again very funny to think that a critical pro trump message in 2024 was that he wouldn’t start world war iii

Something I don't think the UK boasts about enough - and a great rebuttal to Reform and the Tories' anti-net zero propaganda: The UK is home to 7 out of the top 10 biggest offshore wind farms in the world. 10 of the top 20. And 6 in 10 of the largest ones in the world currently under construction.

It has been discovered that Charles Dickens 'A Tale of Two Cities,' was serialised in a couple of local newspapers. It was the Bicester times It was the Worcester times. 🐢💨

This is coincidentally the period in which China integrated into the world economic and trading system. The so-called NICE period was not the result of an equilibrium in which central banks successfully ‘anchored’ expectations. It was the outcome of global wage pressure and financial expansion.

Incredible footage from a United Airlines flight of the Artemis II launch.

NEW 🚨 To face the Iran gas shock, we think the EU should ensure an efficient refilling of gas storages, tap into fuel switching options, try LNG demand coordination with Japan and South Korea, push electrification, provide targeted financial relief to most vulnerable www.bruegel.org/analysis/how...

The only c/a surplus US in 40+ years was in 1991 when checks for US Protection as a Service delivered during Gulf War 1 cleared. Quite unclear whether GCC views causes, course, and consequences of this war as anything like GW1 (or even GW2, which they hated & did not pay for).

Early RED penalised electrification at the margin, grid and permitting bottlenecks strangled electrification. This prolonged our dependence on imported fossil fuels at the point in time when geoeconomics became interesting

Disagree with Jackson on this one. If there's a sector that needs protection it's European wind manufacturing, as we set out here. www.cer.eu/publications...

"the good news is that we have found a relatively cheap and easy way to prevent the cast from going through puberty. the bad news is that not everybody in this room is going to like it".

Go read @natolambert.bsky.social's latest post. (www.interconnects.ai/p/the-next-p...) Very smart and sobering about the challenges/opportunities ahead. Open intellectual commons is not going to happen automatically.

There's a surprise dip in inflation this month.

No, Anthropic isn't losing $5,000 per user martinalderson.com/posts/no-it-...

Ruh roh!

"Carbonnade" would be a good name for a minesweeper.

IMO, it’s important to be precise about what shocks world is undergoing rather than just $ smile safe-haven bla-bla. 1. Febs 2022 & 2026 were negative global energy supply shocks —> positive US ToT shocks. 2. Feb & April 2025 were US global public goods withdrawal —> RoW fiscal expansion shocks.

Me and my mate occasionally like to dress up as Peruvian Owls Obviously we're Inca Hoots

The Isle of Lewis

The more Trump rails on the UK, the more things look up for Starmer IMV

A bit more on the circumstances around the mass resignations

Here is the long-awaited emergency podcast from me and @profafinlayson.bsky.social on the Gorton & Denton by-election. You can find this in any app by searching for Culture, Power, Politics. culturepowerpolitics.org/2026/03/03/g...

Lots of core team members of Alibaba Qwen are resigning publicly on X. The gaping hole that Qwen imploding would leave in the open research ecosystem will be hard to fill. The small models are irreplaceable. I’ll do my best to keep carrying that torch. Every bit matters.

Today's chapter of Agentic Engineering Patterns is some good general career advice which happens to also help when working with coding agents: Hoard things you know how to do https://simonwillison.net/guides/agentic-engineering-patterns/hoard-things-you-know-how-to-do/

Key 122 question -- Would a big $ depreciation exacerbate rather than alleviate US difficulties. This depends on a) currency composition of debt b) FX impact on key inputs - energy c) size/composition/FX elasticity of tradable sector d) inflation passthru. IMO US better off than any other country.

Credit market problems can emerge from a variety of conditions - aggressive aggregate increases in leverage that make the system vulnerable to shock; over-exuberance around a particular sector/theme; sudden changes in rates; loss of access to primary market/secondary market liquidity squeeze etc.

Well worth a read. Ties up a lot of the threads (and so makes more visible the black hole at the centre that is exerting gravitational force on our political culture). www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Brad Setser says that "China is not dumping US Treasuries". This isn't likely to be nearly as exciting as an article that claims that "China is dumping US Treasuries!", but the math, the data and the reasoning are much better. www.ft.com/content/9ea5...

Pixel Agents A VS Code extension that turns your AI coding agents like Claude Code into animated pixel art characters in a virtual office. It shows what the agent is currently doing with animations. You can also customize the virtual office however you want. Repo: github.com/pablodelucca...

My dispatch from the by election trail. Had a lot of conversations that wont have been comfortable ones for Labour as.ft.com/r/b2cf4c07-5...

Even my family are taking the piss

Although better than the British Paralympic strategy which involves participating actively in American foreign policy

So what will we call the offshore euro system? Dollareuro, euroeuro, continental, xenoeuro, exoeuro?

Exclusive Cold shoulder: China, EU in diplomatic stand-off ahead of Munich Beijing has frozen out the EU’s envoy & snubbed its biz lobby, EU quietly boycotting China’s envoy in return, Wang Yi is Munich-bound with no locked‑in meeting with Kallas

EU Leaders meet tomorrow to discuss measures to lift Europe's anaemic growth rate. But the summit risks turning into a nothing burger. EU Leaders have cherry-picked a macroeconomically meaningless simplification agenda from the Draghi report New oped. 1/ www.politico.eu/article/euro...

I expect to spend today staring at this: ‘we’ve gone from government suggesting that the state would subsidise undergraduate student loans by about 45p in the pound, to making a profit on them for that cohort’. A *profit* on student loans: everyone should read this. 🤯 wonkhe.com/blogs/gradua...

BREAKING: The EU has launched an in-depth investigation into Chinese wind turbine maker Goldwind. This is under the foreign subsidies regulation, which the commission uses to weed out subsidies distorting the single market (rather than trade flows)

I used to think the Spice Girls were being paid off by Cuba because they kept singing about how they really, really wanted a bigger cigar

‘Whoa Black Betty...’

One downside of implementing an actual graduate tax instead of the unfair and punitive student loan system is how to get graduates, who like me, live abroad, to contribute to the cost of the degree

This isn't convincing, because the problem isn't tackled. Many consumers prefer media that confirms their biases and gives them ammo in online arguments. That's an existential challenge for impartial reporting.

The way to act is not by depreciating € to bolster exports, but by using causes behind euro appreciation as alibi to increase joint & several fiscal spending funded by ROW, thus boosting € internationalization & reducing vulnerability to US sanctions and surveillance, you morons.

*fully restores your HP as you scroll past*

George Woke Bush was bad enough, I absolutely refuse to deal with Enlightened Blatter www.theguardian.com/football/202...

I gotta say that l am not mega relaxed about Greenland. Growing European autonomy leads to a growing optionality that is seen by Trump regime as a threat (it prefers a Europe that is dependent but buys more military kit from US)

I think this is the key bit: “ In deep DM markets with equity-heavy portfolios and liability-matching investors, valuation does the heavy lifting”. Both requires gross trades (not net), with price doing the adjustment

Maddening, really, that a quick piece from @brianromanchuk.bsky.social offers more clarity and insight on FX markets than what most of us in the full-time FX commentariat have produced. Worth reading. bondeconomics.substack.com/p/sell-the-d...

Exciting wind farm news, even if Norway is being difficult UK to join major wind farm project with nine European countries www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Tanker carrying Venezuelan heavy oil departs to Louisiana, shipping data shows reut.rs/4qGioOI