Thursday 30, March 2023

Super Dario

Inflation in wages is how you keep score in the match between labour and capital. For most of history, labour didn’t manage to find the back of the net. The Black Death in the mid 14th Century gave labour its first opportunity, and …

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Wednesday 29, March 2023

Did the NSA create Bitcoin?

Here’s something you might think is just a conspiracy theory. Maybe …

Still anonymous. Still not cashed out. Still the only bit of blockchain tech that anyone thinks works properly. Still the phenomenon that CBs can use to support the argument …

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Tuesday 28, March 2023

This is from yesterdays ‘Money Stuff’ by Matt Levine. I can’t link to it, but you can sign up for the newsletter for free. You can get the posts via RSS, here. It’s worth it. Trust me!

Kicking the nickel

We talked last week …

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Monday 27, March 2023

Louis Vuitton Baby Socks

A snip at $700 for three pairs.

Or, £300 to the man in the funny hat.

This reminds me of the Plutonomy Citigroup report that came out in 2006, nearly 17 years ago! There is a Wikipedia page on it now. The …

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Own up, who didn’t know what an AT1 bond was!

AT1 (or ‘Additional Tier 1’) bonds are a sort of Schrodinger’s security. They embody equity-bond duality (like wave-particle duality in quantum mechanics). They pay a coupon and (for all I know) treated as a bond for tax purposes …

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The wokeness virus

Institutions need leadership. That leadership needs to be focused on the goals of the organization. Obviously, a leader needs to take his followers with him, but he cannot afford to be held hostage by them, or their ideas, at least if those ideas conflict with the aims …

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Let’s get Fis(i)cal!

Central bankers are Wizard of Oz figures. They have illusory power. But as long as the illusion can be maintained, they can make things happen as though they had real power. Ben Bernanke admitted as much in an aside to one of his successors …

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2023-03-18

Small boat crisis

Rishi Sunak made a pitch for the next election by making five promises. Four of them are the sort of vague political promises that are so familiar that it’s impossible to exactly what they were. I’m sure that making everyone better off, and giving …

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Oil price could hit $107/barrel by end 2023!

Read all about it, here. Normally, I’d be delighted to read a piece of research like this, but this note comes from Goldmans. Don’t get me wrong, Goldmans employs some bright people. Commodities are complex, and oil is the …

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“The US is an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery”

Guess who said that!

Rudy nails it, again

Screaming Red Flags.

20 years ago this week Blair committed Britain to joining the USA in invading Iraq

Neil MacKay attributes the war to energizing the SNP. I don’t know enough about …

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