Tessera

I'm not saying there's going to be a King Lear situation or anything, but Aliko Dangote has three daughters and they are (as here) increasingly taking over as the public faces of the business of Africa's richest man. With some very ambitious financial targets. financialpost.com/pmn/business...

Dangote Targets $100 Billion Empire With Oil and Fertilizers

Aliko Dangote is betting that Africa’s largest refinery, the continent’s biggest cement producer and his fertilizer businesses will expand his empire fivefold to $1…

financialpost.com

YouGov@yougov.co.uk · 2w ago

Channel 4 reality show where Venezuela's bondholders ditch Rothschild, Lazard, etc and go with a panel randomly selected from the British public. Nans versus oil warrants

If you had a choice between instantly receiving £50,000 or a 50% chance to win £1m, which would you pick? £50,000: 73% 50/50 chance of winning £1m: 21% yougov.com/en-gb/daily-...

“The Venezuelan government set up a website to track the revenue from US-run oil sales, but it has only one entry — a transfer of $300mn in March…” www.ft.com/content/0e56...

The US has collected about $13bn of Venezuela’s oil money. Where is it?

Washington has given diverging accounts of where the earthquake-shattered country’s funds are going

ft.com

I finished Sandman Mystery Theatre, a great 90s comic - a great romance comic! - that is up there with the very best homages to 1930s noir/pulp. So here’s a version of Wesley Dodds, DC’s original Sandman.

Digital sketch of DC’s Sandman, emerging from a cloud of his sleeping gas. Gas mask, trilby hat, gloves and cape over a suit are all present and correct.

The underlying pencil and inks that were scanned for the digital colour sketch.

“Did ya think if you ate quietly, the sun god wouldn’t hear you?” is a line from the Odyssey script I’ll certainly be reusing

Barclays ponders whether India's diaspora aren't buying the foreign currency deposits being promoted by the central bank to prop up the rupee (like in 2013, www.ft.com/content/2002...) because they've been too busy profiting from chipmaker stocks (until recently anyway):

At a time when overseas equity markets have surged, especially chip stocks (notwithstanding recent volatility), many NRIs may view these deposits as a less attractive option, albeit one with far less volatility. Moreover, while the Indian diaspora is much wealthier than it was in 2013, the wealth is increasingly invested across a range of assets and is potentially less liquid than in 2013. At a time of increased geopolitical uncertainty, any liquidity may come at a premium.

Marvel Comics is leaving New York (narratively, the centre of the Marvel comics universe) & going to California. It's a bit like Motown leaving Detroit. But after so many media mergers and synergies, it's actually remarkable they were still in NYC so long. www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/bus...

Marvel Comics to Leave New York and Move Staffers to L.A. as Part of Major Overhaul (Exclusive)

The Disney-owned publisher is also getting a new editor in chief as 100 employees are being asked to relocate to Burbank by next July.

hollywoodreporter.com

A “conservative estimate of money leaving Russia outside of official figures so far this year is in the tens of billions of dollars, according to two people familiar with the investment decisions of several Russian billionaires.” 🥲 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Russia’s Elite Are Moving Billions Beyond Putin’s Wartime Grasp

Several of Russia’s richest people including some close to President Vladimir Putin have moved billions of dollars abroad in the past year after growing concerned about the country’s economy and the g...

bloomberg.com

Joseph Cotterill@jsphctrl.ft.com · 2mo ago

South Korea's financial regulator has banned new listings of single-stock leveraged ETFs, two months after many were launched tied to chipmakers (and since blew up). They also made it harder to trade offshore versions but expect this HK version to become the new focus... www.fsc.go.kr/no010101/87353

보도자료 - 위원회 소식 - 알림마당 - 금융위원회

혁신적 금융, 포용적 금융, 신뢰받는 금융, 금융위원회 입니다.

fsc.go.kr

The good news for the Hong Kong-listed CSOP SK Hynix Daily 2x Leveraged Product ETF is that it's still up 510% year to date. The bad news is that it was up 800% up to June 3rd.

I shall look forward to the next rounds of net migration forecasts from the OBR with great interest. www.ft.com/content/54d1...

Shabana Mahmood set to be named UK chancellor by Andy Burnham

Current home secretary expected to succeed Rachel Reeves as finance minister

ft.com

Chris Boyd @paperghost.bsky.social · 3w ago

“Now that SK Hynix also trades in US time via ADRs, investors say sentiment can bounce between Wall Street and Asia around the clock, raising the risk Korea’s leverage-fuelled volatility becomes global...“ uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/korea-a...

Korea’s AI Stock Rout Is Becoming a Lesson in Leveraged Excess

(Bloomberg) -- South Korea’s AI-fueled stock boom is turning into a cautionary tale of what happens when leverage becomes a more powerful market force than the fundamentals.Most Read from BloombergUS ...

uk.finance.yahoo.com

"no one on a temporary (work) visa should have the automatic right to stay forever" nothing about settlement is automatic. but not one single labour MP will call this out, because they've spent months repeating this same lie with regard to the settlement consultation. an endless shower of cowards

Jonathan Portes@jdportes.bsky.social · 3w ago

with alt text

THE RT HON KEMI BADENOCH MP

13 July 2026

Dear Home Secretary,

Last autumn, you set out proposals to extend the qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) to ten years, including for immigrants here already.

We supported the proposals and had tabled similar before Parliament some months earlier. We are concerned to read reports today that following pressure from Labour MPs anticipating a new direction from an incoming Prime Minister, you are now considering u-turning on previous commitments and exempting approximately two million immigrants who entered the country on work visas from 2021 to today from the changes.

This is a grave mistake. As Conservatives learned to our cost, five years is too short a time to obtain the indefinite right to remain in the UK. Many of these immigrants are working in low wage, low skilled jobs which could be done by some of the 9 million economically inactive British citizens.

Individuals who are not making a significant economic contribution over a ten-year period should not be allowed to stay indefinitely. Those not working, or working in low paid jobs, should be required to go home at the end of their temporary work visa.

Receiving ILR currently carries full entitlement to receive benefits. Even if this were restricted for an additional qualification period as some have called for, as things stand the migrants concerned would become eligible for British citizenship a year after receiving ILR and it would be very difficult to restrict benefits for citizens.

We also note there is currently no provision in the Immigration and Asylum Bill or existing powers to vary the welfare entitlements of people with ILR. A u-turn on ILR would unleash huge increases in benefits claims by recent arrivals which hard-pressed taxpayers cannot afford to fund.

The government is perfectly entitled to decide at any time the rules on indefinite rights of settlement, including in relation to those here already. No one who has come here on …

Nice 18th-century political argument, unfortunately Thomas Jefferson has already depicted you as the sickly weak Tory and himself as the chad Whig

Many like Adam Smith believed that all governments in the world could be reduced to just two-monarchies and republics-and that these were rooted in two basic types of personalities: monarchists, who loved peace and order, and republicans, who loved liberty and independence. Late in his life Jefferson likewise thought that all people by nature could be divided into just two parties. They existed in all countries, he said, whether called tories and whigs, aristocrats and democrats, right and left, ultras and radicals, or serviles and liberals. Jefferson left no doubt where his own sympathies lay: "the sickly, weakly, timid man, fears the people, and is a Tory by nature. The healthy, strong and bold, cherishes them, is formed a Whig by nature."
Gordon S. Wood
The Radicalism of the American Revolution: Pulitzer Prize
Winner
#kindlequotes

Many of the future founding fathers in Pre-Revolutionary America were what we’d call ‘patronage politicians’ today (RIP Gordon S. Wood)

Patronage was most evident in politics, and there its use was instinctive. When Benjamin Franklin was made deputy postmaster general of North America in 1753, wasted no time in appointing all his friends and relatives to positions under his control. His son became postmaster in Philadelphia. One brother was made postmaster in Boston; when the brother died, Franklin gave the office to his brother's stepson. He made his nephew postmaster in New Haven, appointed the son of a friend postmaster in Charleston, and made another friend in New York controller. A year or so later he promoted his son to be controller and moved the husband of his wife's niece into the vacated Philadelphia position. When this office again became open, he brought another brother down from Newport to fill it.
Gordon S. Wood
The Radicalism of the American Revolution: Pulitzer Prize
Winner
#kindlequotes

Probably no one in late-eighteenth-century America used his property and patronage to create political dependencies more shamelessly than John Hancock.
Hancock patronized everyone. He made work for people. He erected homes that he did not need. He built ships that he sold at a loss. He sponsored any and every young man who importuned him. He opened trade shops and staffed them. He purchased a concert hall for public use. He entertained lavishly and habitually treated the Boston populace to wine.
John Adams recalled that "not less than a thousand families were, every day in the year, dependent on Mr. Hancock for their daily bread."
Gordon S. Wood
The Radicalism of the American Revolution: Pulitzer Prize
Winner
#kindlequotes

Pre-revolutionary America was an export-reliant frontier market with financial inclusion problems. This meant patronage politicians (some remembered as ‘founding fathers’) could control access to credit on terms that were concessional but could display their influence. (RIP Gordon S. Wood)

Since many colonists did not yet believe that their inland trade was very important, they did not believe that paper money (which made such inland trade possible) was very important. And because the paper currency the colonists issued usually could be exchanged at the rate of 133 to 100 pounds sterling (but sometimes through overprinting of the paper the rate could skyrocket to 160 or 180 to 100 pounds sterling), established merchants who imported from abroad and had to pay their bills in sterling were generally anxious to limit the amounts of paper currency in circulation. Since paper money was therefore not readily available, colonists who needed money for their businesses usually had to rely on loans from local moneyed men, thus increasing their sense of personal clientage and dependency.
Gordon S. Wood
The Radicalism of the American Revolution: Pulitzer Prize
Winner
#kindlequotes

The probate records of wealthy colonists show large proportions of their estates out on loan. All sorts of persons lent money, said John Adams: merchants, professionals, widows, but especially "Men of fortune, who live upon their income." In 1776 Cadwallader Colden was the creditor of seventy-three different people. Even many of the great planters of the South earned more from such presumably ancillary activities as lending money than they did from selling their staple crops. Charles Carroll of Annapolis had f 24,000 on loan to his neighbors. A large landowner in the Shenandoah Valley, James Patton, had 90 percent of his total estate in the form of bonds, bills, and promissory notes due him. When merchants and wealthy artisans wanted to establish their status unequivocally as leisured gentlemen, they withdrew from their businesses and, apart from investing in land, lent out their wealth at interest.
Gordon S. Wood
The Radicalism of the American Revolution: Pulitzer Prize
Winner
#kindlequotes

Sam Gad Jones@samgadjones.bsky.social · 4w ago

First mentioned in the early 1100s as vassals of Holy Roman Emperor Henry V, the Mülltonnengesicht family soon enjoyed imperial immediacy and status as hereditary marshals of the empire. Outshining their rivals, the Eimerkopf.

New joy unlocked: reading about Count Binface - Graf Mülltonnengesicht, comte Face de Poubelle, il conte Binface etc etc - in European papers.

The UK’s regime type could at times be said to be drifting into something like ‘rotten borough presidentialism’. Both the head of government and a key opposition leader wield small electorates to build exaggerated claims to popular authority and re-centre their political capital.