I see claude has learned another new trick

Resolution has applied my model to data up to 2025. As the chart shows, we can be less confident as time goes on. But firm-level evidence from Bloom et al shows a 6% loss. I think it's time to retire the OBR's 4%, which was a simple average of pre-Brexit forecasts.

I think a lot of AI/corporate doomers are still fundamentally not understanding that open-source models you can run locally on consumer hardware are no worse than two years behind the frontier models and for most purposes a lot closer

Merchant vessels report gunfire as they attempt to cross Hormuz, shipping sources say At least ​two merchant ‌vessels said they were ​hit by ​gunfire as they ⁠attempted ​to cross the ​Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, ​three ​maritime security and shipping ‌sources ⁠said.

Merchant vessels report gunfire as they attempt to cross Hormuz, shipping sources say reut.rs/3QLIUJa

Yes there must be a queen in there and the rest will follow where ever she goes.

The post, the headline and the article all seem to say somewhat different things — so I guess it’s hard to be sure what the current status is.

Sending English tourists 20 miles out into the Bristol Channel in a 1950s German flat-bottomed boat feels like it should be a Monty Python sketch.

We got the Oldenburg over to Lundy on a fairly calm day. We took some seats down in the lower section next to the hatch where they serve the sausage rolls etc. To start with all was well as we had a gentle cruise down the river. There were lots of families with young children and there was an air of excitement, and lots of people were enthusiastically tucking into sausage rolls and hot chocolate. And then...we hit the ocean.

As i say it was a fairly calm day but even so the boat was lurching about quite a bit. In itself it wasn't a great problem, just a bit rougher than expected. But then the sausage rolls and hot chocolate, so delicious and satisfying half an hour previously, were now causing problems for a lot of people. A lot of problems for a lot of people. In short order the entire lower section we were in emptied out as people headed for the upper deck for fresh air. So many people were being sick all over the place, and the upper deck was crowded with everyone just clinging on where they could rather than go back down below.

Day trip to Lundy on the ferry earlier and I have to say this tripadvisor review does a remarkably good job of summarising the experience.

I wish I had a better sense of how credible and plausible this kind of modelling is.

That makes sense. Remaining stuck in limbo between scenarios is itself a scenario.

There are still broadly two scenarios but the longer this goes on, the less like “happy Christmas” the better one is.

"People are still thinking that this will be over within two or three weeks one way or another and the Strait of Hormuz will reopen miraculously," said Anne-Sophie Corbeau, a former head of gas analysis at BP who is now at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy. "This may be the case but there's also a high probability that this won't be the case."

The futures price is giving those in charge a false sense of security. The real price of oil is the price refiners and sellers are transacting at and that they will ultimately pass through to consumers. US average retail gasoline prices have already risen sharply, and diesel prices are nearing record highs even if futures prices have remained relatively benign. Moreover, holding down futures prices will be an exercise in futility if the war does not end quickly. The lower the futures price is today, the higher it will need to get down the line as it is not sending the appropriate market signals today to balance demand with much-curtailed supply.

Still a big disconnect between the “people talking about energy supplies” part of the newspaper and the “today in the markets” part. Still impossible to call how this tension gets resolved.

Rearmament, to the extent that it is unavoidable, should be financed in a way that lays the burden squarely on the shoulders of right wing pundits.

I suspect a bit of both. I’ll settle for one good track.

Yes. But if both the absolute number and proportion of children in poverty has substantially increased, I think that constitutes ‘widening’ of poverty. If headline measures don’t capture it that’s a problem with the measures.

60s/70s nostalgia is pretty odd. Not that many people actually lived on King’s Road.

If this is the case it’s deeply cynical and suggests that some of the opprobrium faced by the green plumber for her guardian article was misdirected.

Don’t the child poverty statistics suggest widening as well as deepening?

Might try setting this as a task for Claude when I get back to the desk.

Which for many people quite possibly do translate into a fall in real income.

Yes we know the broad headline trends but there could be stuff happening below the surface that would explain the sentiment.

It’s somewhat surprising and rather irritating how few decent comprehensive studies of income inequality over time in the UK there are. We are all arguing on the basis of really not very substantial evidence.

the assumption about preferences is that a greater quantity of goods is preferred to a lesser quantity, not that a greater growth rate of goods is preferred to a lower growth rate, regardless of absolute levels.

given that the single most important variable in these models is called 'utlility' and purports precisely to proxy for wellbeing, and that all purposeful economic behaviour is downstream of this, i reckon it probably does matter

There’s a really fundamental problem for economic theory if growth rather than level of income is what people care about. The whole lot, from page one of the textbook onwards, is borked. Funny how we just kind of gloss over this.

The confidence with which people are making strong claims based on very aggregated data which hides a whole swathe of statistical assumptions makes me nervous.

Nope, I use one agent and monitor it carefully.

A robin on a pile of sticks.

Very pleasant visit to Leigh Woods: saw goldcrest, nuthatch, treecreeper, blackcap, wren and long-tailed tit among others. Only managed a phone snap of this guy.

bsky.app/profile/fint...

Econ prof here: in my view, annualised real wage growth of 0.6% since Jan 2025 tells you pretty much nothing. You need a longer series to say anything sensible. But, as Will says, it’s not evidence of hard times.