The State of Play July 25, 2024 This inaugural post is one that is sure to keep me humble since it is 103 days until election day and much can and will change. A Blue Wave may be on the horizon fed by the energy of newly engaged Democrats since Kamala Harris has quickly emerged as the party's standard bearer bringing (relative) youth and excitement to what has hitherto been a moribund slog. With the country appearing so closely divided, small movements can have an outsized impact when binary choices are all that is on offer. One of the first hints of this impending change may have been yesterday's stock market rout. Could it be that so called "smart money" has awakened to the fact that a Harris adminstration likely means the trump tax breaks are going away and with them the outsized corporate profits of the past several years? And could it mean that capital gains taxes will rise as the current extreme imbalance between the value of Capital and Labor is at...