Andrew Bailey weighs into the Budget. "Whatever the stance of fiscal policy is, it must be credible and directed at stability, and be seen to be such by markets." Some of Bailey's own policymakers are making the same point about the BoE's policy. www.reuters.com/markets/euro...

Bank of England's Bailey says credible budget policy is needed more than ever

Governments need to redouble efforts to restore confidence in their public finances, Bank of ‌England Governor Andrew Bailey said on Thursday, as global bond markets come under pressure from high borr...

reuters.com

Here I am 10 years after this tweet with singed eyebrows

Andy Bruce (Reuters)@bruceandy.bsky.social · 10y ago

Record low UK borrowing costs aren't just a flash-in-the-pan kind of thing

Bit of an awkward dinner at the Caulfields that night

Ben@cinemashoebox.bsky.social · 5d ago

RIP Jeffrey Archer, not a day goes by when I don't think about the judge in his 1987 libel case (which Archer "won" by doing a bunch of perjury) summing up for the jury by going "would a guilty man have such a hot wife". one of the most insane legal moments of all time

Post a meme made by you

BrokenBanker@brokenbanker.bsky.social · 6d ago

Post a meme made by you (Ok I cheated and snuck in 4)

The last week in fixed income

Britannia Shield was an absolutely cracking home insurance product from 1985, it's no wonder Kemi Badenoch wants to pay tribute with a missile defence network

Morgan Stanley says it’s shorting the pound ahead of the Budget • sees £8b of headroom now • thinks Healey will go for £15b • sees small delay to fiscal consolidation • mild downside risk to gilts • not much change to cash req this year but a bit higher in future years

High gilt yields still largely reflect rate expectations, not fiscal nerves, according to the latest Term Premium Tracker from @niesrorg.bsky.social. UK term premium (ie. yield not explained by rate expectations) inched up in Sept, but still below levels seen last winter niesr.ac.uk/reports/term...

Very into the new Chinese Streamside Garden at RHS Bridgewater.

Had always thought Budget 2026 would be a damp squib, maybe with an eye to gaming the fiscal rules ahead of the next election (à la Hunt).

Andy Bruce (Reuters)@bruceandy.bsky.social · 3mo ago

• Initial 2026 Budget that largely sticks to current budgeting - and meets fiscal rules - but signals big ambitions for 2027 • From April 2027, the rolling 3-year target for balancing current budget shifts to 2030/31 (past election). So Budget that raises spending & backloads consolidation by a yr?

<whispers> the uk is 10-year is the best performing in developed mkts over the past year

Thorough and even-handed post from @robwoodecon.bsky.social on why, in his view, the UK's inflation problem is chronic rather than acute www.linkedin.com/pulse/uk-inf...

UK inflation: from acute to chronic… with a tentative warning

Has UK inflation really been heading comfortably back to target? The bulk of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee has been arguing in the affirmative for some time—but for the war we'd be s...

linkedin.com

BoE's Mann criticises mon. policy response to the Iran war. She disagrees with the idea that tighter UK fin. conditions are curbing inflation: no comfort as those conditions include higher inflation risk premium and uncertainty over BoE reaction function www.bankofengland.co.uk/speech/2026/...

Financial conditions: what’s priced in? − speech by Catherine L. Mann

Given at the Nomura London Macro Forum

bankofengland.co.uk

EXCLUSIVE: US tells France and Germany to release diesel stocks or face US export ban, sources say reut.rs/3U3eCng

EXCLUSIVE: US tells France and Germany to release diesel stocks or face US export ban, sources say

The Trump ​administration has told ‌Germany and France to ​draw down ​emergency diesel inventories ⁠to help ​to ease ​global fuel prices or face a ​potential US ​diesel export ban, ‌according ⁠to three people close to the discussions.

reut.rs

UK bonds having a tough time today as part of a global rise in yields. French bonds underperforming tho - unlike the UK there seems to be a clear fiscal/political risk premium building in there. Asset swap spread and gap vs Bunds ballooning, CDS spiking (none of which really apply to the UK)

Fed watchdog on HQ renovation that became Trump/Powell flashpoint: “At no point during ​our evaluation did we find reasonable grounds to believe that a violation of federal criminal law had occurred requiring a referral to the US attorney general."

Watchdog finds deficiencies but no Fed misconduct in Powell-era renovation project

The Federal Reserve's Inspector General on Wednesday said it found no grounds for a criminal referral or administrative misconduct tied to cost overruns in a US central bank renovation project that ha...

reuters.com

SNAP POLL / By 48% to 28%, Britons support Andy Burnham's proposal to change the triple lock in order to help fund part of a national care service yougov.com/en-gb/daily-... yougov.com/en-gb/daily-... yougov.com/en-gb/daily-...

🥳 UK economy grew more than thought in the second quarter. • GDP +0.5% qq versus a previous estimate of +0.4% (same with GDP per head) • Strong business investment growth (see 👇) • Current account balance (exc. precious metals) smallest in 5 years at 1% of GDP thanks to services exports

Anthropic is making a bet that AI will transform the global economy more profoundly than industrialization, electricity and the internet, according to its IPO prospectus seen by Reuters. ‌Anthropic reported a net loss of $42 billion in 2025, the prospectus said. www.reuters.com/business/fin...

EXCLUSIVE: Anthropic's IPO prospectus shows sweeping AI vision, surging costs

Anthropic is making a massive bet that AI will ​transform the global economy more profoundly than industrialization, electricity and the internet, according to its IPO prospectus seen by Reuters. The ...

reuters.com

Healey's tie that Gordon Brown borrowed and signed in 1999

Literally the only reference to the Budget in Healey's speech was in connection to fiscal discipline...

Any Blue Sky peeps at Labour conference? I am very lonely

A good look at the fiscal arithmetic ahead of the budget from TK Thoughts. I'm afraid I don't know who TK is but it's a Substack I've enjoyed reading over the past few years. substack.com/inbox/post/2...?

A Look ahead to UK Budget 2026

How much Fiscal Space do they have?

substack.com

Andrew Bailey says BoE staff feed the MPC minutes into an LLM before they are published to see how it will land in the outside world. Bailey says he has doubts ("Hmm where are you going on this") but concedes it has been "very helpful".

October 2016

Jim Pickard@pickardje.bsky.social · 2w ago

Andy Burnham has plunged the plan for a third runway at Heathrow into doubt by privately telling MPs he has always opposed the project, and the new prime minister is said to be “open minded” about whether it should go ahead. www.ft.com/content/0206...

Don't count on a circus of magic PuFINS to fly to Britain's economic rescue. My latest on how Labour's reforms to the fiscal rules were not the silver bullet some seem to hope they are - and may have made Britain's debt problems worse. First in a two-part series on Britain's wrecked balance sheet

How Britain Wrecked its Balance Sheet

Four decades of consuming public wealth rather than building it has eroded Britain’s resilience and its long-term debt sustainability, leaving the country acutely vulnerable to deglobalisation

nixons.substack.com

October 2016

Jim Pickard@pickardje.bsky.social · 2w ago

Andy Burnham has plunged the plan for a third runway at Heathrow into doubt by privately telling MPs he has always opposed the project, and the new prime minister is said to be “open minded” about whether it should go ahead. www.ft.com/content/0206...

UK consumer confidence has hit a more than two-year high, according to GfK, symbolised below by the purchase of mangoes. Another bit of generally positive sentiment data. YouGov/Cebr and LSEG/Ipsos surveys have also shown rising consumer morale this month. www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-...

UK consumer confidence hits more than two-year high in September, GfK says

British consumer confidence unexpectedly struck a more than two-year high this month as households ​grew more optimistic about their personal finances, ‌according to a survey on Friday that added to r...

reuters.com

Great to have an apocalypse version of Clegg's "but it'd take us until 2025 to get new nuclear plants!" clip banked for the decades ahead. I look forward to watching it on the ash heaps.

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 3w ago

Nick Clegg plays down fears ‘godlike’ AI could exterminate humanity

Bank of England Deputy Governor Clare Lombardelli said on Thursday that interest rates will likely have to rise if energy ​prices stay elevated, unless there is clear evidence of a weaker economy. www.reuters.com/business/boe...

BoE's Lombardelli sees rates rising if energy prices stay high

Bank of England Deputy Governor Clare Lombardelli said on Thursday that interest rates will likely have to rise if energy ​prices stay elevated, unless there is clear evidence of a weaker economy.

reuters.com