A recipe for unrest

The harsh reality of a bleak future has begun to dawn on the world. Investors should expect trouble, says John Stepek.

During the Great Moderation' the 20-year period before the financial crisis, when interest rates were low and growth was pretty consistent people thought politics didn't matter. As long as governments kept out of the way, free' markets would prevail, economies would keep expanding, and life would just get better.

Now politics seems to be the only thing that matters. You've got the middle classes in Brazil and Turkey protesting over grievances from rising bus fares to unsympathetic building projects. There's a crisis in Egypt. You've got cabinet ministers resigning in Portugal amid growing unrest over austerity, catapulting the eurozone crisis back into the headlines. Meanwhile, parties of protest, such as Ukip, are gaining ground across developed nations.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.