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

Heh

This pair look like the villains in a movie where the hero is a dog.

Maybe my most useful heuristic currently

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

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

Same

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

I’m in danger of liking Ed Davey.

Also, I guess, winning elections

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

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)

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

🏏

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.

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.

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

Okay we're there.

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

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.

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?

The government is firmly against unfunded xenophobia

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.

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"

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

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.

There’s now something out from USCIS. Still waiting for CBP guidance. www.uscis.gov/sites/defaul...

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.

Again Bouie from the top rope

I am not going to be able to return to my job…huh

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!

BOS -> LHR ✈️

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

Quick thread on US public credit markets and some of the nuances around current valuation

Cheat code: the Mag-7 just keep buying each other's products and each other's stock and everyone gets rich.

Quick thread on US public credit markets and some of the nuances around current valuation

HY refi cycle can start in earnest (effective yield below par weighted coupon on the index for the first time since March 2022):

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!

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"...

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.

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.

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.

Bro just wants to see where Musk’s unconditional guarantee to fund lawsuits from X posts caps out

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

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...

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%

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

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.

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...

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.