The British phrase ’tax raid’ condenses a whole indoctrination into a tabloid headline: an instruction not to seek extortion/theft in low wages or high prices but in tax, to understand wealth & income as the innocent, inviolable fruit of diligence, to sanctify the market’s ‘mute compulsion’. Grim!

to me, the “column” is less a form than an opportunity (and a challenge). you’re telling me i have as much space as i’d like to make an argument about anything i’d like to an audience inclined to pay close attention? well let’s see if they’ll read 2000 words on democratic legitimacy. (gift link)

A worthwhile Deptford endeavour, knitting some social fabric. linktr.ee/piehousecoop...

The British phrase ’tax raid’ condenses a whole indoctrination into a tabloid headline: an instruction not to seek extortion/theft in low wages or high prices but in tax, to understand wealth & income as the innocent, inviolable fruit of diligence, to sanctify the market’s ‘mute compulsion’. Grim!

In case you don’t speak central banker, here’s BoE chief economist Huw Pill saying QT should be a club to force austerity on govt. Nary a reference to a BoE mandate in the speech! www.bankofengland.co.uk/speech/2025/...

This is a poor explanation, to put it mildly. If you're going to skip the APF, why not just do it this way: during QE, the Bank of England created money and lent it to the HMT to buy back its own debt. Call this the Big Loan, nearly £900 bln at its peak. 1/5 www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

What a well turned clause and what a perceptive thought!

Very powerful. Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/o...

This is a poor explanation, to put it mildly. If you're going to skip the APF, why not just do it this way: during QE, the Bank of England created money and lent it to the HMT to buy back its own debt. Call this the Big Loan, nearly £900 bln at its peak. 1/5 www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

The BoE responded to market concerns on APF sales of long-dated gilts by shifting to shorter-dated ones. Still will not be following Treasury/DMO issue policy, which is much more geared to short-dated gilts. Note that APF doesn't sell any gilts with <3 years to maturity.

The BoE usually is pleased when its announcements are just what markets expected. The QT announcement (£70 bln and reduced long-maturity sales) clearly was a success on this standard: gilts in the QT portfolio have moved almost not at all (maximum of 1 basis point) since yesterday's close.

BoE to reduce QT to £70 bln and reduce share of long-dated gilts in APF auctions. www.bankofengland.co.uk/markets/mark...

Respectfully disagree: 1) in fact it is unusual for a democracy w/ this level of GDP to turn authoritarian & so quickly; 2) the weakness of both institutions (congress & courts) and individuals (Schumer etc) is shocking. Would take less than 10 people in congress or 2 SC justices to stop all this.

Is there not a market for small signs saying "all toilets in this building are unisex, for the convenience of our customers we have placed signs on the door indicating the nature of the sanitaryware to be found inside and likely gender presentation of the people to be met, please everyone be normal"

Premature headline, also mistaken on fiscal impact of QT. Labour's (silly) fiscal rules say that by 29/30 (1) current budget in balance; (2) PSNFL [pub debt minus fin assets] falling. Slow QT now doesn't help with (2), but makes (1) *harder*, not easier. 🧵 www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/market...

Good piece from Alphaville on likely scale of next year's QT. Threadneedle-ologists starting to remind me of Kremlinologists. Here's some figures on the fiscal effects of possible QT size decisions, assuming current gilt prices. www.ft.com/content/96e6...

How would changing the pace of QT affect the fiscal rules? The table compares 3 scenarios: an unchanged pace, a pace adjusted to reduce active sales to last year's level, or a shift to passive-only QT for the coming year. Maintaining the current pace would save £880 mln/year in interest costs.

Premature headline, also mistaken on fiscal impact of QT. Labour's (silly) fiscal rules say that by 29/30 (1) current budget in balance; (2) PSNFL [pub debt minus fin assets] falling. Slow QT now doesn't help with (2), but makes (1) *harder*, not easier. 🧵 www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/market...

🎉 Huge congratulations to our brilliant LSE @lsegovernment.bsky.social colleague, Mathias Poertner @mathiaspoertner.bsky.social for winning APSA’s Leon Epstein book award for his excellent book Creating Partisans! www.cambridge.org/gb/universit... 👇

100,000 people attended Trans Pride in London. It didn't almost immediately descend into chaos with attendees launching projectiles at police in order to get to those counterprotesting to try and beat the seven shades out of them. Yet, this lot are treated as the "legitimate concerns" brigade.

After 19 years in the UK, I’ve managed to shift the median voter very slightly to the left. All it took was a lot of paperwork, a payment of approximately 5% of the median household’s annual disposal income, and swearing loyalty to a hereditary monarch and his successors.

Radical right accommodation really does not work. New paper out with this exceptionally talented team @katharinalawall.bsky.social @robjohns75.bsky.social @drjennings.bsky.social @sarahobolt.bsky.social @zachdickson.bsky.social @danjdevine.bsky.social & @jack-bailey.co.uk doi.org/10.31235/osf...

Bank of England still has around £15 billion in gold reserves at present prices — a good time to sell.

A virtue of taxes tied to interest payments on bank reserves would be raising the opportunity cost of holding reserves, making gilts more attractive And lowering yields.

It seems to me a side-effect benefit of taxing a portion of bank reserves in the UK would likely be a fall in UK gilt rates, as the opportunity cost of investing in gilts would fall.

Many, many examples indeed but the most amazing to me is this one. uk.bookshop.org/p/books/bloo...

The biggest stall in the centre of the Reform conference exhibition hall… is Nigel Farage flogging gold bullion

New effort to find a positive benefits-costs of QE&QT, as gestures at growth from QE not politically effective. But HMT could have borrowed even more at long maturity if it hadn’t promised BoE not to undermine QE w/ gilt issue. Also presumes no other design of QT/reserves interest possible.

Nine grafs deep into the article and we find out: "Pentagon officials were still working Wednesday on what legal authority they would tell the public was used to back up the extraordinary strike in international waters."

It’s Labour’s own petard they’re being hoisted by. In lashing themselves to a fairytale (wicked are punished—but good will be rewarded!) version of gilt markets and the Truss crisis, they’ve shut down their ability to respond intellectually or politically to the real world of government finance.

This white van ad illuminates a UK fiscal rule accounting issue important for understanding significance of looming BoE QT decision. If buyers are offered a discount for paying deposit and interest, they can choose lower payments&higher indebtedness or a cheaper boiler. Savvy+liquid buyer… 1/3

This white van ad illuminates a UK fiscal rule accounting issue important for understanding significance of looming BoE QT decision. If buyers are offered a discount for paying deposit and interest, they can choose lower payments&higher indebtedness or a cheaper boiler. Savvy+liquid buyer… 1/3

Elon Musk will be championing the Tommy Robinson 13/9 rally, on grounds that Nigel Farage is "weak sauce" on mass deportation and too soft on Islam Govt not even reviewing its use of X since 2022 shows different rules apply to Elon Musk than we expect of every school-child on British values

This is my flag.

This piece (gift link on.ft.com/4lnMwut) shared by @tobyn.bsky.social shows the needless rut QT discussions are in: discussants all agree that maintaining its pace in 2025-6 would require more active sales from the APF portfolio than in 2024-5. But this is not true! Let me explain 🧵 1/5

An excellent piece with new-to-me detail on the ‘accusations’ against Cook. I agree that Powell faces a choice between trying to use the power of market panic to compel Trump to back down or losing.

Realisation: faster QT games silly fiscal rules. Budget balance rule binds more than debt (PSNFL) rule, so incentive to issue low-coupon gilts, just more. But low coupon=price below par, which DMO avoids. DMO issue price '24-'25≈97, APF≈86. Active QT shifts issue from DMO to APF, improves balance...

Children are starving. Hospitals are bombed. Journalists are killed. Trump and Congress must stop all military aid to the extremist Netanyahu government. No more excuses. We cannot continue to be complicit in these war crimes.

Did you know that the Bank of England promised to give the Debt Management Office a voice in determining the terms of quantitative tightening? Here's Governor Mervyn King before the Treasury Committee in March 2009. Thread offers minimal and radical ways to implement this promise.

Labour's genius plan continues apace of making it absolutely clear to the public that in their view Reform are just straightforwardly correct about Britain and what ails us. Fortunately no one besides politics junkies will know about this timid statement so the damage is minimal from this.

@adamtooze.bsky.social on the Fed is interesting. In effect: progressives have been far too willing to defer to norms that tor their agenda in knots, and that trying to restore the status quo ante would be putting on a straitjacket that Trump has cast aside. adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-...

You've found the game theoretical literature on the politics of delegation a bit dry? Well, that was before mutually assured destruction entered the board room.

Will Powell say ‘If the President does not immediately rescind this illegal order, no-one should have confidence in the Fed’s capacity to backstop financial markets’? He must realise that if doesn’t go all out now, when Cook loses at the Supreme Court he will be the next ‘for cause’ dismissal.

How far will Jerome Powell go in mobilising the financial markets (ie threatening a market crash) to support the Fed’s independence? He has enormous discretion, at a conjuncture where the democratic untenability of CBI makes it a potential redoubt for the rule of law.

This is the make or break moment for Powell's @federalreserve.gov. If they do not defend Lisa Cook and treat her as still on the Board, the fight over the Fed as an independent agency will officially be over. see my Friday piece. www.crisesnotes.com/trump-vs-pow...

If you think the attack on the Fed's Lisa Cook has nothing to do with you, you're wrong — any one of us may be next paulkrugman.substack.com/p/we-are-all...

Did you know that the Bank of England promised to give the Debt Management Office a voice in determining the terms of quantitative tightening? Here's Governor Mervyn King before the Treasury Committee in March 2009. Thread offers minimal and radical ways to implement this promise.

The rise of hate and extremism online should have been addressed by government and parliament a year ago in the aftermath of the riots. There is complacency across the political spectrum, and remarkably most MPs remain on X despite the way its owner and algorithm operate. Wake up!

I don’t want to be too shrill about this but I think the BBC, ITV and Sky have disgraced themselves in their coverage of the anti-refugee protests. A massive failure of judgement. But now we know the next time a progressive protest “isn’t news” that it’s nothing to do with numbers