At a recent conference, Fathom Director Erik Britton asked our panellists and our audience whether we could now put geopolitics to one side, and focus instead on pressing macro-economic problems, such as negative real yields and excessive levels of both public and private debt. Sadly, there was little conviction that Emmanuel Macron’s recent victory signalled an end to populist politics. The threat of growing isolationism was still very real. There was widespread agreement that historically low long-term real rates of…