is just about as surreal as it was 25 years ago. Certainly not a day to be forgotten, and arguably the day many things in the world started to change, the effects of those changes resonating till the current day. EL

What we're watching.

The Darkest Hour featuring Gary Oldman as Churchill is an excellent movie. The movie is about leadership and it illustrates to perfection that any leader with have a plethora of opinions thrown at him/her all day long. Many of them very vociferously. But in the end the taste and judgement involved in making a decision is down to one person. Churchill made a series of good decisions as history has shown. Be under no illusion. Good leaders are not afraid to make bold calls. What are the ingredients of a good decision? For some it is granular data, for others it is pure gut feel. Sometimes it is both. This was a very good movie and also sadly an illustration of how far the UK has strayed from its path.
 
This week saw the international release of Season 5 of Israeli series, Fauda. It is particularly poignant given that the season needed to be completely rewritten after October 7. And gosh it hits hard. I have only watched the first episode but it is heavy stuff. If it weren't so real, it would be extraordinary. I see it as a compulsory watch for anyone as it gives a genuine insight into the Israeli emotional state and a new set of priorities since the last time the show aired. Fascinatingly after a couple of days, Fauda was not only the most watched show in Israel, but also in Lebanon. Who would've thought. Maybe the Lebanese also just want to get rid of Hezbollah and Iran and make peace. That would be a major narrative violation though so it couldn't possibly be true! DC