In the Blind Spot (Diesel, Tractors, Inflation)
It’s good to be back! Finance, economics, markets etc: The second part of “A Long Time in Finance’s” interview with Paul Tucker. Worth listening to just to hear Tucker admit that he was not onboard with continuous QE policy. Tyler Cowen on the infant formula shortage. Andrew Bailey’s report for the Treasury Select Committee […]
Valuing Twitter as a giant zero-day exploit harvesting machine
Elon Musk wants to use a fairly crude sampling methodology (which draws on the wisdom of crowds) to reveal the true scale of bot penetration on Twitter. He seems to think that if he discovers that the rate is higher than Twitter has admitted to in public filings it could have a material adverse effect […]
Does the LNG glut change anything?
There’s an important story in the FT about the drop in UK gas prices resulting from massive LNG imports over the past couple of months. The authors note the additional volumes have come from the US, Qatar and Algeria. The story also carries this eyebrow raising chart: As a result of the above, the story […]
Crypto reflexivity and the ultimate stablecoin reading list
The day of reckoning so many naysayers warned the stablecoin market would eventually experience has finally arrived. In some respects, the shakeout is probably a good thing. We need to see these aspiring systems fail in controlled ways to understand the scope of their potential contagion if they were ever to get huge and thus […]
Why financial engineering has gone full circle with Terra
I’m really pressed for time but I wanted to get this out as it’s important. Here as a result is the longish thread-based reply I just posted on Twitter in response to this question: One question: if I buy tether, my cash was supposedly going into a short term dollar asset (asset side of tethers […]
Running on diesel fumes and other commodity crunch stories
The diesel situation is dire. What policymakers seem to be missing is that it’s not just the market’s capacity to provide for today that is under stress. It’s also the market’s capacity to build inventories in the traditional inventory-building season. I am on the run a lot until Saturday (in Poland), but I thought I […]
In the Blind Spot (Terra, Diesel, Cartels)
Housekeeping note. I have been traveling this week (and am currently in Poland for a conference) hence the giant content hole. Finance, economics, markets etc… Is the Terra fail a Lehman moment for crypto? I have been travelling so I haven’t been able to keep up with the Terra debacle as well as I would […]
Paul Tucker on BoE independence
My former colleagues Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins have bagged an absolute must-listen interview with Paul Tucker, formerly of the BoE, now a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. Tucker is also the author of Unelected Power: The Quest for Legitimacy in Central Banking and the Regulatory State. He also happens to be a voice […]
Do politicised central banks have a right to independence?
One of the great questions of our time is whether central bank independence is really still a thing. Yes, of course, in principle it still is. But in recent post-QE, ESG, Covid stimulus and climate-agenda years, the lines between government policy and central bank policy are becoming ever more blurred. This becomes clear when you […]
Indian heatwave compounds Ukrainian grain shortage
Apologies for light content this week. I have been doing a lot of ‘old school’ news gathering (i.e. face-to-face). In that capacity I recently met with Elena Neroba, a Ukrainian agricultural commodity analyst, usually based in Kyiv, who gave me a fascinating overview of the state of the market. She arrived in London a few […]