But who shall return us our children? -- Rudyard Kipling, The Children
The writer’s 18-year-old son, John, was killed on this day in 1915 at the Battle of Loos in the First World War. British troops were mown down in their attack and one German commander is said to have recalled: "My machine gunners were so filled with pity, remorse and nausea at the corpse field of Loos that they refused to fire another shot'."
Kipling was famous for his pro-war writing but he grew critical of the conflict later. In his poem Common Form, he wrote "If any question why we died, / Tell them, because our fathers lied."
The debate
Our Top Line today is the flurry of the fact-checking and untruth-hunting as financial markets and pundits unpack yesterday’s U.S. presidential debate.
Hillary Clinton, seen as a more stable and predictable option that Donald Trump, was tabbed by many as the winner. "Markets started to call the debate for Hillary within the first 15 minutes or so,” Sean Callow, a currency analyst at Westpac in Sydney, told Reuters.
“Standing at the lectern, interrupting and shouting, playing the invisible accordion with his open hands, filibustering, tossing his word salads — jobs and terrorism and Nafta and China and everything is terrible — Mr. Trump said a lot,” the New York Times editorializes this morning. “But as the debate wore on, he struggled to contend with an opponent who was much more poised and prepared than any of the Republicans he faced in the primaries.
Our analysis on BNN today includes assessing Clinton’s promises on the economy and taxation. At 3:20 p.m. ET, we'll hear from Stephen Myrow, managing partner at Beacon Policy Advisors, which counsels on investors on the impact of government policy-making. He cautioned last month that as president she would be unable to push through tax hikes on the wealthy without Democratic control of Congress.
A missed opportunity with the royal visit
From the politics of a republic to… royalty. At 2:15 p.m. ET, we'll be joined by University of Victoria marketing professor Brock Smith, who says the B.C. capital has partly missed out an opportunity to raise its profile during the visit of Prince William and Kate, Duchess of Cambridge.
“The fact is that the itinerary of the visit doesn’t lend itself to a lot of public exposure, and if I were planning this visit with an eye to increasing economic impact, I would have pushed for a lot more events where the public could interact with the royals,” he said last week. “That would draw more people to the city, for sure.”
The future of the oil market
Figuring out the next moves in the oil market by Saudi Arabia’s royal despots is always an exercise on opacity. At 11:50 a.m. ET on Commodities, we'll get the take of Richard Mallinson, oil analyst at Energy Aspects. His outfit reckons that a key change in the politics of crude has taken place. “Key OPEC members, namely Saudi Arabia, are willing and eager to cut output, aiming beyond merely freezing output at current levels.”
But it warns that “without a deal, we do not foresee 2017 prices rising towards US$70 as we have been expecting. Rather they will languish around US$50-55 per barrel as the rebalancing occurs gradually.”
Finally, a urological surgeon in Michigan is working on a theory that the forces exerted on the body by riding roller-coasters may help patients pass kidney stones while they’re small and relatively harmless.
His advice: “If you know you have a stone that's smaller than five millimeters, riding a series of roller coasters could help you pass that stone before it gets to an obstructive size and either causes debilitating colic or requires a $10,000 procedure to try and break it up.”
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Every morning Commodities host Andrew Bell writes a ‘chase note’ to BNN's editorial staff listing the stories and events that will be in the spotlight that day. Have it delivered to your inbox before the trading day begins by heading to www.bnn.ca/subscribe
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