Which is why I think the current denigration of humanities and non-STEM fields is bonkers. From where do ideas like "causality" derive? They *do not* organically emerge from "the data."

Over the last 11 financial years, the UK Treasury has spent more on paying interest to the banking sector on their reserves than it has taken in from them in corporate and sector-specific taxes. In 2024-25, it paid over 3 times as much for interest on reserves as it received from taxes on banks.

TIL that employee contributions to UK national insurance are ludicrously regressive: rate goes down from 8% to 2% on income > £50,270. And it's getting even worse: threshold is infrequently updated & would be nearly £10000 higher if adjusted for post-Covid inflation.

BoE rolls out new defence of QE-QT, stressing low costs for long-maturity debt in QE decade. But it's drawing arbitrary boundaries: analysis (APF Q3 Rept) fails to note that BoE conditioned QE on HMT accepting gilt issue limits, part of causal chain to catastrophic austerity. on.ft.com/3JY23EM

Over the last 11 financial years, the UK Treasury has spent more on paying interest to the banking sector on their reserves than it has taken in from them in corporate and sector-specific taxes. In 2024-25, it paid over 3 times as much for interest on reserves as it received from taxes on banks.

Whole fucking thing makes me sick to my stomach. An abject fucking liar, a man who lies as easily as he fucking breathes, threatening an organisation which strives for truthfulness. And plastic patriots like the Mail and Farage urging him on. Jackels.

Not an easy thing to knit the social fabric. www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/piehouse-w...

1. On Tuesday Night, Democrats won elections nationwide in a stunning rebuke of anti-transgender politics. From Virginia to New Jersey to New York and beyond, anti-trans candidates fell left and right after spending tons of time and money campaigning on hate. Subscribe to support our journalism.

An outstanding policy analysis, but should be made more general: *any* business that has a return on equity < 10% automatically gets a tax adjustment so it reaches that level. Also, the magic of the market requires businesses have absolute freedom on salaries and bonuses.

Read this, seriously.

This is a must read.

Some Threadneedle-ologists say BoE will hold rates this week and wait to see how budget looks. To act on this reasoning would contradict long-stated, albeit entirely arbitrary, policy, which implies implausibly assuming government makes no change.

OM, and with apologies for the language, FG.

Excellent, excellent, excellent from @danielagabor.bsky.social on a podcast with Andy Haldane, ex-BoE. She doesn’t let him get away w/ saying stuff he knows not to be true, eg claiming the BoE could ‘go bust’. It’s mainstream central bank speak that’s bankrupt! podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

The 🇺🇸 has a floating exchange rate and issues the world’s dominant reserve currency & is absolutely nothing like 🇬🇷 or 🇮🇹, which are constrained by belonging to a modern day gold standard. We need to stop using fearmongering analogies & discuss actual tradeoffs when we talk about 🇺🇸 debt.

A central fact about education, but one which almost disappears in discussions of education policy, is the enormous amount of effort and creativity and commitment teachers put into finding ways to help students actually learn. In every classroom people are struggling to find ways to do better.

Under 50 U.S.C. § 1701(a), it is an “unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States” that Canada is being mean to me on TV.

"normies do not care about this thing and so it is no use raising a stink" is imho just an excuse for not doing politics, which is the job of making normies care about something

I'm so sick of discourse from supposed allies about where trans people went wrong. Where we "went wrong" is that billionaires spent unimaginably large sums to attack us repeatedly and major media outlets have spent a decade piling on.

If Labour cannot denounce mass deportation of permanent residents, Idi Amin style, what is the point of them?

Divorce in haste, repent at leisure.

It's incredibly telling that student newsrooms have shown more bravery in the past few years than many national outlets

Hey, let’s write an article about the politics of central banking! -Great, who’s got expertise in that? -Oh, economists of course.

Game theory, democratic theory, feminist theory, the civil rights movement, and more all agree on this: unite for independence or lose. Great piece by Henry Farrell

Very important insight here.

RIP Claus Offe. He built his own monument in his work; here’s something great. www.hwiesenthal.de/publik/hw/2l...

Another giant...I don't think anyone could so effortless move between theory, sociology, and political economy

Claus Offe, ein so wichtiger Sozialwissenschaftler, RIP youtu.be/2uxg2TGXfeQ?...

I hope Starmer doesn’t retreat from the tone he struck yesterday. Lesson from the U.S.: the far right will accuse you of everything they already do. The shamelessness IS a tactic. Biden simply retreated from engaging. But people need to keep hearing a version of what starmer said. Every Single Day.

Or to put it more bluntly, this is crazy—so much so that I for a moment wondered if he could have been misheard. But the whole speech appears geared to telling the Trumpists exactly what they want to hear.

This is a very interesting thread. Two points: first, is the fear that violence will now come for a class that hasn't even considered before that speech can face violent retributions. It struck me that Coates has always known his speech would come at great cost to him, but not Klein. Second,

Did Keynes just invent 'newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces.., the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole'? Anybody ever seen an example?

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...