Construction, including repair work is really struggling (quite a large negative revision of -0.6 for September feeding in). On the upside we're still all having fun and going on holiday and for recreation!

This year is the year of the fire horse in Japan. It is considered an unlucky year to birth a girl. The last time was in 1966 and live births fell by 19% y/y!

For various reasons economists like to use y/y numbers but I've never been convinced they're the 'right' metric to think about Does the public experience inflation as 3-monthly, 12-monthly or 36? I don't see any any great reason that the y/y measure should be privileged when considering sentiment

The number of one-off structural changes that disadvantage young people vs their parents at the same age is pretty staggering

US has strong EM characteristics Housing, defence, banking all being nudged by US admin to perform acts of service now

“I think you can 100 percent say A.I. saved their lives,” Patients had come to the hospital with complaints like bloating or nausea and had not initially seen a pancreatic specialist, Dr. Zhu said. Several of their CT scans had raised no alarms until they were flagged by the A.I. tool.

Will Venezuelan GDP be higher or lower by 2028?

One amusing feature of the British public is how violently they oppose the idea of chlorinated chicken

AI lab winner factors: Pro 'fast-follwers' - low switching costs so far - low cost of imitation (IP protection seems moderate given high flows of researchers between labs) - low certainty of who is the end-consumer - limited vertical integration (shockingly low given Google, Microsoft in the race)

Since 1960 US recessions have seen gains in education and health services employment in every recession *excluding* 2020. Manufacturing saw declines in every recession alongside information www.minneapolisfed.org/research/rec...

Trump Tariffs have nearly 100% price pass through Shipping lags and enforcement gaps result in the paid rate remaining c.50% of the statutory rate

Short run growth impacts from AI: DM benefit more than EM Differential growth impacts across countries stem from differences in sectoral exposures to gen AI, differences in countries’ production structures and their level of technological readiness www.bis.org/publ/work132...

China Banks: Industry insiders say banks are rushing to lock in business before Dec. 31 to hit 2025 targets and build momentum for next year.

UK YIMBY victory in sight

Unemployment now at 5.1% (subject to revisions) up 10bps in three consecutive months and now 20bps above OBR forecast for 4Q25

UK October GDP -0.1% 3m/3m vs est. 0%

Economic dynamism as measured by entry exit rates of businesses and employment in the UK have been flat to down over the last 25y

Macron: "This is not at all aggressive or protectionist. The Americans and other players in the North American market do it, the Chinese do it,” the president said. “The major risk for Europeans is accelerated deindustrialisation" Chart: China trade balance with the EU

No notes

Trump on football (formerly know to Americans as soccer) "We have to come up with another name for the NFL"

Russia nearly blew up Zelensky over Irish airspace and failed by chance alone: "The drones reached the flight path of his plane exactly the time it should have been there, but just missed it because Zelensky arrived ahead of schedule"

Oh dear "until now, at the Spring Statement in March, there was a premature access to that OBR forecast web address, 5 minutes after the Chancellor started giving her Commons speech, but half an hour before normal publication"

Starmer says he is “accepting the Fingleton recommendations” and asking the business secretary to extend the lessons to other sectors. On face value this is extremely good news

Not ideal "S&P Global Ratings downgraded Tether's USDT stablecoin to a stability rating of "weak" due to its exposure to high-risk assets, including Bitcoin, and limited disclosure."

BoK: recent rises in USDKRW were not driven by interest rate differentials but by retail investors' flows into US equities

Net migration 204k (898k in, 693k out). Both EU+ and British national groups saw more people leave the UK than arrive, with net migration provisionally estimated at negative 70,000 and negative 109,000, respectively.

I'm taking the over on unemployment; under on growth, productivity

UK Government spending narrative violations

Peston: "the Chancellor has been nobbled by a legal and planning adviser, who claims the Fingleton recommendations somehow breach the UK’s environmental, trade and human rights obligations."

"Exorbitant privilege stems from issuing overpriced debt in the early stage, followed by bondholder losses and financial repression in the later stage."

Extraordinary: "UK abolishes its "de minimis" rules which exclude cheap imports below £135 from paying tariffs"

It's my favourite time of the year: year n+1 outlook release szn

Average is over

If the government doesn't make the economy work for young people then they'll vote for volatility The status quo in the UK is that unearned wealth has accumulated among the 50+ and it drives a wedge in housing affordability, economic and geographic mobility and worsens younger people's social lives

So we're losing a tenth of employment every month at the moment Where are the jobs being gained and lost? The largest increase in the Public administration sector, with a rise of 16k employees; the largest decrease was in the wholesale and retail sector, with a fall of 71k employees.

In cases where there is insufficient transparency to apply a risk weighting to banks' equity investment in funds a risk weight of 1250% is applied

The bull case for COVID migration cohorts is that they seem to be seasoning reasonably well The negative charts of median monthly earnings by nationality collapsing are mostly a function of age

The UK doesn't really believe in prices anymore, or at least it acts like it

I don't think the extent to which households delevered over COVID is well recognised

Who is accountable for erroneous prison releases and why aren't they explaining themselves?

Lots of panic about smartphone usage focuses on children/ students, but the quality of parenting as seen in school preparedness data suggests that parents are also a major problem

A whole new generation of investors in Japan ready to get stuck in having not been scarred by investing between 1990 and 2009

Rent control for new tenancies jeopardises the price mechanism. We've seen what happens when judges get to decide what fair wages are (see Birmingham bin collection saga, Next, various supermarkets)..

Ministers love to hide behind process instead of taking accountability and civil servants encourage them to do so

Acronyms can be tricky

Has China actually failed in its task of shrinking it's manufacturing reliance? Or alternatively have they simply failed to do it fast enough given it's size? Manufacturing, value added (% of GDP) - China

We're returning to an oral tradition. Voice and video in, text and writing are out

EDF CEO "Even if the wholesale price were to halve the bills will rise" E.ON CEO: "you could get to a position by 2030 where if the wholesale price was zero bills would still be the same as they are today because of the increase in those non-commodity costs"

Rents up, sales values down Both well under inflation/ wage growth

Hilarious "The write-off of the Credit Suisse AT1 capital instruments as ordered by FINMA in March 2023 lacked legal basis. The Federal Administrative Court has therefore revoked FINMA’s decree in a partial decision."