1. Winners and losers and the political economy of inflation

    Published: Tue 25 April 2023
    Updated: Tue 25 April 2023
    By steve

    In Markets.

    Tuesday 25, April 2023

    Who are the winners and losers of inflation?

    When inflation spikes, the losers are those who are long bonds. This is because the value of bonds falls when inflation rises. The reason for this is that bonds are essentially loans, and the value of a loan …

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  2. Economics, politics, and what Chat GPT thinks

    Published: Sat 22 April 2023
    Updated: Tue 25 April 2023
    By steve

    In Markets.

    The conflict between economics and politics

    I enjoy Bethany McLean and Luigi Zingales’ podcast, Capitalisn’t. I’ve listened to a few episodes and I find them to be very informative and thought-provoking. One I listened to recently was this one with Elizabeth Popp Berman, who argues that that measuring …

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  3. Net Zero for CO2 does not mean Net Zero for inflation rates!

    Published: Fri 21 April 2023
    Updated: Fri 21 April 2023
    By steve

    In Markets.

    Inflation and Net Zero

    Imagine a factory that dyes wool. The waste chemicals just get discharged into the river that runs by the factory. Fish get killed, but the factories costs are minimized and consumers benefit from cheaper coloured clothes. It’s hard to quantify, but clearly the benefit of …

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  4. Intelligence and rent seeking

    Published: Tue 18 April 2023
    Updated: Mon 01 May 2023
    By steve

    In Markets.

    Tuesday 18, April 2023

    Adam Smith divided value into wages, profits and rent. Rent was the income derived from that factor of production whose supply was perfectly inelastic, the return to the rentier, which comprises an income derived from the scarcity of land, of which there is a fixed amount …

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  5. Old Friends and autoimmune diseases

    Published: Sun 09 April 2023
    Updated: Sun 09 April 2023
    By steve

    In Markets.

    Sunday 9, April 2023

    Old Friends

    I have had a number of close friends and relations suffer from Crohn’s Disease and similar autoimmune conditions (including the most common of all, coeliac disease). My best friend from school had Crohn’s, as did his brother. It’s a pretty terrible …

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  6. The ghoul

    Published: Wed 05 April 2023
    Updated: Thu 13 April 2023
    By steve

    In Markets.

    Wednesday 5, April 2023

    Blair’s legacy

    Tony Blair has been in the news again. It’s the 20th anniversary of the Second Gulf War. There are numbers of reports of Keir Starmer soliciting advice from Tony Blair (e.g. here). The shadow cabinet have been working hard to raise …

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  7. Inflation. What does it mean for them?

    Published: Tue 04 April 2023
    Updated: Mon 10 April 2023
    By steve

    In Markets.

    Tuesday 4, April 2023

    Same observations, different conclusions

    Inflation is an obsession with most economists, which is weird, because most of economics deliberately tries to ignore it and focus on real variables. For most ordinary mortals, money is what they spend their valuable time trying to earn. For economists, money …

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  8. The Twitter Files

    Published: Sun 02 April 2023
    Updated: Tue 04 April 2023
    By steve

    In Markets.

    Sunday 2, April 2023

    What we know from the Twitter Files

    I am no fan of Elon Musk. As far as I’m concerned, he’s a narcissistic psychopath. But even narcissistic psychopaths have been known to do some good sometimes. He has released some internal Twitter documents to a …

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