Tomas Hirst
@tomashirstecon.bsky.social
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Strategy & Asset Allocation. Queasy metropolitan liberal. “Economist” - @t0nyyates
pinned post!
Hello new Bluesky-ers! Guess I should do one of these awkward introductory posts - work in asset allocation but mostly here for finance, economics, social policy and politics (though the last almost exclusively through a policy lens). Frequently snarky, but aspiring to avoid cantankerousness.
11 months ago
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This is a great column but this para in particular struck me as correct - institutions like the Federal Reserve operate independently as a wilful check on other branches with a limited mandate set by elected lawmakers. It’s a question of demonstrating good governance
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about 5 hours ago
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Tom Hearden
about 3 hours ago
Heh
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Conor Conneally
about 5 hours ago
This pair look like the villains in a movie where the hero is a dog.
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Maybe my most useful heuristic currently
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about 5 hours ago
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This is a great column but this para in particular struck me as correct - institutions like the Federal Reserve operate independently as a wilful check on other branches with a limited mandate set by elected lawmakers. It’s a question of demonstrating good governance
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about 5 hours ago
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Word for word what the crypto shills were saying and TBI would have happily dived headfirst into that swamp too if there was money at the bottom
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about 6 hours ago
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Same
about 22 hours ago
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All I can say is that it’s a good thing we invited Trump over to see how things really are in the UK at the moment - here he is watching the introduction of Sharia law from his carriage
1 day ago
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FOHF
1 day ago
I’m in danger of liking Ed Davey.
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Also, I guess, winning elections
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1 day ago
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Toby Nangle
1 day ago
It’s normal for 10-25% of PE buyouts to end in failure. Is private credit ready to be on the hook for the losses?
on.ft.com/4mtOJVO
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Given the uncertainty surrounding the impact of QE/QT on market functioning and feed through to real activity, I would have thought the logic here runs in reverse (especially where the yield curve is pricing in heightened risk premia, potentially impairing policy transmission through rate channel)
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1 day ago
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John Springford
1 day ago
This is a good policy. Tax wonks are pretty united on national insurance being a bad tax, because it means labour income is taxed more than other forms, and adds to complexity
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🏏
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1 day ago
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This thread was written 7 months ago in the aftermath of DeepSeek unveiling. And the AI show is still on the road. Which is impressive, or concerning, depending on your vantage point. I just see it as a massive concentration risk (the omni-beta) on which far too much now depends.
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2 days ago
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Actually, one question we might want to start grappling with is that we *could* be left with an awful lot of spare data centre capacity. And we should think about the potential uses for that.
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2 days ago
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So, if I get this right, OpenAI is paying Oracle $300BB for computing power, which is built on its partnership with NVIDIA, which is funding OpenAI to the tune of $100BB
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2 days ago
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George Pearkes
2 days ago
Okay we're there.
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This is a transparent lay-up to blame the Fed for bad downstream consequences of the overall policy mix. It manages to forget that the OBBBA included a load of spending, that tariffs are a tax on consumption, that the mechanism lowering rents would be v damaging to growth etc etc
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2 days ago
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Coincidentally, the rigorous analysis comes out near the number the administration wanted to begin with. Truly remarkable when you see this kind of accidental coordination in the wild.
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2 days ago
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Daily caffeine consumption currently consists of 1 or 2 morning coffees; 1x white tea; 2x jasmine tea. Feels like this is a reasonable level vs 4+ coffees a day previously but struggle with late afternoon/early evening lethargy. Anyone find decaf an effective placebo?
2 days ago
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The government is firmly against unfunded xenophobia
2 days ago
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Lots to agree with here but I don't really think it's clear that we can easily square softening UK labour market w/ economy running at/near full capacity. Still think there is room for the government to borrow to fund investment, as it has done, but need to show that they can use tax levers as well.
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2 days ago
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Chris Hanretty
2 days ago
One really hard thing when you're a head of department is hiring people from outside the UK. You tell them, "congrats, you've got the job", and you wait to tell them, "by the way, the university doesn't cover the cost of your visa, or the cost of your NHS surcharge"
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Once the norm of treating thinly disguised xenophobia as disqualifying was breached, we were always likely to reach a point where we would need to face down ethnonationalism directly to redraw it. That it’s happening while the centre is in disarray is deeply worrying, but we cannot cede another inch
2 days ago
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It is cute that there is a section of US commentators still apparently convinced that the political discourse could be changed if only people posted on X a bit harder.
3 days ago
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Guan Yang
4 days ago
There’s now something out from USCIS. Still waiting for CBP guidance.
www.uscis.gov/sites/defaul...
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Lemme be absolutely clear *every* H-1B visa employee at my (large cap) US firm was summoned back to the office from wherever they were in the world today for this crap. For some, it was utter panic. Appalling.
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4 days ago
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Reconstructionist
4 days ago
Again Bouie from the top rope
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I am not going to be able to return to my job…huh
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4 days ago
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Nathan Goldwag
5 days ago
Oh Jesus Christ, we're doing this discourse again. The reason that Democrat lose in Red States more than they used to is educational polarization and nationalization reshaping coalitions. There were, in fact, many pro-life Democrats a decade ago, and they all got replaced by Republicans!
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BOS -> LHR ✈️
5 days ago
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Just hyperextended my arm opening my laptop bag like a prime idiot and now trying my best to look normal in my office lobby as I grimace through the pain
6 days ago
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Quick thread on US public credit markets and some of the nuances around current valuation
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6 days ago
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Dom White
6 days ago
Cheat code: the Mag-7 just keep buying each other's products and each other's stock and everyone gets rich.
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Quick thread on US public credit markets and some of the nuances around current valuation
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6 days ago
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HY refi cycle can start in earnest (effective yield below par weighted coupon on the index for the first time since March 2022):
6 days ago
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Declan Gaffney
7 days ago
Most people working in this area have known for years that DWP's figures on trends in out-of-work benefit caseloads are complete junk but have struggled to find more accurate figures. Ben has now produced an estimated time series and the discrepancy is huge. Nobody should be using these stats!
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Dan Davies
7 days ago
1) a policy of moving closer to the USA on crypto is de facto a policy of moving away from the EU on financial services in general, absolutely crazy from a growth standpoint 2) the US government's "crypto friendly approach" is based almost entirely on "deregulation through non-enforcement"...
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Dow
8 days ago
The people saying we shouldn’t worry about Fed independence are the same people who told us Trump wouldn’t try to overturn the elections and would eventually accept that he lost. These are the kind of questions you can’t afford to get wrong.
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George Pearkes
8 days ago
In other words, real retail sales (I'm deflating w/ CPI, close enough as the chart above shows) is up an anemic 0.3% annualized this year. But over the last three months its annual advance is over 5% annualized. 4% over the last two months. That REALLY doesn't look like final demand collapsing.
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Note of caution on retail sales - biggest August seasonal adjustment since 1992 (~0.6%). NSA was ~0.1% but bumped up to 0.7% after seasonal adjustment. Last year it *cut* 1.1pp from August reading.
8 days ago
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Bro just wants to see where Musk’s unconditional guarantee to fund lawsuits from X posts caps out
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9 days ago
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Actually stopped myself having rows today - even when accused of bad faith by a rando - so gonna put a 1 on the board if I make it to tomorrow without a lapse
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9 days ago
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Aaron Sojourner
9 days ago
Since January, BLS has lost about 1 in 5 staff, largely through the combination of DOGE layoffs and paid admin leaves + hiring freeze. This led to erosions in data collection and quality. Good to see them open a crack in the hiring freeze.
www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
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BLS Is Hiring 25 Part-Time Staff to Collect Prices for CPI
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is hiring price collectors for a key inflation metric that’s increasingly relying on a statistical guessing method to compensate for lost staff.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-15/bls-is-hiring-25-part-time-staff-to-collect-prices-for-cpi?sref=SFtCN2M4
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Scott Santens
9 days ago
2 studies of the Rx Kids program are out today—one about the moms and one about the kids. Here's what happened when $1500 was given to ALL pregnant moms in Flint and also $500/mo for a year after birth: Flint saved $6.2M in NICU expenses due to fewer premature births Postpartum depression fell 14%
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The US town that pays every pregnant woman $1,500: ‘We’re not OK with our babies being born into poverty’
Infants in Rx Kids in Flint, Michigan, saw lower rates of prematurity and other issues, saving millions in NICU visits
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/15/rx-kids-flint-michigan-pregnancy
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There’s an ice cream stand near where I’m sat at the airport and watching the sheer delight of people (of all ages) ordering is making me think I’ve stumbled onto the set of a Richard Curtis film
9 days ago
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I don’t have a particularly strong view around quarterly earnings reports except that, given the backdrop of the administration’s attempts to influence the Fed and the BLS, it’s not a *great* time to be discussing reducing visibility/timeliness of data provided by the corporate sector.
9 days ago
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Jim Pickard
9 days ago
superb column from
@stephenkb.bsky.social
“racism does not diminish through rising GDP but through the willingness of politicians to argue against it….”
www.ft.com/content/fbbd...
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Starmer and Badenoch are handling the far-right march all wrong
A look back to the days of Enoch Powell suggests a better model
https://www.ft.com/content/fbbde39a-9eeb-4329-a97c-3bd1a44cb5df
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Idea I am coming round to after a large number of conversations with heavy users of various AI models is that there very clearly are already a number of use cases - some of which are genuinely exciting in terms of expanding the scope of particular fields of inquiry. But it should not be mass market.
9 days ago
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