Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (January 2, 2026)
Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (January 2, 2026) The subject of this month’s blog is about the political history of the United States going back to the time before the USA declared its independence from the British Empire in 1776. The USA is among a few modern day nation states which has a parliamentary system largely inherited from England. This system is called a “first past the post system” in the modern day UK where seats in parliament are contested by individual districts across the entire country and not awarded according to “proportional representation” as they are in much of the rest of the world. This latter system traces historical roots to the French Revolution of 1789. Many authoritarian governments around the world have representative parliaments with governments of “national unity” which do allow for multiple political parties – but these parties are not allowed to go against the will of the national government – examples here include the People’s Republic of China, North Korea and the former German Democratic Republic (1949 to 1990). Modern democracies with a “first past the post” parliamentary electoral or voting system include the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Most democratic electoral and voting systems in the rest of Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia use proportional representation or even a hybrid system using some of each of the two described systems. The political system of the modern day UK traces much of its parliamentary origins to the “Magna Carta” of 1215 in which the nobility obtained concessions from the ruling monarch (king). It is much more difficult to have third or multiple political parties in a “first past the post” system whereas in a parliamentary system we often see many smaller political parties who are represented in parliament. The two…