Strategy & Asset Allocation. Queasy metropolitan liberal. “Economist” - @t0nyyates
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Right, and I think the police feel they are the right people to make the determination about what constitutes incitement based on e.g. a pattern of behaviour. It’s for them to judge if there’s merit to the complaint. They don’t arrest everyone who gets complained about.
The police have deemed it actionable, and the CPS will decide whether it meets a bar to bring charges. People can form their own views over the case but I would not personally want to water down laws relating to incitement to violence because of a single incident, especially at this moment.
Was accused of being "dogmatic" when I pointed this out on here earlier. Hard to avoid the conclusion that we are allowing the boundaries of bigotry/racism to be shifted by a combination of lack of action and by the tacit acceptance of "overreach" claims when the police do attempt to do something.
It's possible to overpolice trivia, but when the top examples of doing so are people tweeting "burn the hotels" and "if I find one in a changing room I'll punch them" I am far from convinced this is happening either.
Sunder says it best bsky.app/profile/sund...
I genuinely don’t have any dogma around this particular issue. Maybe the law is bad (I’m not familiar enough the entire body of case law to know!). I was just frustrated that the line of apparent concern was a guy being arrested for (alleged) incitement rather than the wave of online hate speech.
But again, specifically, in this case it’s unclear to me why the government felt the need to step in with comment. If they want to change the law, then they should make the case for what exactly they want to change and whether/how the intent of the law is being frustrated against your yardsticks.
Those are all arguments about line drawing.
Also reminder that debt interest "costs" are in large part the capital uplift on IL. Which certainly increases total debt but is not a cashflow or refinancing issue.
What evidence is there for that?
The tweets are very much spilling into the streets
I’m saying they didn’t need to comment on the case and they’ve chosen to do so to make a point about stifling speech. Reasonable to suggest that it’s at the very least a bad look. We have a huge problem of online radicalisation and escalating incidents of racism/discrimination.
To be clear, I am suggesting that the authorities have *not* been “coming down like a tonne of bricks on racism and discrimination” permitted and promoted on various social media platforms. And, every time the law is followed, we get pearl-clutching like this hinting at overreach.
It’s…the implication of exactly what he’s saying. And my point is that the government and regulators are not “coming down like a tonne of bricks” on racism and discrimination” online (see @sundersays.bsky.social feed). Instead they are suggesting that police are being overzealous.
It’s this right? bsky.app/profile/toma...
Can we just have one day where nobody running the country needlessly jumps in front of a passing bad faith narrative bus?
Yes exactly!
There is an argument about selective enforcement, but it’s predominantly the police and regulators being unwilling to hold platforms accountable for their clear and obvious breaches.
God this government is full of inflatable dartboards isn’t it?
We should let social media self-regulate. They have proven themselves sounds stewards of the public square. No issues here.
Yes, *this is the moment* in history to start watering down legal protections against hate speech. Incredible.
It’s possible that winning an election via an unusual amount of tactical voting has warped Labour minds a bit into thinking that other centre/left parties should just shut up and let them govern solely focused on their right flank. Basically coalition by proxy.
Come DMO - do the right thing and gut long and ultra issuance
Provider interest aside, I *don't* actually think that shrinking UK Higher Ed a disaster in principle (much as I don't agree). Will be 20%+ fewer 18yo home undergrads in the 2030s, there is replication in the system, perhaps over-reliance on international students tested urban areas. BUT... (1/3)
But like…actually
Treating LinkedIn as a proper social media platform is just doodling over your CV.
It creates a shadow hierarchy of laws that either the police must intuit or the executive arbitrarily decides. Seems…not like a thing a former DPP would want to be suggesting.
To put the effects of this distinction in more concrete terms: The order *does not* require the Trump administration to withdraw the remaining national guard troops. It can still use them for things like protecting federal property. But not for domestic law enforcement. bsky.app/profile/anna...
(Worry that I’ve said the one smart thing I had in me today on that agglomeration point though so now I need to stay in near monastic silence)
Same thing! Except this one has an incentive for rentier capital to keep the ratchet going.
Yep, world is full of one-way ratchets that only go back the other way when nearly fully broken by incremental pressure.
I think this is right. The sound management of public finances is a necessary condition but not a political goal.
It’s also a concept that lives on an ever expanding agglomeration frontier and, well, maybe there’s a point on the spectrum at which the capitalisation of further density into rents approaches 1.
It definitely does help, if the evidence of remittances is anything to go by, but it creates a dependence on external flows/activity that are potentially both harmful in the building of domestic industry and a longer-term risk that exists largely outside of domestic control.
Again, despairing about the UK (socially, economically, politically) is actively unhelpful here. There are a lot of things going for the country that should allow it to course correct to a better position across all of those areas. We can improve! We have the potential.
The UK government (broadly) knows what it wants to achieve, has been serious in the way it has gone about it, and has a reasonably long runway to deliver on it. I think they could (and should) be much more active! But the list above are not common factors when you look at peer economies.
Not sure I agree with @chrisgiles.ft.com over the delay of tax rises - especially if it implies delay in spending on improving services - but overall this is a much better analysis of the UK's fiscal state than most of the rest you'll read
(There’s also bridge funding into CVs and dequity funds etc etc all broadly attrition on PE returns but with similar issues around correlated beta)
At any rate, if done at sufficient scale there’s a risk of it collapsing the beta of the asset classes into each other which impacts their portfolio utility - even if the lending turns out ok.
So they say! Does that make sense in a world where distributions are being pushed out again and people are being increasing pushed to secondary markets at discount to get liquidity? Who’s to say…
Now see private credit lending to private equity against NAV to fund exits while the latter refuse to mark down their books...
*EUROPE BOND SALES TOP €49.6 BILLION IN RECORD-BREAKING DAY
This is very good
Here for it
(Incidentally why I’ve stopped wanging on about contingent tax commitments bit because, well, we probably need to see some action now before those types of promises are deemed credible)
And the problem for the government now is they have to change the message from “this huge black hole we didn’t realise was there but chose to do nothing about” to “well, it’s still there and maybe it’s about time to take it seriously”, and the latter seems…much harder to me. But we are where we are.
(Actually sorry about that one)
Looking out the curve Could give you all the fear But gov needn’t borrow At that long 30Y
Risk ranked by dividing their military size as a percent of US military multiplied by mysterious discount factor that turns out to be an arbitrary hard-coded number.
No worries. Understand one would have questions when looking around around at…all this.
Yep, largely starved of resources for about 15 years and/or failed to keep pace with rising demand
E.g. look at NHS satisfaction surveys or inner city school results
There were very substantial improvements in UK public services between 1997-2007
We *do not* need a repeat of Osborne's false economies in 2025 (and, for that matter, Truss's wasteful, regressive tax cuts would also have been a poor answer to the problems of 2010).
We're not in 2010 anymore across a whole number of dimensions. BoE policy rate is just one. New Keynesian brain can be deeply unhelpful at times. Yes, lower rates create a better growth environment, which helps, but you still need to spend much more on public services to fix the mess.
Please can we not do "the UK could *actually* do austerity now because rates are high" bit, because I do not have the energy to continuously point out the gaping public service distress gap in that argument. Lower rates here *buys more fiscal space to address problems* due to lower interest costs.
He’s right! Doing a poor impression of Reform on major policy issues is indeed a political dead-end…
I will commit to 20 hours a day. No more. Just doing my bit.
I mean, I tried bsky.app/profile/toma...
So you’re saying I *can’t* have full immersion counter-strike? (I know you’re making a good and serious point - agree the rate depreciation on these is aggressive so timeframe to figure out what to do if AI buildout stalls/reverses isn’t huge)
I will also accept Mariokart or Bomberman
His cup runneth ov… *single shot rings out*
Full immersion Counter-Strike
(Because we have to explain point 2 in your list, and the best way is I think that people are willing to stick with grand-sweep political narratives for longer than one would think even when they’re proving false and not delivering on their claims)
Think the point I’m trying to make is that if non-populist governments get pushed into welfare harming policies via populist pressures they don’t blunt populism’s appeal. They both need better policies and a counter-narrative to sustain the project.
Technocratic incrementalism requires welfare gains for its legitimacy - that’s what it’s central claim is - but of the path to delivery requires some near-term pain they need a coherent, compelling political narrative.
Another frame here might be that the lesson of populism here is that people *do* seem willing to take some economic pain for a political project that motivates a base. Given the tradeoffs currently required, this is an important thing for governments to learn. Don’t cede narrative to populists!
Because they thought that it had peaked, the growth trade-off was biting, policy remained tight (albeit modestly less so) and so inflation would come down. Government pushing up demand enough to get inflation rising again is a different problem.
They don’t have the ability to do this in the current institutional set up as the BoE would stop them out.
So fecking depressing isn’t it
Don’t disagree with the kicker there though about who is getting kicked.
The taxes are *paying for current spending* so it’s more redistribution than consolidation. So I think it’s wrong to think of it as potentially facilitating tightening but true that tightening could induce lower rates. I’m saying the frame of austerity is wrong.
Hmm maybe. Dysfunction is a common feature of many of those countries currently.
For sure there would be some offset from lower rates but here it *reduces* requirement to frontload tax hikes because it improves debt service cost trajectory.
I think the issue is that rates seem disconnected from UK econ fundamentals currently (can debate how far potential has fundamentally shifted but I’m sceptical by this much) so we’ve got real yields squeezing capacity unhelpfully.
Some and some. UST 10Y is out 5bps so a touch more than OATs
iii. From a fiscal point of view, the UK is relatively more insulated from this than some of its peers thanks to the long average maturity of its debt profile, even after adjusting for the impact that QE has had (chart here is from the DMO).
I mean, we do have to stop doing this silly commentary. Yes, there is some additional risk premium baked into Gilts right now that reflects some specific dynamics around lack of structural long-end natural buyers, weak growth, political indecision around fiscal trajectory etc but this ain’t it.
It doesn’t allow for austerity. It allows for lower interest costs to fund additional fiscal. Very different.
I mean, we do have to stop doing this silly commentary. Yes, there is some additional risk premium baked into Gilts right now that reflects some specific dynamics around lack of structural long-end natural buyers, weak growth, political indecision around fiscal trajectory etc but this ain’t it.
The Uk public sector is in significantly worse state than in 2010 and BoE cuts can’t offset that.
Bah once again yield move in Gilts is mostly a US yield story not a judgement on UK politics - idea this is reshuffle driven is bonkers
I think if other countries were to poach scientists from the USA, they should try to get entire programmes. This seems like a good one: arstechnica.com/science/2025...
As Russia's refining sector is reduced to ash I think defence planners have some interesting question to ask about the security implications of running on fossil fuels for transport. Hitting a nuclear plant is high stakes / escalatory, solar and wind too diffuse but refineries? Game on. #EnergySky
I agree with @tobyn.bsky.social - central bank digital currencies are probably our best bet at competition in this space. I mean *look at these stats* www.ft.com/content/d966...
In the year 2025 it should not be wildly profitable to sell basic payment services, and yet...
Article was here fwiw: www.businessinsider.com/apple-pay-an...
Legacy payment providers (Visa/Mastercard) with net margins of ~50% is totally the result you would expect from a couple of decades of fintech investment - a huge chunk of which went to new payment tech.
Apple seems to be using its payment platform to enforce a sort of (absurdly high) corporate VAT - complete with carve-outs for favoured products! It's at least wryly amusing to me since almost a decade ago I wrote a piece saying they appeared to want to preserve vs disrupt moats of payment providers
I get it, a lot of people don’t really care about the health of the society they live in as long as they’re doing ok. Which is what it comes down to really. The prioritisation of the self over the collective. I just have a different preference order.
No because the algo is controlled by a guy who himself is accelerating the spread of the misinformation/racism.
Right, and “me leaving won’t change anything” is precisely the sort of collective action problem most of us bang our heads about.
And, very clearly, has encouraged and helped coordinate real world repercussions downstream of that promotion. I’m shocked that it’s not an issue for the courts. But since they won’t act, it seems incumbent on the rest of us to do what we can.
I presume there are good NATO Art 5 reasons for not stating it though
'Europe is at war with Russia' is a deeply weird thing that you can find out just by reading the information that governments put on their website and if you read a quality newspaper, but *actual politicians* don't really talk about:
It obviously does not apply to the extremes of luxury and/or performance where the market you are participating in has very different preference and capacity hierarchies. But it’s where most of us operate at, and so it’s important I think to set expectations that this is coming and it is v real.
There are some places where the sales pitch for paying a bit more for brand *really works*. But in aggregate, much of that spending gets washed out by trade-downs elsewhere.
Yep, I think in general it’s hard to persuade people to persistently pay for just a little better and that “little” covers more ground than some investors tend to think