A brilliant story about Peter Mandelson, told to me by Mark Gatiss on my podcast Trash Talk...

Inspiring research headlines in my inbox this morning. "FTSE hugs flatline" (HL) "Steady day" (Rabo) And the winner from Paul Donovan at UBS: "Nothing" #august

Aw, look! A wedding.

Germany inscribed austerity in its constitution. The “debt brake” is so rigid that The Economist has called it an instrument of “self harm”. Reform is overdue. I’m honored to be appointed by the Finance Ministry to serve on the expert commission in charge of fiscal rules.

Despite being the only white man in his 30's without a Substack, I still wanted to write something long-form about why I think the Trump administration's trade strategy is struggling to extract meaningful ransoms. Hope you find it interesting! www.explaintrade.com/resources/tr...

A friend had a surveyor add a comment reading "river at end of property, potential risk of flooding" for a flat near the Clifton suspension bridge.

This only happens to you once.

Now that's a headline... FT www.ft.com/content/31c6...

Walk on fare for two from London to York at 4pm on a Monday: £345*. "Demand pricing helps smooth overcrowding and gives us all a better railway!" Peak trains:

The Heist By @davidfrum.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

This is a very enjoyable, super-informative use of your time. Great discussion between Paul Krugman and Barry Ritholtz. open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

This Labour government’s apparently policy in office is to somehow improve growth/productivity while attempting to force a larger share of the overall workforce into lower value add employment and undermining profit centres. It’s definitively an unconventional approach!

If you can't see two huge boulders, you can't be trusted to see people outside of cars. Pickup trucks need to be made more inaccessible to the general public and I say this as someone who spent most of my life behind the wheel of one working in farming and the ag industry.

First take ranking of Pope Leos (Leones? Popes Leo?) on which I will not be elaborating 1. I, The OG, Leo Magnus 2. XIII 3. III 4. IX 5. IV 6. II 7. X 8. VIII 9. VII 10. VI 11. XI 12. V 13. XII XIV has a pretty good chance at a high slot, a lot of these were… not good

Putting air filters in classrooms seems to reduce student sick days by more than 10 per cent.

That new golden age of America in full. on.ft.com/4jp8pcI

Nothing will prepare you for the interview… (🎥 7 News Queensland)

Superb summary of how things stand

Import Chinese battery: 145% tariff Import Chinese battery inside Chinese laptop: 20% tariff Import Chinese battery inside Vietnamese laptop: 0% tariff Fuckin brilliant. A+ work here team. I am so glad there are such smart people working on our trade policy.

Tariffs get their name from Tarifa, a pretty Andalusian port just west of Gibraltar which was base to notorious pirates who used to mug traders passing between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.

Good day to remember that a US President has no inherent power over tariffs whatsoever. It’s not like war powers or pardons. It’s entirely delegated by Congress to deal with emergencies. GOP Congress cld modify that law tonight and bring this to a screeching halt.

If you are going to report how "reciprocal" these tariffs are or how they quantify trade barriers and economic injustices... ... please keep in mind they're not, becuase that would have required work. Instead just did: COUNTRY'S US SURPLUS --------------------------- = Rate% ITS EXPORTS TO US

Brutal comment under a YouTube CNN video about the EU response to US tariffs ... but yeah ... they got a point, don't they.

Oh damn…!

TV Garden allows you to stream tv channels from all over the world. tv.garden Quite addictive.

Efficient market news; FILA, Quality Italian fine art and pencil Group has Mkt Cap €511M. Their 26% holding in quoted Indian Company DOMS, which they incubated then IPO'd is €455M. So the rest of the stable, growing and profitable Group is worth €54M giving a P/E just over 1.. Results on Friday.

Steel and aluminium tariffs week - full details expected Wednesday. But with this administration, quite easily announced today, dropped tomorrow, reimposed Wednesday, doubled on Thursday as the greatest thing ever, and exempted on Friday.

Quite the first paragraph. No idea as to the merits of the claim, but A+ for effort.

This makes little sense. You can’t reroute an automotive supply chain in one month.

Okay, here's AI at work in a way that I can see the point of. Provided its dataset is accurate, and its modelling is accurate, that is saving a lot of hours of work - without pretending there aren't variables that need human input for accuracy.

Fun appreciation of @highllamists.bsky.social from a few months back.. www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ9J...

CJR has a fair-minded piece on why I left the Times. All in the past now; I'm basically full-time on Substack www.cjr.org/analysis/pau...

Anti-cycling stories are bad for the UK’s health, says Chris Boardman

Emotional rollercoaster, railway edition.

Genuinely the most tense, gripping sporting contest I've seen all year. Great sportsmanship at the end too 👏🏾

The Guardian long read on the strange world of Samuel Smith pubs is as brilliant as everyone has said. The sheer amount of reporting that has gone into this piece is palpable in every line. Late entry for best British business story of the year? www.theguardian.com/news/2024/de...

FT front page has a story that billionaire financier Michael Spencer whining that top CEOs should be "paid like footballers" to make us competitive. It then notes the average Premier League salary is £2.1m and the average FTSE 100 CEO earns £4.1m.

Trump tariffs essentials: - he likes tariffs - doesn't understand supply chains - that's most trade - he has power but it isn't unlimited - likes deals but not particularly traditional FTAs - companies not governments trade - US companies will be lobbying intently - there isn't a 'US or' choice

The fact that UCC hid a 3000-year-old mummy under the floorboards of a lecture theatre on a campus where two and a half tonnes of uranium rods were being stored in a basement nearby and DIDN'T end up with a zombie-pharaoh apocalypse is both a mystery and endlessly disappointing

Even if, for some inexplicable reason, you’ve never heard of this and/or Powell and Pressburger, trust me: this is big news. This film is a thing of pure joy – and the restoration looks... *swoons*

Laparoscopic instruments are usually only available in one size, and they are much more difficult to use for those of us with smaller hands. Also, operating room tables often do not go down low enough for shorter people to operate without step stools (these are a safety hazard btw).

Qualitative change in this site. I can now keep tabs on what’s going on without Muskland. And I’m getting more engagement here despite 1/70th as many followers

There's a serious amount of content and thought here in a sub ten minute read! If Goldman Sachs are right on future investment returns, I hope that'll at least be balanced by some mean regression in non US markets.. bsky.app/profile/nixo...