The Times calls Keir Starmer's decision to hire Peter Mandelson an "egregious error" which deserves an "inquiry into the appointment process." Not included is any demand for an inquiry into their own appointment of him, long after his post-conviction relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was exposed

The rule "it dooms any senior PM adviser for the media to be convinced he's a genius" has no recent counter examples

NKY ⬆️ JGB yields ⬆️ USDJPY ⬆️ Japanese domestic investors sell USTs, and buy JGBs and NKY ✅️ crypto remains a worthless 'asset' ❌️

Also space being cold isn’t quite right, as there’s basically no particles it’s actually more like a really good insulator, so data centres in space is a terrible idea

Apparently the typical hypescale data centre has about 20 times the floorspace of the International Space Station and uses about 800 times the electricity. I'm not sure the idea of data centres in space has been fully worked out.

Ok everyone, give me your hot takes about what a crushing win for the Japanese PM means for global rates, tech stocks and crypto. Go.

Good morning…

pca.st/episode/043a... "People clearly have a preference for *real assets* in a world of debasement and fiscal deficits... Bitcoin is trading like software, it's trading like SaaS" Odd Lots with @tracyalloway.bsky.social and @weisenthal.bsky.social is always worth your time.

How the house of Rothschild became entangled with Epstein - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... Everything is astonishing, not least the scale of the fees he got for advice

Ease borrowing curbs for development schemes, gilt investors urge Reeves - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... via @financialtimes.com Worth considering?

For fuck’s sake … it is long past time the British media ostracised these absolutely deranged clowns. Once your ‘intellect’ has been disgraced in public by the actions you took, that should be it. Hide in shame forever. The Profumo Model.

Rare for me to post, cc in @gilesyb.bsky.social as I do But, watching 6N Rugby on ITV tonight the Copilot ad use case scenario was someone neg a contract asking AI during the meeting 'what is the lowest we can make profit on?' Who enters a neg without knowing that? How would AI make £ even if so?

I’m glad Jeffries came out swinging on this one. Trump is an unrepentant racist and his posts should not be normalized.

The endless column inches, YouTube videos, podcasts and more given over to the largely non-existent rightwards shift of young men is exhausting. A small fraction are getting radicalised by the online right. But most young men vote left and liberal! Even more so than millennials did at their age!

Skyla likes to curl up with a Shakespeare

www.resolutionfoundation.org/comment/uk-p... The overlooked story of booming UK productivity?

The Russian economy is tanking.

www.thetimes.com/comment/colu... "Drumming him out of the Lords will look strange to our successors" Only just caught up with this quite amazingly courageous take.

The "hiding in plain sight" aspect brings me weird memories of the PartyGate scandal. When the damn breaks, all kinds of other confirming horrors pour out. Dozens of stories waiting for their second source. Jim had this in the public record. How come Mandelson wasn't quizzed on it on his podcast?

What does government need to function more effectively at the centre and support long‑term growth? Our latest report by @gilesyb.bsky.social explores reforms, roles and coordination across Whitehall. www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/...

Both @polcurrency.bsky.social with Balls and Osborne, and Political Dysfunction with Rigby, Harman and Davidson are amazing this week. Really rising to the challenge of this week's material.

the meme crowd moved to precious metals (as well as the more garden variety speculators), when it became clear that crypto had become a graveyard for momentum. maybe they come back, who knows ? am more interested in when the dumb 'smart' money realises it's backed the wrong horse with crypto ETFs...

The whole Epstein-Mandelson scandal is easily the most consequential, revealing and fascinating of my lifetime. Anyone claiming they're bored of it or the media should move on are being so incredibly revealing in turn

I guess at some point bitcoin will fall close to its intrinsic value and then the value investors will step in and get some, and that still backstop the thing. Can someone pls find out what this intrinsic value is pls, I like trading

Big tech investment boom spooks investors. To get your head around this: the increase in tech capex since 2023 is nearly five times the UK's entire defence budget giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... via @financialtimes.com

Correction: 20%

The company known as Strategy is now just a pile of some 700,000 bitcoin, bought some 10% above where its currently trading, and presumably many of the holders of Strategy stock invested at a high multiple of where it's now valued. There are times I really wonder about efficient market hypothesis

great column by Juliet Samuel about the delusions of grandeur afflicting the once-in-office, the doomed reach for relevance and status www.thetimes.com/comment/colu... it is never about you, but your office: tattoo that onto every departing politico

I do believe Seven Dials is the stupidest TV programme I've ever managed to finish. Please tell me that wasn't Agatha Christie's actual plot

here’s our 2,000 word report from June 2023: www.ft.com/content/0723...

good morning. the rollercoaster continues in energy & precious metals. the idiot crypto cousin continues just one way:

terrible shocking news. no one could have anticipated that turning a company into a gigantic store of cryptocurrency would turn out badly. Whatever next?

There’s a Schumpeter quote that’s something like “the achievement of capitalism is not the manufacture of silk stockings; queen Elizabeth had silk stockings. The achievement of capitalism is to put them in reach of factory girls.”

4 February 1925 | A French Jewish woman, Ginette Kolinka (née Cherkasky), was born in Paris. She was deported to #Auschwitz from Drancy in April 1944. She was transferred to Bergen-Belsen and then to #Theresienstadt. She survived. Today she turns 101.

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/news... "If you had told me in 2016 “my company will send rockets to Mars to generate free cash flow to subsidize a capital-intensive money-losing website that will use machine learning algorithms to answer people’s questions,” I would have like: No no no, the other way"

Nothing like enjoying your slightly cheaper pint while imagining the toddler crying from hunger that paid for it.

one of my favourite bugbears in financial commentary, whether in print or on air, is the use of misleading hyperbole. mark of a charlatan every time.

Reminds me of this classic bit of research showing that using agent (bullish, punish, struggle, etc) or object (tumble, soar, etc) metaphors in financial commentary can cause investors to make incorrect assumptions about future movement. Metaphors and the market: www.columbia.edu/~da358/publi...

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has entered the chat.

Labour has set itself the mission of markedly raising the UK’s growth rate. In our latest report, @gilesyb.bsky.social says the government is right to be ambitious – and explores what the centre can do to design better growth policy www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/...

Part of the problem is that once a set of language to describe something becomes embedded, people stop thinking about why it was originally chosen and it becomes the standard way people think about the thing.

This is great. UK science and innovation policy is full of ridiculous metaphors. In their defense they are excellent signals the person doesn't know what they are talking about.

"in 3026 our nth-great-grandchildren will encounter a race of intelligent aliens in a distant galaxy, and the aliens will be like “how did you get here,” and our descendants will say “well it started with some slop feeds” and the aliens will be like “what.”" Brilliant Matt Levine yesterday

observer.co.uk/news/interna... "There would be flying cars, giant robotic dinosaurs and a huge artificial moon. Its centrepiece, the Line, was to consist of parallel lines of conjoined mirrored skyscrapers stretching 105 miles (170 km) inland from the Red Sea coast." Who could have foreseen etc etc

Inside Trump’s $550bn ‘shakedown’ of Japan Inc - www.ft.com/content/78d1... No reason to think this is actually good for the US economy. The USA is not demand constrained. Spread over 5-10 years it's macroeconomically small anyway. And politically-ordained projects don't help the supply side

Demand for UK rental properties drops as buying becomes more affordable - www.ft.com/content/1372... good news for inflation?

Confidently expecting one or other of the libertarian bloggers I occasionally follow to pretend to have found the Melania documentary good, as evidence for how open-minded and original and uncaptured they are

Built a successful electric car company which he’s destroying, bought one of the world’s most influential social media companies which he’s destroying and now looks set on doing the same with what has been a leading and successful space launch company He’s done well on debt and gov subsidies mind