“the Cayman Islands is [now] in fact the largest foreign holder of US Treasury securities…Indeed between 2022 and 2024, hedge funds “absorbed 37 per cent of net issuance of notes and bonds”, …“nearly the same amount as all other foreign investors combined”.
www.ft.com/content/c5a3...
Please gird yourself for months of shameless self-promotion, mute me on socials, feel free to avoid me in public etc, because my next book — A Fabulous Debt: The Epic Story of How Bonds Built the Modern World — is now available for pre-orders. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/750210...
Pleased to finally publish this paper with Mareike Beck on the epistemic origins of the 2022 gilt market crisis in @jeppjournal.bsky.social
How can we explain the limited regulatory response to the increasing systemic risk of LDI strategies in UK pensions?
1/n 🧵
doi.org/10.1080/1350...
Placing the power to set the rates of interest & unemployment in the hands of an independent body whose regional branches are run by bankers and whose top job is held by exceptionally conservative and Wall Street-friendly technocrats has been a 𝘬𝘦𝘺 𝘱𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘭 𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩𝘺 in the United States. 1/2
How not to talk about capitalism
The more it penetrates our daily lives, the less we seem to understand the “system that runs the world”
By Dominik Leusder
This is a very interesting piece, both in terms of its analysis of the Truss government and its implications for how we think about the politics of depoliticisation today.
Without denying the enhanced power of bond markets in the UK’s current economic context, this shows how it is also the institutional arrangements around economic policymaking — which are not subject to iron economic laws — that shape fiscal space.
2) the institutionalised market sensitivity baked into UK macroeconomic policy, in large part from an over-reliance on speculative OBR forecasts and continually adjusted estimates of fiscal headroom based on arbitrary fiscal rules.
Not mentioned is: 1) how QT and the Bank’s discretionary decision to aggressively downsize its balance sheet amplifies the power of bond vigilantes. This has led to a shifting demand base of gilts toward private and more price-sensitive investors needed to absorb increased supply.
In presenting a story of the Labour gov’t vs. bond vigilantes, it overlooks the amplifying effects (and power) of the Bank of England, and the UK’s macroeconomic regime, in mediating the power of bond vigilantes. www.ft.com/content/5209...
Good read from @willdunn.bsky.social in @newstatesman1913.bsky.social, especially this on trader views of the (lack of) credibility of the Labour gvm’t: ‘there is no plan, there is no vision, and they’re not going to succeed because they don’t have the talent’ But two things are missing🧵
Pleased to post this new Dig ep w/ my partner in all things @triofrancos.bsky.social on her beautiful book Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism. We go from Chile to Nevada, from dawn of colonialism to geoeconomic conflict between the US and China—and more www.thedigradio.com/podcast/extr...
📝 Don't miss this article from the current issue of #BJPIR
'Reframing centre-left neoliberalism: New Keynesian theory, Third Way ideology, and the construction of an elite consensus in the US, Britain, and Australia' by Brent Toye & @dillonwamsley.bsky.social
🔗 buff.ly/62G4GAB
Recommended alongside this in @lrb.co.uk: bsky.app/profile/lrb....
In response to Truss’s challenge to their autonomy, I argue that key institutions realigned as part of a ’Bank-Treasury-OBR’ nexus around a conservative macroeconomic consensus, ultimately playing a key role in Truss’s downfall.
Beyond Truss incompetence and bond vigilantism, the article highlights the Truss moment as a key shift in the UK macroeconomic regime.
It offers a heterodox take on the Truss government, framing the mini-Budget crisis as a moment of intra-elite conflict between Truss’s neoliberal project and depoliticised institutions in the British state.
BoE rolls out new defence of QE-QT, stressing low costs for long-maturity debt in QE decade. But it's drawing arbitrary boundaries: analysis (APF Q3 Rept) fails to note that BoE conditioned QE on HMT accepting gilt issue limits, part of causal chain to catastrophic austerity. on.ft.com/3JY23EM
Labour government preparing to hike income taxes - blaming bond markets.
not one adult in the room will say the obvious:
1. Britain's fiscal rules are shambles
2. Bank of England has too much power over fiscal decisions
3. ignore bond vigilantes
www.ft.com/content/5c8f...
“There are entire ruling class industries on the market side…and committees and subcommittees and consultants on the government side, working hand in hand that take in billions of public dollars to make that opaque… regime of credit allocation function.”
thebaffler.com/latest/payin...
New @thedigradio.bsky.social: SECOND of two w @melindacooper.bsky.social on Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance. How asset boom and bust drove MAGA’s rise and also revealed powerful monetary tools that could make socialism—that and more www.thedigradio.com/podcast/from...
Does China's party-state capitalist model mean it can fully decarbonise its economy?
Our exec producer Chris Saltmarsh joins Remi to discuss his @ripejournal.bsky.social article on the development of the Chinese political economy and implications for tackling the climate crisis
🎧 shorturl.at/xUwW5
The Rhodes Center Podcast is back. Me and Leah Downey on her wonderful book Our Money: Monetary Policy as if Democracy Matters. This is part one of two. In part two we discuss what happens when democracy starts to get the upper hand. Coming soon: player.captivate.fm/episode/eb5e...
“What is more, one wonders why something as crucial as borrowing costs to the lives of every citizen should sit beyond a country’s democratic process.”
www.ft.com/content/a667...
My newest piece for Jacobin traces the ideological inheritances of Danielle Smith.
jacobin.com/2025/08/albe...
@johncke.bsky.social @charlieangus104.bsky.social @dgrdon.bsky.social @nolore.bsky.social @youcaughtscott.com @desmondcole.bsky.social @temcd.bsky.social @dillonwamsley.bsky.social
