‘Andor’ sketches while playing with Procreate: Luthen and Saw Gerrera.

To take an apposite South African example, you could fit several Jacob Zuma Nkandla ‘security upgrades’ scandals into £5mn (going by the sums he was ordered to repay).

Venezuela has officially launched its debt restructuring, very soon after it rejoined the IMF and the US allowed advisers to engage under sanctions policy. First step is releasing a debt sustainability analysis by June. www.businesswire.com/news/home/20...

Starmer and Ramaphosa: both under pressure to quit; both bafflingly bad at political capital at times and yet also cautious lawyerly types who are hard to manage out of the building; both ultimately counting on their parties being unable to coalesce around a successor. (Cyril's better at it though)

Amazing also to think that SK Hynix made losses just a few years ago. “Hynix-nyeonim?”—a portmanteau of SK Hynix and *Haneunim* (Korean for “God”), referring to SK Hynix employees who receive substantial bonuses“: www.chosun.com/english/nati...

Rookie move. Everyone knows you pledge gilts (and any spare US Treasury bills lying around) in a total return swap, access Swiss franc interest rates, ????, profit, and don't forget to unwind before the next election.

Just putting it out there but could UAE follow leaving OPEC by depegging early - stealing a march on KSA? open.substack.com/pub/timothya...

BofA: growth rates in global hyperscaler bond sales have caught up with the telecom debt boom of the early 2000s. “Hyperscalers today are exhibiting some of the fastest credit market growth rates ever seen”:

“If insufficient healthcare spending in China is considered a major contributor to global imbalances, should “excess” US spending of $1.5tn annually be considered in a similar light?” (@rajakorman.bsky.social): www.ft.com/content/631a...

Incredible story by @morsels.bsky.social about the man who blew up Koeberg nuclear power station at the height of apartheid in 1982.

Stalin deposed by film star. www.ft.com/content/8656...

John Donne would have liked kaiju.

Zambia cancelled a Lusaka meet-up of the world’s biggest digital rights conference after Chinese diplomats brought pressure to bear on the government over delegates from Taiwan, the organiser says. Quite ironic in terms of transnational censorship… www.rightscon.org/rc26-stateme...

Further to this point on the UAE's two key banks. They have been growing internationally - but not very transparently! - adventurous, such as FAB's 'total return swap' lending in Africa. Are they commercial banks or foreign policy tools? Maybe a judgement call the FOMC would rather not make.

Emerging market bonds as a 'don't look down' trade: BofA: “Two months into the war GBI-EM [local currency bond benchmark] is down 2% vs pre-war. In 2022 it lost 10x as much in the seven months after the war started. The energy price spike this time is as high. What we don't know is its duration...“

AI chip price/export boom watch: Hong Kong ran its biggest trade deficit on record - and the records go back nearly 75 years - in March. Imports rose 41% to $90bn, $41bn of which was electrical machinery et al. Taiwan also reported record exports in March. finance.yahoo.com/economy/arti...

Re UAE's OPEC decision Oil has a different role for UAE's economy to Saudi Arabia's. UAE has lower dependence (oil:population ratio is more favourable) versus the high Saudi "fiscal breakeven" - ie Saudi requires a higher price to keep society content.

In the last few weeks, the UAE has a) sounded out the US on a swap line b) pulled billions of dollars out of Pakistan, an ally c) left Opec, where it was one of the biggest members by quota.

Little factoid for all you petrodollar (chipdollar?) take-havers. TSMC is ending April with a bigger market value than Saudi Aramco, $1.8trn versus $1.78trn.

The UAE recall of its deposit from Pakistan also shows a weakness in IMF bailouts. The fund gets ‘financing assurances’ from big creditors (the ‘promise’ in the second paragraph). But, like the UAE, creditors can backtrack and no one can do much about it. www.ft.com/content/9907...

What makes this even more intriguing of course is that Dangote is looking to IPO the refinery in the near future, at a valuation that could be in the tens of billions of dollars...

The UAE here serving as a cautionary tale for treating swap lines like Political Seals Of Approval that can remain largely contingent, compared to financial tools. Someone might ask for a Political Seal of Approval that you won’t want to Approve. www.wsj.com/world/middle...

The IMF has recognised Delcy Rodriguez's government in Venezuela - a key step to international financing and a debt restructuring. Though the fund will have to look at the books. The fund's last Article IV consultation with Venezuela was *2004*. www.imf.org/en/news/arti...

Go well Mark Mobius, EM legend. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Magyar's government will take back stakes in MOL (Hungary's state oil and gas firm) and Gedeon Richter (pharma) that were given to the Mathias Corvinus Collegium under Orbán. These are 10% stakes, worth the equivalent of nearly $2bn in total... www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Must-read on China Shock 2, including that it is, to a significant extent, rooted in a local government finances problem. “Officials are scared of missing their GDP targets. Nobody is scared of overcapacity”: www.ft.com/content/7d51...

Not a great day to be invested in the shares of two particular Hungarian companies, run by Orbán allies, that received large state contracts: 4iG -16% Opus Global -30%

Biggest immediate task ahead for Tisza in government will be reckoning with state capture. But also important in the months ahead: setting out the plan for Hungary to join the euro.

Crispin Odey has dropped his £79mn libel claim against the Financial Times over its reporting of sexual misconduct allegations against him, acknowledging that the FT would win in its defence.  www.ft.com/content/6966...

“If you want to get a message out, use erotic content and put the message at the end of the book.” I love this @ruthmaclean.bsky.social piece about the entrepreneurial Hausa women writing erotica for women and making a lot of money while doing so

On the proliferation of 'total return swaps' as a form of sovereign borrowing. Should they even be called TRS? They also resemble repo, but they keep calling them TRS, so 🤷 www.ft.com/content/9b76...

“To make Covenant with bruit Goldendoodles, is impossible; because not understanding our speech, they understand not, nor accept of any translation of Right; nor can translate any Right to another; and without mutuall acceptation, there is no Covenant” - Thomas Hobbes

Within you there are two eras. www.ft.com/content/5269...

Emerging markets equities are (were) Asia (and particularly Asia tech) dominated, Iran shock edition. Of $70bn in portfolio outflows from EMs last month tracked by the IIF, over $53bn of the drop was EM Asia equities. EM debt flows holding up surprisingly well, maybe.

US threats to the papacy: could be a lot worse, especially after the Maduro abduction precedent…

"Trump, worried about surging oil prices and surprised by a resilient Iranian regime, was eager for a ceasefire since at least his first threat on March 21 to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants, according to five people familiar with the Pakistan-led back channel."

Still, at least there's a debt reporting clause! ...Oh: “The Issuer’s failure to comply with its ‘Debt Reporting’ and ‘Annual Investor Call’ covenants in the terms and conditions of the Notes provides no contractual recourse for Noteholders.”

“Once... Iran completes its assessment, vessels are given a few seconds to pay in Bitcoin, ensuring they can’t be traced or confiscated due to sanctions”: www.ft.com/content/02ae...

Amtelon Capital on how Iran’s stock market might reopen post-ceasefire, which also illustrates that even being highly isolated, Iran’s stock market is relatively large in frontier market terms. It’s about a third the size of Vietnam’s, on a very low valuation.

Hungary could be in the euro in a decade if Tisza wins this weekend, and the Maastricht criteria shouldn't be too difficult, BofA reckons:

Harrow proliferation watch: “A Dubai branch of UK boarding school Harrow, which charges fees of more than £21,000 a term, is scheduled to open for the next academic year in August 2026.” www.ft.com/content/3fcc...

“Local actors like the GCC & Israel have far too much at stake to let things settle like this. But who knows? Maybe we’ll get a few months of ceasefire, or maybe this conflict freezes for a year or even longer. But… Every earthquake has its aftershocks.” threeninetywest.substack.com/p/the-islami...

Ironically enough, I'm not sure if Bacon would have classed LLMs as Idols of the Tribe, Cave, or Marketplace - but surely as one of them. www.ft.com/content/0a8f...

Nigeria is doing Africa's biggest sovereign total return swap loan yet - $5bn against $6.6bn in naira bond collateral, after Senegal's $1.3bn $ Angola's roughly $2.5bn to date. These deals are sweeping African government borrowing as international bond markets have closed. placng.org/i/wp-content...

It also turns out that Korea's president is keeping the MAX WEBER FLAME ALIVE en.sedaily.com/politics/202...

Lebanon's defaulted bonds watch: prices were around 30 cents on the dollar at one point this month. Now about 25 cents or just below (or about where they started the year...)

I was in Paris this weekend, and alongside ‘The Lady and the Unicorn’ the Musée de Cluny just opened a wider exhibition on the history of unicorn art. Which included this tantalising glimpse of how Albrecht Dürer might have approached the My Little Pony franchise.

Definitive proof that every member of the administration has read Tocqueville (but on the Ancien Regime and the Revolution), as Khatami correctly surmised.

“So far, the state — the biggest employer — has continued to pay civil servants and year-end bonuses… Food prices have not been as volatile as in recent months, partly because the currency market has in effect become inactive.” www.ft.com/content/8d63...

Succinct early history of gold in Southern Africa and the role of long-distance connections in this article. The decision by the Fatimid rulers of Egypt to make gold currency their standard measure of value in 969 caused huge demand for gold in southeast Africa: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....