Blain’s Morning Porridge May 21^st, 2026 – When Personalities Lead the Markets what might follow?

“Second prize is a set of steak knives…”

I know I should be talking about bond yields and inflation risks, but sometimes we have to stop and listen to the noise. Trump, Musk and Bill Winters. When our idols say, do and enact stupid things there are always consequences. This is a market perhaps too focused on the personalities, and not enough on the realities.

LINK TO PODCAST

The markets are getting worried about bonds. I am watching. But there are lots of other things to consider this morning when trying to fathom the current markets. In no particular order let’s deal with wage slavery, FOMO risks, and the ultimate corruption of the US dream…

Bill Winters

Standard Chartered’s boss Bill Winters has been a successful banker for decades – but now he will forever be remembered as the man who dismissed his staff as “Low-Value Human Capital.” Marie Antionette could not have put it better.

I predict the comment will haunt Winter into obscurity. It will define the next page of the “Woke” vs “Greed is Good” battle between the Dignity of Work and the Dark Side of Capitalism. When I look at the composition of markets today one thing that strikes me is how disposable the people I’ve spent a career working with became. They work 24/7 and their family life struggles, but they get dumped as soon as they display any signs of burnout or complacency – the financial markets equivalent of PTSD and shellshock.

Of all the folk who worked for me, few have survived the 50-something dead-wood cut-out date. They are hounded out by weaponised HR departments, offering bad-deals and wrapping them in NDAs to hide how companies repeatedly break and arbitrage the employment laws. Employment lawyers are prohibitively expensive – but firms make it so.

I recently heard about a CEO of a very successful company call a “Town-Hall Meeting” and called his employees “Chickenshits” for not winning more business, using their failure it to justify a 10% RIF (reduction in force) across the whole firm. Willy Loman stuff. Or was it more brutal; Glengarry Glen Ross where the third prize was termination? Did it make people feel good about their jobs? Or did it make them fight each other harder in the rattrap to survive?

Take a look at Meta. The consequences of treating staff as “low-value” disposable assets, forcing competition between staff to keep their jobs (no-matter what it does to the customer experience) and demanding greater obedience from staff – well, we know where that goes. When people are scared, they become more amenable to doing bad things and obeying bad orders. Ripping off customers is not a bad thing – but becomes an objective. Ultimately, treat them bad enough and they will do anything to survive.

But before going down the “it’s not markets that are bad, but the people behind them” route… Let’s talk about Elon Musk and the art of exuding confidence.

SpaceX

I am going to hold off writing much about the SpaceX IPO until we see how the launch of new “improved” Starship V3 performs – launch no. 12. It should happen in the next few days.

Elon Musk says the new Starship V3 is a very much improved and more advanced rocket from the 17 rather “meh” Starships tests and launches (and 10-12 huge explosions involving the Super Heavy booster, depending how you count them) thus far. Much is expected of Starship. Without it, Musk’s SpaceX promises are undeliverable; from datacentres in space, moon bases, to the Mars trip.

The Starship launch ahead of the IPO is a typical bravado play by Musk – it is confidence squared. If the $1.5 – $2 trillion valuation play happens as we expect, he becomes the world’s first Dollar Trillionaire. So why risk a launch ahead of it?

He is gambling on the launch to boost the value even higher. He presents overweening confidence the substantially redesigned rocket is going to succeed and demonstrate it can hit all its mission objectives – assuring potential and existing investors it will eventually reach orbit (which it hasn’t done yet, and won’t on this trip), it can be made fully reuseable (which is difficult if it blows up), and can carry a significant payload (which it hasn’t.) If it doesn’t work, he’s betting he can gloss off an excuse, and be hoping the infectious enthusiasm for all-things-Elon (a particularly virulent strain of FOMO) means people won’t ask too many difficult questions.

It looks a rather binary bet. I checked the probability markets this morning. They think there is an 87% likelihood it will reach space (defined as 68 miles high), but this test doesn’t include orbital insertion – although it does include a dummy cargo deployment and a controlled splashdown in the Gulf. (Which sounds pretty much like the last test?)

The consensus in the informed space community was Musk was failing fast on the Starship Programme because; a) that’s what he does, b) the engines were underpowered and unable to get in orbit, and c) its hugely complex. Launch by launch, SpaceX is addressing each of the many issues as they occur. However, there are a significant number of Space Engineers now wondering if Starship is a trip down a dead-end street – it still will have to prove the rocket can be refuelled (multiple times) to get it into high orbit, the Moon or Mars. (And then there is coming back again.)

Let’s see what happens…

Trump

When it comes to personalities driving the market… nothing compares to Trump. The last few days have been extraordinary in terms of the naked corruption on display. I don’t need to list it all here.

There is a scene in the Meteor Strike film Armageddon where one of the characters demands no IRRS taxes for life. Trump just got it – immunity. The $1776 million fund he’s set up from the tax-hand back will be disbursed to fellons prosecuted and found guilty by the US courts – to patriots unfairly persecuted by the Biden administration.

There will be whole books written about Trump and corruption. The consequences will simply reinforce the evil that bad capitalists do. If the law does not apply to the President – why should it apply to me?

I asked a Republican chum what was really going on. He told me Trump is bunkering down – knowing the midterms will likely make him a lame duck, he plans to surround himself with the legal hedges, the wealth and power necessary to protect himself, his family and loyalists against the vengeance of the Democrats. I thought he was being particularly astute – until I realised my chum genuinely believes Trump is doing it to protect America from the other party! What some people call it corruption, others paint as patriotism. A hostile legislature will control the economy, while Trump commands the military. Its a recipe for civil war.

Where did it all go wrong?

A character with strength and vision could have been the solution to the American problem – the political polarisation and gridlock in Washington DC that made America unable to address its multiple problems.

Who would such a character be? After promising the American people he, and only he, could address these issues, he could have balanced the blocking power of the legislature, pushing executive power to the forefront to “get-things-done“. He would do so as a strong man with complete control over his party. The opportunity was immense. Using the power of American technological exceptionalism and the strength of the US capital markets to fund it, he could have created a second American Century. Strengthened its alliances both militarily and in terms of trade, and remained the arsenal of democracy, freedom and justice. Repatriating jobs, wealth and prosperity to the US would be a challenge, but achievable.

The danger, of course, is that by cutting the balance provided by the legislature, the US would veer towards becoming an authoritarian state.

Instead… well we now know what we got. Donald Trump had the power and control of the party but has proved a very poor choice. It has led to a fractured, diminished, friendless USA that’s struggling to maintain its credibility on the global stage. Trump did not lead wisely – he surrounded himself with yes-men sycophants who opened the doors to grift and opportunism.

This is not a new story. This has happened multiple times in multiple republics, kingdoms and empires throughout history.

What America needed was an Augustus. Instead, Trump has proved a venal Caligula. We know how that ended.

Out of time, and back to the day job…

Bill Blain

Author of the Morning Porridge
CEO Windshift Capital
Advisor – Spitfire Strategic Capital

Meanwhile, don’t forget about my new book:

The Battle For Hamble is a proper grown-up examination of how bureaucracy has failed: a tale of Greedy Corporates, Bad Planning and Economic Illiteracy. It explains how a wholly unnecessary Gravel Quarry will be dug in middle of a prosperous village – putting 6000 jobs at risk. The truth is no one wants gravel, and the quarry company understands it’s not what you dig out, but what you stuff back into a hole in the ground that matters. Gravel sells for £30 a tonne – Landfill earns £150 a tonne to bury. Go figure.