Oligarchs and no kings
Key Markets report for Thursday, 22 January 2026
Yesterday evening, high on the mountain overlooking Davos, someone thought it appropriate to write “NO KINGS” in giant, glowing letters.
Who is so passionately opposed to kingship to take the trouble, and why? It wouldn’t be a Swiss political protest, since Switzerland is not a kingdom. There are some royals among the WEF attendees, like the King Philippe and Queen Mathilde of Belgium, Crown Prince Al Hussein bin Abdullah II of Jordan, Prince Faisal bin Farhan bin Abdullah, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and Sheikh Bandar Bin Mohammed Bin Saoud Al-Thani of Qatar, Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum of the United Arab Emirates and Prince Albert II of Monaco.
But the “no kings” slogan wasn’t directed at them. It wasn’t directed at Mark Carney who swore allegiance to king Charles III in London, nor at Charles himself. Rather, it was directed at President Donald Trump who is an elected President of the U.S. His presidency was also targeted by multiple “no kings” protests in the U.S., particularly during the summer months of 2025 and again in October of the same year. These protests do not arise as spontaneous expressions of people's anxiety about the danger of being ruled by some king. They’re funded and organized for some reason.
The organizers and the paymasters
Targeting the Trump Presidency, the protests were organized by a broad coalition of over 200 progressive and left-leaning groups. Key organizers included “Indivisible” (a central coordinator handling data, communications, and mobilization), the 50501 movement, ACLU, MoveOn, Public Citizen, unions like the American Federation of Teachers and Communications Workers of America, Democratic Socialists of America, Planned Parenthood, League of Conservation Voters, and others.
The funding came from a network of philanthropic foundations and donor-advised funds, often described in conservative reporting as “dark money” channels supporting progressive causes. Prominent reported funders include: the George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, Arabella Advisors network, Tides Foundation, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller-linked funds and Warren Buffett-linked funds and donor networks. The aggregate estimates from sources like the Government Accountability Institute, claim that between 2017 and 2025, these sources provided close to $300 million in funding.
It may seem odd that financier oligarchs like George Soros, Warren Buffett and the Rockefellers would be so keenly defensive of our democracies to spend $300 million on protests against something that doesn’t exist. There are no kings in the U.S. nor has anyone announced any plans to turn the Republic into a kingdom. So where’s the problem that justifies activating all the progressive groups and spending so much money on them? Do oligarchs really love democracy so much?
True sovereigns can keep oligarchs in check
Of course not. Real democracy would entail the rule of the people - ordinary people and this is not what moves oligarchs. What does move them is the fear that a sovereign leader might emerge whose power could eclipse theirs. A king - a true sovereign - would be superior in his power to the oligarchs, and could act to curb their power if it became excessive or abusive to the people. Historically, kings tended to always be in conflict with the nobles of the land, both sides having an obvious preference to curb the power of the other side.
A king would prefer to be surrounded by subordinate, cooperative oligarchs (or noblemen). The oligarchs would prefer a subordinate king who would readily bow down to their ambitions and plans. Even since the Roman oligarchs killed the last king of Rome in 509 B.C. the Western civilization’s cultural tradition has abhorred kings, and has tended to describe them as abusive tyrants. But without a king, there is no check on the power of the oligarchs who can turn whole nations into their private fiefdoms and conceal themselves behind “democratic” institutions.
This goes back nearly 3000 years!
The rise of independent oligarchies is what happened in classical Greece and Rome in the first millennium BC, and has become the distinguishing feature of Western societies ever since. Greece and Rome had no palace rulers at the time interest-bearing debt was brought to the Aegean and Mediterranean lands around 800-750 BC.
To remove all checks from their power, the financier oligarchs colluded to destroy any political authority with the power to restore economic balance when the accumulation of debts grew in excess of the societies’ ability to pay.
Western cultural traditions celebrate what made classical Greece and Rome different from what went before, including individualism and secure creditor and property rights. Laws providing security for credit and property rights and opposition to kingship are regarded as consistent with individualism and democracy. Rome’s law of contracts established the fundamental principle of Western legal philosophy giving creditor claims priority over the property of debtors, which are today euphemized as “security of property rights.” They guarantee the liberty of privileged individuals to pursue economic gains at the expense of the broad public interest.
Throughout recorded history the most destabilizing dynamic has been the tendency of societies to polarize between a creditor oligarchy monopolizing land and other wealth, and an indebted clientage at the bottom. There can be little doubt that this is a pathological development that’s ultimately destructive to society, as it was to the Roman Empire. “The greed of creditors,” wrote Plutarch, “brings neither enjoyment nor profit to them, and ruins those whom they wrong. They do not till the fields which they take from their debtors, nor do they live in their houses after evicting them.”
When debts begin to suffocate the whole economic system, society reacts. Today, this reaction has manifested itself in the election of Donald Trump in the U.S. and the popularity of sovereigntist movements in Europe. These movements jeopardize the power of the oligarchs because they support strong, nationalist leaders who might turn against them. In modern times, this has already happened with the election of Vladimir Putin in Russia in 2000. This is why the oligarchs are rallying the troops against kings: not out of love for democracy, but for the love of their privileges.
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Today’s trading signals
With yesterday’s closing prices we have the following changes for the Key Markets portfolio:
