"Jean-Philippe Bouchaud is both baffled and frustrated by how economics has fallen in thrall to theorists — mathematical, social or political — and become bereft of the rigour of proper sciences, where real-world experiments and experiences actually matter." Aren't we all? www.ft.com/content/6f54...

The judiciary is looking politicised in the US, with the appeals court backing Fed’s Cook vs Trump, but in a 2-1 decision The 2 appointed by Biden backed Cook. Trump’s appointee backed the White House It’s not the institutions, it’s the people www.wsj.com/economy/cent...

Botswana credit rating downgraded from BBB+ to BBB, still one notch above the lowest investment grade rating of BBB-. Botswana started with a A rating in 2001 from S&P, cut to A- after the global financial crisis and to BBB+ during COVID The external shock hitting Botswana now is very specific

Very interesting history here ..about the connection between supply and demand of money for mortgages. The building society model kept the pace the of house prices connected to household earnings (John Plender, FT big read)

Botswana. A bit like Chile and Peru losing guano exports after German industrialists developed industrial fertilisers .. or Norway losing ice exports after the invention of the fridge www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Syria exported 600,000 barrels of heavy crude in its first oil shipment in years, as the lifting of western sanctions brings relief to its war-ravaged economy

Good read on the solar panel growth story in Africa .. echoing what we’ve seen in Pakistan. In Pakistan the issue is so important it’s threatening the finances of the big electricity companies

This is a curious story .. would be good to see some more media digging on this The investment pledges are enormous The lack of transparency about Gulf sovereign wealth funds is a contributory factor Now the pledge to Botswana is being cited in a FT story to do with diamonds

A solar panel boom in Africa Will check some per capita figures one day .. original data source seems to be here ember-energy.org/data/china-s...

I’d always found emerging markets more interesting than developed markets (DM) partly because of guys like Erdogan Trump is doing a very good job at making the US interesting for those DM economists who’ve missed out on seeing institutions attacked/undermined by political leaders

The Lisa Cook “firing” by Trump …can he / can’t he ..may end up with the Supreme Court and more clarity on its May 2025 statement suggesting he can’t Politically, this is smart of Trump to test this over allegations of mortgage fraud. It can align him with “the people” vs Fed

Indonesia industrialised in line with the education, fertility and electricity thesis of @TTTEconomist but has now seen manufacturing shrink from 32% to 19% of GDP The article suggests too much focus on Indonesia’s plentiful natural resources + these reasons www.ft.com/content/0eb1...

Chinese growth AND value equities have both returned more than 40% in past 12m. Astonishing But almost entirely valuation driven. 12-month fwd earnings for value stocks are lower today than a year ago "Quality" companies, where the earnings outlook has picked up nicely, have underperformed by 10%

As my publisher says it would take 1-2 years to do an audio version of The Time Travelling Economist, this may be a good option for those who've not read it. It's like a second edition of the book, with 2024 UN demographic forecasts + focus on services and women podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c...

USD lower & US Treasury bonds lower in price. The US is an EM but you all aren't EM investors... yet. You'll learn the hard way... we all did.

US and EU close in on deal to massively raise taxes on Americans, in total violation of both US domestic law & WTO treaty obligations

The author shows "Education can account for about 45% of global economic growth and 60% of pretax income growth among the world’s poorest 20% from 1980 to 2019".

Delighted to announce that Benin, Côte d’Ivoire & Nigeria have become our recipient countries as of today. We'll bring our distinct private-sector focused, locally based business model to unlock access to finance, promote local businesses, foster sustainable and long-term growth

This such bad news for Botswana which has been one of Africa’s luckiest countries in recent decades, due to huge natural resource wealth and a tiny population Now the diamond price shock is akin to the commodity price shock that hit Nigeria and others in the 1980s and 2015-16

Meeting with Tanzania central bank governor Tutuba yesterday and we didn’t talk about Trump at all. It was great

S&P cuts Senegal to B- with a negative outlook (was cut to B from B+ in March) za.investing.com/news/world-n...

Good morning *TRUMP SAYS US WILL IMPOSE 30% TARIFFS ON EU, MEXICO FROM AUG. 1

I guess Americans can just sell their shares to pay for their higher import bill

No TACO necessary when markets hit a record high

After 3 months of negotiations and great trade deals, the average tariff to be imposed on 1 August, is down just 1 percentage point from those imposed in early April Trump wants this consumption tax on Americans to cut the budget deficit by $300bn or 1% of GDP

Good to see some African equity markets powering ahead this year: Egypt +16% in US dollars Nigeria +22% in US dollars Kenya +39% and Morocco up 45% (I didn't expect that) Africa, like much of EM, does well when the $ is weak .. and when Trump isn't paying them much attention

Me, sipping tea in a Starbucks: "Wow, Americans really know how to hold a grudge"

Curious report. It starts by pushing responsibility for debt problems onto external crises It doesn't mention the infrastructure, hospitals and schools that were built on this debt Nor the benefits to consumers who paid less tax for a decade as governments spent more than they raised in tax

Namibia dropping back to lower middle income.. they'll look back and smile (hopefully) once the oil revenues come pouring in blogs.worldbank.org/en/opendata/...

Updated the oil exports per capita chart. Guyana doing best Explains why Nigeria doesn't have the wealth of Dubai (UAE was once 6,000 on this chart, per 1,000 Emiratis) Few liberal democracies among them .. because oil wealth means "no taxation & no representation"

Thanks to Our World In Numbers, found a more updated version of Polity IV or V, which allows a little more complexity than the Freedom House (Free, Partly Free, Not Free) labels v-dem.net/documents/61...

My estimate is that Senegal’s debt carrying capacity will drop from strong to medium, implying debt/GDP must fall from 119% of GDP to 55% to get IMF support. Does that sound right ?

US saved roughly 90mn lives via US AID over 21 years. On the ledger vs lives lost via interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq etc this suggests US foreign policy was a big net positive for the world

Brain drain is an enduring problem for Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. But it actually shows these regions are producing human capital with globally valued skills on.ft.com/40seTA8

Saudi Arabia's newly minted current account deficits are here to stay for the rest of the decade, the IMF reckons. (From the latest Article IV; the current account went into deficit last year at 0.5% of GDP) www.imf.org/en/News/Arti...

Reuters: "In the first quarter the US current account deficit jumped $138.2 billion, or 44.3%, to an all-time high of $450.2 billion." This is equal to an astonishing 6.0% of gross domestic product, the highest since the third quarter of 2006. www.reuters.com/business/us-...

By the time you’ve reached your forties you will have lived to see the newspapers that insisted that the country you grew up in was on the verge of social collapse portray those very same years of your youth as a period of blissful social cohesion.

Venezuela manages to go more extreme on economic failure than ever Now stopping the release of inflation figures after letting the official currency devalue Arresting two independent economists for attempting to measure inflation - among 50+ others And as noted, paying workers $1 a month

Electricity is not a perfect proxy for GDP in a country where agriculture and tourism are so important .. but Nairobi being 44% of Kenya's electricity consumption is very large

Markets will worry Iran may try to close the Straits of #Hormuz as its revenge on the world but 1) it would be bad for Iran’s regime survival 2) they may not be able to, and 3) global oil stocks are sufficient to compensate for any temporary blockage #thread

A new frontier market - Somalia's stock exchange - which aims to start trade equities and sukuk bonds early 2026 says Bloomberg. Was surprised to find all this on the website www.sse.so/about-us

"Persian" taxi driver in London told me last night the whole world should be supporting Israeli strikes on "terrorist" leaders in Iran as it will hasten the end of the regime .. interesting end to an evening of Chaka Khan at Hampton Court

It’s the Bull Gates effect - walking into a bar and then leaving One reason UK voted for Brexit may be because when wealthy foreigners poured into London, and pushed up average wealth, it didn’t make the average Brit better off and happier Equally now they’re leaving, most not that affected

Lucky there's been no Middle East geopolitical risk pushing up the oil price. The 12% YoY fall helps so many oil importing low income countries

The East African press this morning, from Tanzania to Kenya; roughly 10 newspapers none of which mention Iran and Israel

As Africa's domestic savings grow (thanks to falling fertility rates, see The Time Travelling Economist) - the continent is able to borrow a higher share from domestic sources which by definition avoids currency risk The chart may be a bit different in 2024 after NGN, EGP, ETB devals in 2024

Who taxes the most, and least, in Africa? Average data is the small blue line - and compares to the average 15.2% of GDP for everyone over 2015-23 Kenya around average Nigeria, DRC and Ethiopia below average Industrial economies (SA, Morocco, Tunisia) around 25% of GDP

This is the extra tax that the African Development Bank thinks can collected by each government on the continent Another $3bn in Kenya (KES400bn), over $8bn in Nigeria, $15bn in Egypt. But it wouldn't necessarily come from you. It will be from those that are avoiding tax

What’s happening in Pakistan with electricity is one of most interesting development stories in low income countries today Falling solar, wind and batter prices letting the middle class escape an unreliable grid And a 2 year pay back for companies investing in renewables www.ft.com/content/2b4c...