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Tuesday, November 3, 2020

Born in the USA

There is a, possibly apocryphal, story that the character of Biff in the film Back to the Future - the potential nemesis to the Michael J Fox character Marty McFly - was based on current US President Donald Trump. Whether that is true (and given the fact that the films significantly pre-date the Trump presidency, the characterisation seems remarkably prescient), today marks the opportunity for the American voters to decide if Mr Trump’s own potential nemesis, Joe Biden, triumphs.

Although I ultimately ended up with a law degree, for part of my time as an undergraduate I studied political mechanisms and this included American political processes. Whilst I did not go so far as some of  the students on my course who had travelled  to the US to participate in the elections in support of the candidates (Reagan v Mondale which does rather date me.....), I nevertheless found US politics (and some of its terminology - “Pork Barrel Politics”, Gerrymandering anybody?) fascinating. The UAE dirham is pegged to the US dollar so the economic fortunes of the USA have had a much larger impact on our own sense of financial well-being over the last 10 years we have been in Dubai (particularly so when I was being paid in Dirhams) but undoubtedly I will not be the only one awaiting the outcome of today’s election with considerable interest.

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