Elizabeth Warren has some questions for Scott Bessent on the US bailout in the works for Argentina. www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/do...

Well, if you liked this Argentine bond/opportunity to trade the rest of Javier Milei's presidency at 17%... guess you'll love it at 26%. Where it is priced more for a trade on when the reserve capacity to pay will run out.

The claim that reneging on ILR is about “cheap foreign labour” is interesting for two reasons. First, it would also affect (say) people like me with spouses on marriage visas. (Which also means it would be a way to leech even more revenue in visa fees and surcharges.) on.ft.com/4gTvkwF

They always start by saying it's legitimate to be concerned about flows, but ultimately the rage is about the stock. Think I've first said this as a silly quip ten years ago, and well, here we are

I’ve been busy inscribing your skeets in werewolf blood in eldritch tomes in the

among the issues with people not having any knowledge of hybrid regimes in the global South is the fact that everyone assumes contemporary authoritarian governance looks like 20th century totalitarianism

“For decades, we Turks dreamed of becoming a “little America”, and now I sometimes wonder — half seriously, half ironically — whether the US is slowly turning into a “big Turkey”.” www.ft.com/content/61e9...

Being a co-founder of a global macro fund with no less a personage than Stephen Miran gets you in the door to be deputy managing director of the IMF these days I see. www.ft.com/content/1209...

Day moons of Rome this past weekend.

China solar “anti-involution”: GCL, a Chinese polysilicon producer, sells shares to a hedge fund at a discount to raise $700mn... largely for an industry fund to close polysilicon overcapacity. Shares close up about 4%. media-gclpoly.todayir.com/202509160824...

You can now lend to Javier Milei's government in Argentina for nearly 17% on a bond due 2029 that could pay half its principal before the next presidential vote in 2027. Just in case anyone is already thinking about Christmas gifts for the most (or least) favourite libertarian in their life.

Giving him the plane went well I see.

By becoming a Canada-headquartered miner with Greenland exploration prospects, Anglo Teck really is spoiling us with the Trump irredentist risk. (/s) www.angloamerican.com/media/press-...

“South Korean companies have routinely used unsuitable visas for workers sent to the US to build multibillion-dollar advanced manufacturing sites, according to Seoul-based executives and industry groups,“ as the US failed to facilitate short-term work visas despite a FTA. www.ft.com/content/c677...

This doubly telling because 1) being totally batshit on the internet as a British MP can now give you a 50% uplift on an MP's salary! bit of a worrying incentive! 2) being one of the most shared politicians on X only earns you £40k, meaning most of the blue ticks are debasing themselves for pennies

Tax-exempt or municipal stuff is a good source of this - in the US, individual churches, charter schools, etc. The Schuldschein market would be this but they are not really bonds and they will get mad at you if you call them bonds.

“Officials familiar with the mission said the SEALs pulled the bodies into the water to hide them from the North Korean authorities. One added that the SEALs punctured the boat crew’s lungs with knives to make sure their bodies would sink.“ www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/u...

The most eyebrow-raising part of this is that Tether's push into commodity financing has apparently grown quite large very quickly. This is not a market for amateurs. (And the gold stuff appears to be mine royalty finance) www.ft.com/content/135f...

My Trade Secrets today. Govts often do an immigration sleight-of-hand, demonising a tiny minority esp asylum-seekers as cover to admit workers. Giorgia Meloni can still pull this trick off and is issuing 500k non-EU work permits. Keir Starmer is so scared & UK public trust so damaged he can't. 1/2

China and India cannot unseat the dollar. But they might undercut the french fry. According to Rabobank's WORLD POTATO MAP (out today), they have 40% of world production and have gone from net importers to exporters in the last five years. And the exports are relatively cheap.

I'm quoted in this article arguing that the flood of cheap, lab-grown gems is the biggest shock to the industry since 1908 when diamonds were discovered on Namibia's coast. Within two years, Namibia's diamond fields were producing about 50% of world output, up from 0%.

😢 www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...

We’re in a moment (you can also see it in investment grade EM issuance) where even with low spreads, lots of investors appear to want to lock in relatively high yields as if they are going out of fashion. Because - looks to camera - maybe they are

Shouldn't the Space Command be based in space though.

“Alfonso de Ceballos-Escalera y Gila, the Viscount of Ayala and Marquess of la Floresta, regrets the reticence of his peers to use their titles, a trend which began during the transition to democracy following the death of Franco in 1975.” 😬 www.ft.com/content/bad1...

I missed that Saudi Arabia has launched its first ever RMBS, through its Fannie Mae equivalent. (Saudi banks might need to increasingly offload mortgages so they can keep lending to the mountain ski resorts and Neom projects.) srco.com.sa/en/media/src...

Striking numbers, given all the doom and gloom: over the past year UK equities have significantly outperformed US equities in both £ and $. In £ FTSE All share total return 15% vs 8% for S&P 500 In $ FTSE All share 24% vs 16% for S&P 500 It's only a year but when was the last time this happened?

Looks like the SCO has agreed on getting its own development bank (a bit like the Brics NDB), a long-term aim of Beijing. “The initiative to form a development bank of the SCO more than 10 years ago by the Chinese side has finally come to a fruition”: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Apropos of nothing, I am reminded how Robert Mugabe used to enjoy crushing Zimbabwean morale by mocking rumours of his death whenever he came back from a few days out of the public eye. “I resurrected, as I always do”

Britain on the brink of civil war and/or an IMF bailout latest (Lloyds Business Barometer for August, out today www.lloydsbank.com/assets/asset...)

On an unrelated note, spreads in various credit markets are at their tightest levels since 2007. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

“Xiaomi’s loyal fans, styled “mi fen”, pack its smart car factory every day to watch the production line churn out a car every 76 seconds... the cars rolling off the end of the line are expected to outnumber those sold by Tesla in China next year, according to Citic Securities’ estimates.”

African imports of cheap Chinese solar panels are starting to look a lot like Pakistan's surge. “Over the last two years, the imports of solar panels outside of South Africa have nearly tripled from 3,734 MW to 11,248 MW.” ember-energy.org/latest-insig...

The analogy you want for the US situation isn’t your usual authoritarian regime - where constant dramatic purges aren’t actually the rule; it’s more insidious - or even Erdogan’s Turkey. It’s specifically South Africa in the throes of state capture under Jacob Zuma, from late 2016 to late 2017.

In 1902, Joseph Conrad's contemporaries could lose a lot of money in attempts to connect Argentina's farmland to global markets. Tether's own recent investment in an attempt to connect Argentina's farmland to global markets is entirely different, of course. tether.io/news/tether-...

Reinventing the stationary bandit. “They’re no longer drug-trafficking organisations... They will move anything that transits their area of control. So if you need gold, they can move the gold for you. If you need cocaine, fine. If you want to move migrants, fine“ www.ft.com/content/dc6b...

Ukraine's ‘growthiest‘ restructured bonds, with GDP-linked triggers for extra payouts that make them particularly sensitive to the timing of a peace deal, have returned about 22-23% so far this month, versus 9-10% for the 'normal' bonds. (They're both still in the red YTD though)

Nice Bloomberg story on the market love for South Africa's bonds, not least because of a hawkish SARB (high real rates, de facto new low inflation target). The EM local currency rally has to end at some point, but for now... www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

“They appeared to differ on whether they had come to any agreement. A planned second meeting between the two leaders’ teams in Anchorage was scrapped.”

Trump rolls out red carpet for Putin as Ukrainians watch from afar on.ft.com/3V1l1fw

Two things on tomorrow's US-Russia summit: 1) The usual ceasefire trades in markets have largely gone sideways this week after a brief jump a week ago (Ukraine sovereign bonds, select Russia-exposed assets, etc). 2) I've always wanted to go to Anchorage.

Tim Ash (who I don't think is of this parish) on confusion about the Turkish central bank's *complex* inflation targets/forecasts. Moral of the story is, central bank independence: it's missed when it's gone, and takes a long time to get credibility back. timothyash.substack.com/p/turkiye-cb...

One thing I will say about this administration is it has proven a pet argument of mine. I have always *loathed* those "how journalists would cover America if we wrote about it like Africa" parodies, because actually journalists should cover their home countries more like foreign correspondents

Starring George Osborne as Stevens the butler, and JD Vance as Lord Darlington www.ft.com/content/64df...

The Wolvere was a stout carl for the nones; Ful thyc he was with adamantine bones. “The best ther is, bubb,” he wuld oft advyse, “Bot that I do, hit ys nout verry nyce.”

Big revisions come from low initial response rates. BLS was working on increasing response rates, but the Trump administration fired the voluntary committee working on it.

"Until it is corrected, the BLS should suspend issuing the monthly job reports but keep publishing the more accurate, though less timely, quarterly data," EJ Antoni said www.foxbusiness.com/politics/tru...

EM™️: where the national champion du jour might also be randomly rinsed for cash or an export tax, but at least you won’t pay 60 times forward earnings for it.

It's because of this effect that corruption is the ‘gift’ that never ever ever stops ‘giving’, as a South African SOE executive put it to me once. The corrosion is also out of all proportion to the sums anyone actually succeeds in looting. Everyone loses.