John Stepek @John_Stepek Twitter profile

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John Stepek

2 months

This newsletter is now officially award winning, yet it is still free. So if you sign up now you're getting all that value added for the bargain price of zero British pence, or cheaper still, zero US cents - so get yours while stocks last!

Money Distilled

Bloomberg UK's John Stepek looks at the world of markets and economics, and explains what it all means for your money.

www.bloomberg.com

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Last Seen Profiles

@sentslices

@altyb_rswl

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@PeopleRestored

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@bokeplokalmalam

@BorisJohnson

@SavoirBeds1905

@stw_pdg

John Stepek

@John_Stepek

2 months

Sorry but @SteveBakerFRSA is mostly, perhaps entirely correct in his analysis here. And the smug reaction - ridicule, not to mention the extraordinary notion that 17 years ago is ancient history with no bearing on the current situation - exemplifies why voters are fed up

Good Morning Britain

@GMB

2 months

'At last I'm free' Steve Baker loses his Conservative Wycombe seat to Labour and questions who got it wrong.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

1 year

@davidbelle_ Have to say, this is the kind of reality check that curbed my libertarian streak

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

11 months

At some point, I'll be fascinated to read an in-depth account of the thought process that led to one of the UK's best-known high street retailers deciding to hire a boss with no retail experience and whose core strategy was "do less retailing"

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

1 month

Sorry, but Reeves is now in power, not in opposition, and needs to start focusing on that rather than the politics of smearing the opposition. Whatever you think of Liz Truss, your mortgage is not higher today than it was two years ago because of her.

Rachel Reeves

@RachelReevesMP

1 month

Millions of people are still paying the price for Liz Truss’ disastrous mini-budget. That is why I’m taking the difficult decisions now to fix the foundations of our economy, so we can rebuild Britain and make every part of our country better off.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

3 months

Britain: <taxes every productive activity in the country and tosses it down the gullet of a virtually static housing supply, an insatiable healthcare system, and the over-68s.> Also Britain: "Why oh why do we have a productivity problem?"

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

6 months

I was totally unaware of this good news story

Alec Stapp

@AlecStapp

6 months

Biomedical innovation is miraculous

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

18 days

The problem with acknowledging that the student loan system is closer to a graduate tax, is that this turns it explicitly into a tax on aspiration. "Study hard and you too could win a 71% marginal tax rate" is not a message that any politician - left or right - wants to send.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

2 months

Burnley has England's cheapest housing stock. It's less than an hour's commute from Manchester, but there's 1 fast train/hour and I don't know re reliability. Name me a policy that would work faster than doubling frequency and shaving 10 mins off the time

Even Britain’s Cheapest City Has a Housing Crisis

The city’s struggles illustrate challenges ahead for a new government intending to confront a nationwide housing shortage.

www.bloomberg.com

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

2 years

Why dry January? Why not dry July? Why choose to be fully lucid during the most miserable month of the year?

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

12 days

Found a rare exception to Betteridge's law of headlines in the wild

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

10 days

Have to say the audacity of this Fabian pensions report is breathtaking. The whole thing is about making defined contribution pensions less generous, then it tosses this point in about DB (largely public sector) pensions

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

3 years

Seems to be a lot of buzz around this new cryptocurrency, Natgas

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

5 months

It's fascinating - many are borderline obsessed with the "march of the far right" down here, but in Scotland an explicitly nationalist government is passing thought crime laws and it's largely ignored as well-meaning incompetence

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

2 months

Radical idea but hear me out: what if every adult in the UK (give or take) got to vote on a member of the community who would go to, I don't know, a big room in the capital city and represent them in debates about making laws and spending taxes. They could even make decisions

Duncan Robinson

@duncanrobinson

2 months

People in British politics would do ANYTHING rather than require a politician to make a difficult choice. How about another quango? What about a citizen’s assembly??

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

11 days

What's that you say? Rent controls don't work? Gosh if only economists had said something

How Rent Controls Are Deepening the Dutch Housing Crisis

A law designed to make homes more affordable ended up aggravating an apartment shortage.

www.bloomberg.com

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

2 years

Just to put that last tweet into plain English: everyone thought interest rates would stay low forever, so big chunks of the financial system (and many businesses) only work if that holds true. And now it doesn't - so they don't.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

1 year

Odd thing about this story is that prior to Brexit, most economists swore blind that EU migration had little or no impact on wages - I wonder what changed

Merryn Somerset Webb

@MerrynSW

1 year

Well will you look at that. Train people properly, pay them well and you can start to solve your staffing problems..

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

2 years

Gilt yields ticking a bit higher and pound dropping a bit now as investors start to wonder if absolutely milking the productive part of your economy to avoid making politically tough choices is really such a good idea

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

3 years

You know the market mood has turned when people are being nice about Warren Buffett again

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

4 years

@afneil Yes, and while we're right to recognise Russia's sacrifice in the second half of the war, it would also be good to stop downplaying what Stalin did to the likes of Poland during the first half

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

2 years

Today's my last day at @MoneyWeek . I've had the privilege of working with a superb team and I'll miss them all. But huge thanks to @MerrynSW for taking a chance on me 17 years ago – I really couldn't have hoped for a more knowledgeable or generous boss, colleague and friend.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

5 months

Cutting the ISA allowance would be an error because it's a savings vehicle that is still largely trusted and understood. Adding complexity with new variations is not ideal, but hacking away at allowances would introduce the same political uncertainty that now blights pensions.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

10 days

Fabian report also suggests "rebadging" pensions tax relief as a "pension tax credit" or "match payment" or "government top-up", lest you forget that every penny you're allowed to keep is one which has been nobly foregone by your benevolent overseers

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

6 months

British Isa: an extra £5k annual allowance for investment in UK equity. On top of existing allowance. Think no one can complain about that.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

10 months

Another point on UK mortgage approvals and housing market generally - transaction levels are now so low that last month, mortgage repayments outweighed the value of new mortgage debt taken out. Again, the sort of thing we haven't really seen since 2008-2011 downturn

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

6 months

I genuinely don't understand why this surprises people so much. London was at the centre of the global financial crisis in 2008, which was the closest thing to a 1930s depression-level event in our lifetimes. A long drawn-out, painful recovery was always on the cards

John Cassidy

@JohnCassidy

6 months

Remarkable chart from the FT showing that the British economy basically never recovered from the Great Financial Crisis. In the words of @MartinWolf_ : "In all, this is a disaster."

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

1 year

Most countries build sovereign wealth funds on resource wealth. Ireland built one by being hugely competitive on tax. UK could have done either. But no. Our big SWF plan? Appropriate the assets of the only remaining high-quality private sector corporate pension schemes.

Merryn Somerset Webb

@MerrynSW

1 year

Your pension. Their “investments”

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

1 year

In many ways it's fascinating that we've got to the point where this question is even being asked, let alone that the wrong answer is (at the time of retweet) winning

Martin Lewis

@MartinSLewis

1 year

Today's Twitter Polls: Should a mortgage protection fund be set up to help people cope with high interest rates as Lib Dems are calling for (a £3bn one)? Or are you a no, perhaps as the state should not get involved in helping fund mortgage payments.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

5 months

The smoking ban feels to me like yet more gesture politics. Just another layer of pointless paperwork creation so someone can claim to be "doing good". Governments generally need a clearer list of priorities to stop them getting distracted by this piffle

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

2 years

Personal news - I’ve recently moved to @bloomberguk where I'll be writing a daily newsletter, Money Distilled, in which I’ll be boiling down how the biggest stories of the day affect UK investors and savers. Sign up here - it launches very soon!

Money Distilled

Bloomberg UK's John Stepek looks at the world of markets and economics, and explains what it all means for your money.

www.bloomberg.com

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

4 months

I feel that it cannot be stated often enough that at least part (quite a bit part) of the secret to America's economic success lies in this chart

The US has Low Electricity Prices - Marginal REVOLUTION

The US has some of the lowest electricity prices in the world. Shown below are industrial retail electricity prices in EU27, USA, UK, China and Japan. Electricity is critical for AI compute, electric...

marginalrevolution.com

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

3 months

What happens to a Ponzi scheme when potential new marks can no longer afford the entry fee?

Rev Cap

@rev_cap

3 months

Coming to America in every election for the rest of our lives

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

5 months

If you want to encourage British savers to pin even more of their retirement hopes on winning the housing lottery, then messing about with ISA allowances is about as effective a policy as you could hope to come up with.

Use Your UK Savings Tax Breaks While You Still Can

Even ISAs are on the hitlist now.

www.bloomberg.com

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

23 days

Price controls really are having a moment right now, it's amazing that economists apparently have so much influence and yet can't make even the basics that they almost all agree on stick.

Kamala Harris

@KamalaHarris

23 days

When I am President, it will be a day one priority to bring down prices. I’ll take on big corporations that engage in illegal price gouging and corporate landlords that unfairly raise rents on working families.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

1 year

"Britain’s elites are not serious about anything other than managing public opinion." V good piece from @s8mb on Britain's growth problem Similar piece from my colleague @adwooldridge here

Britain Should Stop Pretending It’s a Rich Country

The UK needs to do something about its dismal growth to avoid a permanent future of NHS queues, deteriorating services and recurrent strikes.

www.bloomberg.com

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

4 years

Just finished "Red Notice" by @Billbrowder on Audible. Superb, if harrowing at times. Main story is about battling human rights violations in Russia, but also has some of the clearest lay descriptions I've read about what investment banks and hedge funds actually do. Recommended.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

2 years

One thing I'd point out about the red dots on this chart for those feeling a contrarian "buy" coming on: April '09 - epic central bank loosening; April '20 - epic central bank loosening; Jul '22 - spot the difference

Jonathan Ferro

@FerroTV

2 years

BofA Fund Manager Survey "I'm so Bearish, I'm Bullish" -Record low growth expectations -Record low profit expectations -Equity allocation lowest since 08 -Cash levels the highest since 01

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

1 year

It's just hit me that when we were kids we didn't need mindfulness, because we had boredom

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

3 months

Seriously, stop criticising politicians for taking private jets/helicopters, and stop asking them what random grocery items cost. Neither of these displays hypocrisy or being out of touch. Dig in and hold them to account properly or don't bother

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

11 months

I am pro the ban on smoking in pubs. It worked. But I feel that creating a system where you'll eventually have 30 year olds getting ID'd in shops and a class of adults who can legally smoke vs those who can't, is fiddly, intrusive and counter productive

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

3 months

Fascinating that a grown adult - one feted for writing books for other grown adults at that - is apparently only now waking up to the fact that intentions are not the same thing as outcomes.

City A.M.

@CityAM

3 months

“The goal was to get Baillie Gifford to divest; it was not to get the festivals to lose their sponsors.” @NaomiAKlein defends Fossil Free Books in an interview with City A.M., calling Baillie Gifford "thin-skinned" for putting festivals in jeopardy

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

1 year

Finally read this piece by @watling_samuel on why the UK struggles to build new housing - it's brilliant, if you haven't read it yet, I urge you to make the time

Why Britain doesn’t build - Works in Progress

The history of attempts to reform planning in Britain is proof that political willpower is not enough: you need to be smart, not just brave.

worksinprogress.co

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

1 year

Market no longer convinced UK Bank rate will peak at 6%, let alone 6.5%. Just feel that efficiency wash over you

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

2 years

I said that UK house prices could well fall by 30% in real terms from peak to trough. Believe it or not, we're already a third of the way there.

UK House Prices Are Already Down 11% in Real Terms

And that’s not a bad thing.

www.bloomberg.com

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

1 month

“If we cannot afford it, we cannot do it.” Every time Rachel Reeves said this yesterday, an #MMT fairy lost its wings

UK Taxpayers Should Brace Themselves for the Reeves Budget

The new chancellor made it clear yesterday that there’ll be no gain without plenty of pain.

www.bloomberg.com

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

10 days

I'm quite curious to see how big the spike in the capital gains tax take is this year as a result of frantic pre-Budget selling.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

1 year

Note the triple-lock means the state pension will now rise by 8.5% from April 2024. So a figure artificially boosted by "one-off" bonuses to NHS and civil service staff means we're hiking the state pension significantly in real terms at a time when we're apparently broke.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

9 months

The US becoming a bigger oil producer than Saudi Arabia is probably the most important economic and geopolitical event of this century - certainly relative to its prominence (folk just seem to take it for granted now), and probably in absolute terms too.

Steve Hou

@stevehouf

9 months

Ooooo is this the “supercycle” everyone was talking about? I thought they meant prices. But it’s actually quantity?

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

1 year

Here's a suggestion - why not cut out the middlemen and just hand £10k to a housebuilder every time someone in the UK turns 30?

Resolution Foundation

@resfoundation

1 year

@ConnectingGens @mariatgrasso @hale_shale @FalkinghamJane Ahead of the event Lord Willetts writes for @ConHome on the need to address inter-generational inequities in the housing market, and proposes a £10,000 capital grant or 'Citizens Inheritance' to help more young people onto the housing ladder.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

27 days

Excellent analysis of why capital gains are so tricky to tax. Basic problem is that if govt puts up income tax, there's almost nothing your average punter can do about it, so outcome is predictable. But if govt puts up CGT, potential behavioural changes are far wider.

Marcus Ashworth

@marcusashworth

27 days

The main mission was growth, amirite? Overdoing wealth taxes is just about the finest way to destroy it. UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves has a fine line to tread, raising taxes while signaling Britain is open via @opinion

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

2 months

Fair point, well made

John Ralfe

@JohnRalfe1

2 months

See my @TheTimes_UK letter on public sector pay (and pensions) @RachelReevesMP @Keir_Starmer @TPScheme

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

11 months

I've just read that "One in five adults in England drink above the guideline 14 units per week" and frankly I'm appalled that 80% of you tell bare-faced lies to your GP

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

11 months

@shjfrench IR35 must be a big part of it. Probably also the fact that self-employed got fewer protections in covid

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

4 months

I fear a new must-avoid podcast is incoming

Genevieve Holl-Allen

@genevieve_holl

4 months

Exclusive: Lord Hague has said that he and Sir Tony Blair are like “two old guys on a park bench setting the world to rights”, as he revealed the pair have put aside their political differences (1/2)

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

5 years

That Jacob Rees-Mogg "gotcha" by C4 is a classic reminder of why I struggle to trust anything I read in the papers or see on telly. The level of understanding is so poor and the resulting message so skewed as to be plain wrong.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

1 month

ESG was a zero interest rate phenomenon part ninety million

Glencore Abandons Plan to Exit Coal as Shareholders Say No

Glencore Plc has abandoned plans to spin off its coal unit just nine months after saying it would exit the profitable but polluting business, following discussions with its shareholders who pushed...

www.bloomberg.com

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

4 months

Yes there are side-effects to Ozempic etc and it doesn't work for everyone. It's sensible to be cautious. But objecting to it because you think folk should lose weight "the hard way" or because you want to ban a type of food that you personally never eat, seems unreasonable.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

6 years

QE

felix salmon

@felixsalmon

6 years

I don’t understand what happened between 2003 and now that this painting would go from $27m to $150m. Modigliani’s reputation hasn’t really changed.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

9 days

Taylor Swift: embarks on globe-spanning multi-year tour that has such a significant stimulative impact on economic activity that it may have saved entire nations from technical recession Edinburgh: she should shell out for emptying the bins

Donald Turvill

@donturvLDR

10 days

✨🚨NEW: Taylor Swift's Edinburgh concerts cost taxpayers an 'outrageous' £40,000 The council was not recouped for providing extra toilets, security, CCTV and over 1,000 hours of overtime worked by staff, new figures show Full story to follow @EdinburghLive_ #LDReporter

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

18 days

Obviously, the fact that telling the truth about the student loan system would make it look really bad and open up entire palates-full of cans of worms, makes it clear that our current system is quite likely the worst of all options.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

5 years

I've just realised that Softbank is Berkshire Hathaway's anti-matter twin.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

10 months

The NI cut is welcome, but in the context of the overall income tax threshold freezes, perhaps analogous to watching the guy who just stole your car roll down the window and toss your wallet back to you

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

1 year

Bad enough that FTBs now nudging above the 35-year mortgage mark, but for STBs to be extending duration too just shows how stretched everything is. I will once again reiterate, hopefully unnecessarily, that it is not good for an economy for shelter to be this expensive.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

2 years

If you like windfall taxes on unearned profits, you'll love CGT on primary residences (won't you?)

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

2 months

Hey you! Do you like the Question Time audience? Well, you'll absolutely love Citizens Assemblies

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

2 years

A big general problem here is that the entire financial world has been positioned for a low or short-volatility universe and so the whole thing is riddled with fragilities that only become apparent in a high/long-vol world (which is what we're now in).

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

9 months

The growth of fracking is an extraordinary story. Even once it became a huge source of oil, the majority view was that it wouldn't last long because fields would be rapidly exhausted. But productivity / ingenuity etc appears to have postponed that decline

US Frackers Return to Haunt OPEC’s Pricing Strategy

OPEC’s one-time nemesis — US shale — is rearing its head just months after the sector was all but written off as a threat to the cartel’s sway over worldwide oil markets.

www.bloomberg.com

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

5 months

It's hard to think of a more effective acid bath in which to slowly dissolve the bonds of trust that hold civic society together, than Scotland's abhorrent new hate crime legislation

Chris Musson

@ChrisMusson

5 months

Police Scotland keep issuing variations of the line "Hate incidents are not recorded against alleged perpetrators" when asked about storing names of 'perpetrators' in non-crime incidents This statement misleads the public. It *suggests* names aren't logged. The opposite is true

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

2 years

@gabrielmilland One of the best things about moving down to London from Scotland was finding out that none of the widely-used London airports are by any credible stretch of the imagination, actually in London

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

1 year

"I don't think there's 'groupthink' in the MPC," Andrew Bailey tells the Treasury Committee. I'm sure the rest of the Bank of England team agrees

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

2 months

The trouble is that all forms of tax simplification would require our politicians to grow something resembling a spine

Merryn Somerset Webb

@MerrynSW

2 months

This is exactly right. Our insanely complicated tax system just takes up too much time.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

2 months

Look at this plucky little emerging market currency go

Zoe Schneeweiss

@ZSchneeweiss

2 months

Sterling exits the shadows as rally gathers momentum: @marcusashworth via @opinion

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

2 months

A key point which Dan makes further down - the average worker in the UK pays less tax now than they did in 2010. If (and it is an "if") the UK wants to raise more tax to spend on public services, it has to widen the tax base again. "Non-doms" and "the rich" aren't enough.

Dan Neidle

@DanNeidle

2 months

Opinion polls often show lots of people personally willing to pay more tax. But they never ask the obvious follow-up question: how much more tax? We did. It wasn't pretty.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

4 months

If I didn't want to be a member of a men-only club, I would simply not join a men-only club, but then I am something of a wilful contrarian

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

4 months

Think Simon's just uncovered the real reason why everyone in Britain's been miserable for the last two decades... the house price stairway to untold riches was snatched away and never came back

Simon French

@Frencheconomics

4 months

What is remarkable about UK resi prices is actually how stable in real terms (CPI, RPI, GDP per head adjusted) they have been in almost 20Y. No sustained change in real terms prices since the 1998-2007 ramp up....

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

1 year

“It’s widely acknowledged... that our tax system is over complicated, confusing and inefficient. It contains numerous cliff edges which at worst leave someone worse off by earning more money, create disincentives to work or grow a business.”

UK’s Complex Tax System Named an ‘Obstacle’ to Economic Growth

Britain’s tax system is so complicated it has become an “obstacle to economic dynamism” and needs to be simplified, an influential committee in Parliament concluded.

www.bloomberg.com

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

5 months

I love Thought for the Day on Radio 4. I love whacking the "off" button as it comes on. Gives me that gentle jolt of petty rebellion that gets me through the rest of the day.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

1 year

@MerrynSW It's not a bad column on a complex topic, but my main takeaway is that it confirms my view that you can always find an academic study to back up any point you want to make

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

2 months

@SteveBakerFRSA No, thank you - nice to see someone who remembers that stuff actually happened in the world prior to 2010

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

11 days

Colour me flabbergasted

Sam Bowman

@s8mb

11 days

This says we should tax pension contributions for defined contribution pensions – the ones private sector workers have – but have a special carve-out for defined benefit pensions – you know, the ones public sector workers have.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

1 year

You have to love how UK stocks care more about US monetary policy than anything the Bank of England does

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

4 months

This is a nice example in the wild of why our tax system will never be simplified. The opposition party has taken a loosely stated government aspiration to scrap employee NI (the UK's 2nd income tax on workers), and converted it into a promise to get rid of the state pension

The Labour Party

@UKLabour

4 months

Rishi Sunak’s unfunded £46 billion pledge is a threat to pensioners like Betty. It’s time for him to come clean about who is really going to pay for it.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

3 months

The key to understanding the Fossil Free Book and related protests (protests with which I entirely disagree) is that the stated goal (which is obviously stupid) is not the actual goal. The goal is to overthrow capitalism and (urgh) the "bourgeoisie". The rest is window dressing

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

6 years

(Sorry more MMT stuff) I also don't see why MMT needs to be invoked as a way to fund universal healthcare in the US. The US already spends about twice as much on health (as % of GDP) as the average developed nation. It's a political choice, not an economic constraint.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

1 year

It's reassuring to see that the bonds that were introduced in the wake of the last financial crisis have blossomed into today's assets of indeterminate value that are freaking everyone out this morning.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

10 days

They want to ban smoking harder? They want people to buy fewer cigarettes? Don't they know there's a £22bn black hole in the public finances? Won't someone think of the deficit?

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

3 months

Quick reminder that "cracking down on tax avoidance" is just another magic money tree. It's an all purpose answer to "where's the money going to come from?" If this money was easy to collect, don't you think they'd already be collecting it?

John Stepek

@John_Stepek

5 months

1/ HMRC data on what drives the theoretical £35.8bn "tax gap" (2021/22): taxpayer error and sloppy admin - 45%. Outright evasion and criminality - 24%. Legal disputes (ie tax that may not be owed) - 12%. Non-payment (ie bad tax debt) - 9%. "Hidden" economy - 6%. Avoidance - 4%.

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

10 months

What today's inflation rate drop also means is that the Bank of England interest rate (at 5.25%) is higher than the CPI inflation rate (now 4.6%) for the first time since (I believe) mid-2016

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

1 year

Oh come on...

Ben Bernanke to lead review into forecasting at Bank of England

The Court of the Bank of England is pleased to announce that Dr Ben Bernanke has agreed to lead a review into the Bank’s forecasting and related processes during times of significant uncertainty. Dr...

www.bankofengland.co.uk

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

6 months

I'm so old, I can remember the days when everyone was panicking about how the world was going to have too many people

Financial Times

@FT

7 months

The troubling decline in the global fertility rate | opinion

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

3 years

It's shocking to see how primitive our ancestors were in the days before the Metaverse and NFTs

Alan Cole

@AlanMCole

3 years

This was a real thing in the late 1990s. People were dead serious about this! Beanie baby value would only ever go up!

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

2 months

A revolutionary device for the boiling of water can surely only be decades away

Liam Quigley

@_elkue

2 months

“Welcome to our trash revolution.” Mayor Adams introduces the new bin that buildings with 1-9 units will be required to use instead of loose bags of garbage

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

4 months

@Madz_Grant @MrEwanMorrison Here you go

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

4 months

If the UK government offered a £55k baby bonus, I reckon the birth rate would rise sharply. Definitely have more 2-kid families turn into 3-kid families. Plus insta-deposit for FTBs? Analysis by @tylercowen of a scheme being examined by South Korea

Could a $70,000 Baby Bonus Solve South Korea’s Fertility Crisis?

A proposal to pay families for having a child is worth considering, though it’s unlikely to have much of an impact.

www.bloomberg.com

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

3 years

Serious kudos to @gilliantett for this piece on nuclear - it's so rare to read anyone (let alone a high-profile columnist) genuinely and thoughtfully acknowledging that they might have been wrong on a controversial subject

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

11 days

It's a good thing economies probably don't actually run on vibes, because the new UK government seems fiercely committed to finding out how much the feelgood factor really matters. There's a good economics PhD topic here somewhere...

Starmer Warns of ‘Painful’ Budget to Rebuild UK Finances

Keir Starmer warned that his government’s October budget statement will be “painful” and asked the nation to accept “short-term pain for long-term good,” as the prime minister used his first major...

www.bloomberg.com

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

6 months

Best entry yet on the interminable "why aren't you people happier?" argument

Dario Perkins

@darioperkins

6 months

hope this helps

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

10 months

Pleased to see that marginal and stealth taxes are now such a visible issue ("pleased" is the wrong word but at least we're talking about it)

Robert Colvile

@rcolvile

10 months

How can a £1 pay rise leave you £14,500 poorer? As @thetimes launches a new campaign to stop the stealth taxes, I've written for them on the two Very Bad Problems which are making millions of Britons worse off

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

3 months

A point which may already be obvious, but just in case it isn't: the book festival divestment campaign is not about the environment, it's about overturning capitalism. That's why it's apparently impervious to logic - because it's not actually about fossil fuel use etc

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John Stepek

@John_Stepek

1 year

Market now firmly expects Bank of England rate to peak at 6% rather than 5.75%

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