CupidStunts

When governments enter the terminal phase of a sovereign debt crisis, they go to war with their own citizens’ savings long before they admit their policies have failed.

In 458 BC, Rome was on the brink of collapse. An invading army had trapped the Roman consul and his legion in a mountain pass. Panic spread through the city. The Senate did the only thing they could think of: They sent messengers to find a 60-year-old farmer plowing his field. His name was Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus. He had once been a senator, then lost his fortune paying his son's bail. Now he worked his own four-acre plot just to feed his family. When the Senate's envoys arrived, they found him sweating behind a plow. They asked him to put on his toga so they could deliver an official message. The message: Rome was making him dictator. Absolute power. Total command of the army. No checks. No oversight. No term limit. He accepted. Within 16 days, Cincinnatus had raised an army, marched out, surrounded the enemy, and forced their surrender. The republic was saved. He had legal authority to rule for six months. He could have stayed. He could have expanded his power. He could have done what every other ruler in human history did when handed unlimited control. Instead, he resigned on day 16. He took off the toga, walked back to his farm, and finished plowing the field he'd left half-done. Twenty years later, when Rome faced another crisis, they called him back. He was 80 years old. He took command, crushed the conspiracy, and resigned again, this time after just 21 days. He died poor. On his farm. 2,200 years later, when George Washington was offered a kingship after winning the American Revolution, he refused and went home to Mount Vernon. The reason he was hailed as "the American Cincinnatus" is because Europeans literally could not believe a man who had won would willingly give up power. King George III, on hearing Washington would resign rather than rule, said: "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world." The lesson isn't that Cincinnatus was humble. The lesson is that for most of human history, the people most qualified to lead were the ones who didn't want to. And the moment a society starts rewarding those who chase power instead of those who flee from it is the moment the republic begins to die. Cincinnati, Ohio is named after him. Most people who live there have no idea why.

Together, we will build a stronger and fairer Britain.

Interesting commentary from Friday's Exxon earnings call on both current oil prices and how they think things will settle out at when Strait reopens: “So I think it’s obvious to most that if you look at the unprecedented disruption and the world’s supply of oil and natural gas, the market hasn’t seen the full impact of that yet. And you only have to look at the ranges that oil prices have moved at, which are very consistent with the last 10 years versus historically unprecedented disruption. So there’s more to come if the Strait remains closed.” “Why haven’t we seen those impacts manifest themselves fully in the market yet? Well, I think we all know there was a lot of oil in transit on the water, a lot of inventory on the water that has been deployed in the first month of the conflict. Strategic petroleum reserves have been released. Commercial inventories have been drawn down. And so we’ve seen that play itself off and mitigate the impact as we move through March and then here through April.” “As you get to kind of minimum working levels of inventory on the commercial side, you’re going to lose one of these sources of supply. And so we anticipate as that happens and the Strait remains closed, that we will continue to see increased prices in the marketplace.” “Once the Strait opens back up again, it’ll take some time for, frankly, to get back to a stable flow rate that was consistent with what we’ve historically seen. Ships got to reposition themselves. We’ve got to work through the backlog. Then there’s obviously the transit time to get the product to market. And so we’re thinking there’s going to be a one to two month time lag between the Strait opening up and the market seeing normal flow.” “And then depending on how long this goes and how far strategic petroleum reserves are drawn, how low commercial inventories go, there will be a period of time where players, markets, governments, countries try to refill and replenish those inventories. And so that’s going to bring an additional level of demand into the marketplace, which we think is going to put upward pressure on prices. I would also anticipate that many countries around the world will look at if they don’t have strategic petroleum reserves, start thinking about whether they need those. That may bring some additional demand into the marketplace.” Something I’ve been arguing. “And then obviously people are going to reassess their energy security and how they ensure that going forward that they don’t have the same exposure that many of them have realized here in the short term.”