Where finance and media intersect with reality.

Category: Post

In the Blind Spot (The grand social media exodus to BlueSky begins)

Dear Subscribers, Welcome to the new look Blind Spot newsletter. We have given up on the old formatting because it was making everything look horrible in the send-out. The inspiration for the new style comes in part from how Politico organises its newsletters. They’ve been doing this a long time so emulating them is no […]

Meet the farmers who control one-third of the EU’s budget (POLITICO)

By Bartosz Brzeziński, Paula Andrés · Oct 6, 2023 BRUSSELS — Franc Bogovič spent 16 years selling pesticides. Now he’s leading the charge in Brussels against an EU master plan to wean farmers off them. The 60-year-old European lawmaker lives in the Kozjanski Park — a biodiversity hotspot in eastern Slovenia that is protected under […]

Could Trump use forgotten Chinese debt to salvage the global economy?

As the United States confronts an impending government shutdown amid an unwelcome outbreak of bond vigilantism, an unexpected remedy to global financial implosion might just lie in a murky corner of long forgotten financial history. Dormant for decades, the Blind Spot understands the overlooked issue of defaulted Chinese imperial debt is quietly turning heads on […]

The problem with Ozempic, a personal story

If you’ve not heard of it, semaglutide (also known as Ozempic, Wegovy) is the wonder weight loss drug that is currently storming the world, and even Boris Johnson seems to think it has revolutionised the treatment of obesity, meaning the problem could be nipped in the bud very soon. As someone who struggles with weight […]

In the Blind Spot (When governments manipulate markets)

Salve Romani, How often do you think about the Roman Empire? Because the answer for me and my fellow anacyclosis-minded buddy Tim Ferguson is, obviously, hourly. To honour the fact that everyone else is thinking about the Roman Empire at least a few times a week, too, I’ve added an SPQR channel to the Blind […]

Poland’s PiS under fire for massaging inflation data (POLITICO)

By Ben Munster, Izabella Kaminska · Sep 28, 2023,  A high-stakes electoral gamble over inflation by Poland’s central bank may be about to pay off, with preliminary September figures on Friday expected to show a large slowdown in consumer price rises, supporting the central bank’s contentious decision to aggressively cut rates earlier this month. But […]

In the Blind Spot (How Brussels missed its opportunity to dominate finance)

Dear Subscribers, I want to start this weekend’s newsletter with a historic tale of sour financial grapes that has had a huge bearing on how the City is regulated and how it will continue to be regulated in the near future. It starts like this. Earlier this year I sat down with the inimitable Andrew […]

In the Blind Spot (What do psychedelics have to do with power politics?)

Greetings and salutations. Turn on. Tune in. And drop out. A phrase first spoken by counterculture radical Timothy Leary in 1966. But, as Leary also noted, “In the United States in the next five, 10, 15 years, you’re going to see more and more people taking LSD and making it a part of their lives. […]