‘Tech billionaires have visibly lost contact with reality and with anything that could plausibly be described as classical liberal values…The princely passions described by Hirschman didn’t disappear, but went underground. Commerce and power were fused into a new ideology of entrepreneurial virtù.’

The political economy of billionaire derangement

The passions are devouring the interests

open.substack.com

Without going full Hall & Soskice, unpicking some aspects of Thatcherism (centralisation + privatisation) but not others (financialisation) also risks creating a larger and more fragmented state whilst leaving the fundamental drivers of the UK’s stalled growth model intact

Scott James@drscottjames.bsky.social · 2w ago

Whatever reversing ‘neoliberalism’ means, a necessary condition must surely be reframing the City of London as a historic contingency amenable to state reform and not as a reified structure to be accommodated

Whatever reversing ‘neoliberalism’ means, a necessary condition must surely be reframing the City of London as a historic contingency amenable to state reform and not as a reified structure to be accommodated

If it’s traditional for effective PMs to appoint heavy hitting Chancellors to drive their domestic agenda, then Burnham’s strategy might be to delegate to a heavyweight Foreign Sec to create more space at home. But struggling to think of a precedent: Major & Hurd/Rifkind?

Burnham’s soft left populism clearly aimed at halting and potentially reversing Reform’s rise through targeted and politically driven redistribution, but it risks providing considerable space for a revived traditional Tory growth & competitiveness agenda

No, because remember who will write the history books

Sky News@news.sky.com · 3w ago

Starmer will hope history judges him more kindly than his party

The obvious tensions between devolution and public ownership are as old as Labour itself

Imo a curious feature of so much critical IPE is how it’s suffused with an unwritten political realism and philosophical pessimism. The ubiquity of power, inevitability of conflict, limits of reason, etc. Tbh critical IPE without the promise of human progress is a pretty bleak place.

Scott James@drscottjames.bsky.social · 5mo ago

In a room of neo-Gramscians puzzling over global disorder and folks the mood is not upbeat

Amidst the noise, this may be Reeves’s most enduring legacy: the UK has gone all in on dollar stablecoins

The 10 stablecoin commandments

A U.S.-UK joint statement on stablecoins.

open.substack.com

Re Tooze & Setser on the profit dollar, stablecoins might be seen as an effort to resolve - or at least delay or deflect - the contradictions: leverage offshore private (rather than official) demand for dollars as a vehicle currency whilst creating a captive market for USTs

Chartbook 457: The metamorphoses of the dollar

The general question I find myself preoccupied with right now is how we think - or fail to think - radical economic change.

adamtooze.substack.com

Fwiw I’d rather live in a country that forces right populists to compete against a dustbin

Scott James@drscottjames.bsky.social · 4w ago

I see that the OBR has published its fiscal risks report. I kinda feel that something might happen that forces a change of course at some point before we get to debt at 1000% of GDP? And this implies that it's not a very meaningful scenario?

The City of London was central to the political economy of Thatcher and Blair, but was an afterthought in Starmer’s. If Burnhamism is move beyond pot hole socialism, it needs a theory of finance.

William Davies · Burnham’s Political Economy

Whatever rash remarks he may have made about the bond markets or spending commitments, Andy Burnham understands...

lrb.co.uk

With the US Treasury using $ stablecoins to create a captive market for T-Bills, and the BOE providing a gilt backstop to £ stablecoin issuers, we need to talk about the new infrastructural power of crypto

A recognition that gilt markets and sterling stablecoins are a heady brew

BoE to offer unique liquidity backstop for systemic GBP stablecoins

The policy, aimed at maintaining gilt-market stability, positions the UK on a very different path to the EU.

open.substack.com

Shot/chaser ‘Some big hedge funds believe they may actually benefit as higher funding costs squeeze smaller rivals out of the market.’

Bank of England to push ahead with plan to limit hedge fund leverage

Move to make gilt market more resilient has been criticised for potentially raising funding costs

ft.com

Trump’s carbon coalition of blue collar workers and high finance arrives in the UK 🤝

A reminder that one of the most immediate and consequential tasks for Burnham and his chancellor will be finding a replacement for Andrew Bailey by March 2028. But that timing probably comes too late in the electoral cycle to seriously rethink the Treasury-BOE relationship.

Because obviously Britain has no history of effectual PMs governing in constructive tension with heavyweight Chancellors

CBI is a regime grounded in a distinct ecosystem of economic interests & epistemic politics. Left and Right opponents have polarised views on monetary policy and represent incompatible constituencies. Lack of consensus on what replaces CBI is a recipe for politicisation without institutionalisation.

Britain’s politicians need to worry less about the bond markets – and more about the Bank of England | Daniela Gabor

A new model of central banking would weaken the power of bond vigilantes – and help progressive politicians pay for transformative change, says academic Daniela Gabor

theguardian.com

We also need better theories of financial repression if this is the most likely and feasible route to fiscal consolidation. Pragmatism over orthodoxy is also prudent, but to what end? Otherwise it risks degenerating into muddling through the polycrisis until something shows up

Chartbook 448 Price controls, nationalization, financial repression, fiscal-monetary coordination - embracing the Four Horsemen of Heterodoxy

If the current state of the world economy is marked by stark cognitive dissonance, if what is not sustainable cannot be sustained, then what comes next?

open.substack.com

Still not sure there’s an internally consistent Toozian account of moral hazard. You’re either relaxed about the crisis-driven ratchet effect expansion of CB balance sheets, and the systemic hazard it generates, or you need a coherent theory of unwinding which isn’t conditional on growth.

Chartbook 447: The US economy in May 2026 - How much cognitive dissonance can you handle?

Open your favorite business paper or news site right now and you will be confronted with a scene of spectacular cognitive dissonance.

open.substack.com

Well timed Muskology

/538/ Muskism ft. Quinn Slobodian & Ben Tarnoff

Podcast Episode · Bungacast · 10 March · 1hr 15min

podcasts.apple.com

Morning

So. much. de-dollarisation.

The offshore RMB system is about supporting China’s export growth model, not challenging the dollar 👀 open.substack.com/pub/hegemone...

Leaving aside the economic logic of sticking it to the bond markets, the timing (lagged oil crisis, US gridlock, Taiwan?) and politics (shadow of Truss, 5-party politics, hyper-adversarialism) of doing so are just uniquely terrible

Ben Ansell@benansell.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Why don't you just say "MMT" three times in front of a mirror if you want to summon them?

Trump’s poll numbers are a leading indicator and equity markets are a lagging indicator…which is not normal historically, discuss

Wall Street bulls bet US stocks rally will defy bubble fears

Investors and strategists shrug off worries that markets could be overheating by betting on huge gains for AI-linked shares

ft.com

Interesting on the three rails used by China to process offshore dollars

Yuan-a pay in dollars?

How China domesticated the dollar

open.substack.com