With the trade unions, one quarter of Labour MPs, a majority of Labour members and half the great offices of state calling for the prime minister to set a path to his departure, we are now at the end of the Starmer regime. He might like to think he can still set a timetable but …
1. NvidiaWith stock markets ever more disconnected from the oncoming stagflationary tsunami, the latest earnings from MAG7 and geopolitical bellwether Nvidia on Wednesday will bear even more weight than usual. Not only is it an indication of momentum for the apparently unstoppable AI train but it is also a litmus test for US/China relations, given Air Force …
1. The UKAnd so, the local election date finally rolls around on Thursday. It need not have been quite so pivotal if discontented Labour MPs hadn’t kept talking about it as the date by which they would finally be forced to dispense of their beleaguered leader. This is usually qualified by “if results are worse than …
Our intern Emily Major considered the question: When and why do British Prime Ministers step down? An analysis of the past 50 years. The Road to resignation Fifty years ago, Harold Wilson closed the door of Number 10 Downing Street behind him for the final time – an abrupt departure that would come to define …
Read more “The Road to Resignation: A study of British Prime Ministers”
1. EarningsA market scarred by last year’s post-Liberation Day whiplash doesn’t need much to reactivate its “Don’t Get Caught Short” mantra. It doesn’t matter if ceasefires don’t hold, if the logistics of moving 800 stranded ships are too complex to be immediately cleared, or if inflationary pressures from shortages are already in the supply chain …
++ The physical fiscal cascade has begun. We are in a supply shortage that no protagonist can solve and that the belligerents are incentivised to maintain, if not exacerbate. Stimulative monetary and fiscal intervention is not only useless but counterproductive in such a stagflationary shock, even as electorates will demand action. Bond markets and voters …
We can’t be as confident as Chance the Gardener that there will be growth in the spring. If anything, the passage of approximately 150 ships through the Strait of Hormuz during the whole of the last month compared to the pre-war average of 150 per day is making a recession ever more likely. Five years ago, …
If this were a normal two weeks, we would consider the slew of central bankers explaining their about-turn from contemplative doves to inflation expectation hawks (ECB Watchers Conference on Wednesday and BOE speakers Thursday); we would reflect on the volatile outcome of the German regional election in Rhineland Palatinate where the AfD doubled their vote …
