Blain’s Morning Porridge, Jan 9th, 2026 - The Risks of Cascading Sugar Rush Policy “When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in mighty battalions.” The frenetic pace of activity in Washington this week has left the commentariat stunned while dulling the market’s sensitivity to momentous events. Some of it is madness, while much of what Trump is doing makes curiously perverse sense – but what are the risks it all spectacularly unravels?Shakespeare was right. This morning’s quote is from the Danish play! It sums up the reality of the Cascade Effect – how events, (events dear boy), have a habit of running riot as their consequences, and the cascading instabilities they conspire to create, gather momentum. The scale and impact of cascading crises tend to be directly proportional to how widely their roots are spread. President Trump has demonstrated a remarkable genius for dominating the entire eventsphere. After his success in Venezuela, he’s now embarked on a deluge of new announcements – which his detractors have dismissed as the actions of a Toddler on a Sugar High. I can’t remember anything like it in the first week of a new year. Whether its kidnapping foreign leaders, his ICE praetorians murdering citizens and justifying it as a war against leftist domestic terrorism, privateering vs Russian flagged tankers, banning institutional housing investment, threatening to split Nato by seizing Greenland, withdrawing from all international organisations, capping defence industry salaries and bonuses, and then announcing a 50% increase in the US “War” budget from $900 bln to $1.5 trillion per annum, it’s no wonder everyone is wondering what Trump will do tomorrow? The never-ending deluge of policy quakes has bred a curious lack of concern about the implications and consequences in the markets… we just assume much of it will not happen, that its strum et drang, bluff and bluster. It’s just Trump. He’s just saying it for effect. That’s a dangerous assumption. Consequential tidal waves oft start as small ripples.You can read the Morning Porridge by subscribing on ⁠www.morningporridge.com⁠, and have it delivered fresh to your inbox every morning!

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