When Burnham says 'not in hock to bond markets' he means exactly this. The question is whether a Burnham government would have the political capital to attempt a new BoE concordat, or whether the gilt market reaction to his candidacy - 10bp this morning alone on the 10yr - makes that conversation impossible before it starts.
He'll be inheriting Starmerite Labour's mandate, not his own - and a party that just tore itself apart won't suddenly unite behind such a significant leftward shift on fiscal policy
Any move to change HMG's relationship with the BoE should be made cautiously, carefully, and deliberately. Central bank independence is a huge accomplishment and must not be compromised (for a sample caveat, just think "Prime Minister Farage", then think again). I would much rather have the future in the hands of Andrew Bailey than any of the party leaders, even Starmer who, despite it all, is the best of the lot. Fundamentally, the country IS "in hock to bond markets", no matter what a politician might pretend to think. The Bank can help manage and mitigate that relationship, but only if it has its own credibility and legitimacy as an independent, analytical, technical operator. We will soon see how much damage even a marginal reduction of independence will do with Warsh at the Fed. Let's not take too many chances with the much more fragile UK economy.
This is giving slippery slope to high moral hazard / high fiscal dominance. It might work in this crisis, but if the country is just inherently riskier now, why should the Bank of England stop the quite reasonable repricing? And who’s to stop a populist party from misusing the cap on yields imparted by the BoE.
The Truss-era memory keeps the BoE policy band tight — every successive UK government now has to price the bond market reaction into its first 100 days, not its first parliament. The interesting question is whether the same dynamic shows up in the US in the next fiscal cycle. The 30-year is already trading like the gilt market did in 2022, just slower.
The pattern from mur d'argent to the Truss-LDI episode is fiscal dominance choosing the timing. Bond markets only veto democratic politics once the debt-to-GDP arithmetic narrows the policy space below the political pain threshold. The US ratio is on the same trajectory, only later in the curve.
I agree with forcing the BoE to fulfil its macroprudential mandate. It's just that before that happens we have to stop politicians mouthing off about defying the bond market.
The UK and US run current account deficits and so must rely on the kindness of strangers to fund those deficits. No so Japan and the Eurozone trio of Germany, France and Italy whose surpluses afford them a degree of day-to-day funding cover.... Are foreign strangers losing patience with the fiscally incontinent West? If there are, it is hardly surprising that the UK is the weakest link...
Yes good for Uk to rejoin the EU, but this time give up the sterling and go Full Monty! Adopt the Euro and make Britain a slave to Brussels! Restore the Western Roman Empire!🤣🤣
I was with you right up until you suggested the horrific undemocratic idea of PR, your reference to it being especially horrific as it’s followed 2 sentences later acknowledging governments without majorities are a problem
Not that the majority issue is the issue with PR the issue is in a FPTP (yuck) or ideally preference or AV system the voters go to an election knowing what the coalition (a large broad based party that can in FPTP is a coalition) and policy program are BEFORE the election, with the horrific anti-democratic PR the coalition and policy program are formed AFTER the election
What is needed is for voters and party leaders to recognise politics isn’t like an iPhone you don’t get to tailor it specifically to your idiosyncratic preferences and for broad based parties to form again
The Voldemort framing is perfect and it reveals a structural pattern. The gold standard in the interwar period and the ERM in the early 1990s both imposed policy constraints on elected governments while appearing to be neutral technical arrangements, deflationary discipline dressed up as monetary architecture. BoE independence plus aggressive QT is the 2020s iteration. The constraint changes each generation but the political function is identical, it provides cover for governments to say "we have no choice" when they mean "we've chosen not to choose."
The Robin Brooks comparison is the sharpest part of this because it makes the argument from the other direction entirely. If UK yields are higher than Italy's partly because the BoE refuses to cap them while the ECB does, then the gilt market premium is measuring the BoE's willingness to let elected governments feel pain rather than UK fiscal risk in isolation. thats a policy choice being read as a market signal, and the entire UK fiscal debate is being conducted on the basis of that misreading. The haunted house metaphor works precisely because the ghost is real. it just lives in Threadneedle Street rather than in the deficit figures.
Austerity strip mined the value from Britain and handed that value to the wealthiest members of society. Now Britain needs to raise taxes dramatically to claw-back that value, and to spend it aggressively to repair the damage -- repair infrastructure, invest in the NHS and education, and renationalize critical functions such as water supply.
Unfortunately, rejoining the EU may require also joining the Eurozone. And, we know what a disaster that was, and continues to be. Britain had a very special deal with the EU which is unlikely to be offered the second time around.
Well said Adam. We wrote about this recently as well (link below). When you think how much ink has been spilt on 'fiscal dominance', it's remarkable that the UK has monetary dominance to the point of treason! If the Bank of England is no longer operationally independent in 5 years' time, QT will be why, and deservedly so!
Today's 10Y close above 4.5% extends the precedent further — the bond market is no longer reacting to budgets, it is pre-empting them. Once that becomes the operative dynamic, fiscal-political space collapses without a single policy announcement. The Voldemort-on-Threadneedle frame travels well beyond London.
I would say that the Americans don't regard the uk as a "basket case" but that on a continent of slaves, the british are perhaps most slavish of all.
Take away the United States and the uk goes from America's Special Little Buddy to a flavor challenged backwater nominally ruled by a character out of a comic opera, poor, backward, pompous and won't shut up about long past glories and Male Buggery.
As a historical point, one of the Two Incredibly Prescient 1990s Edward Luttwak LRB Essays is on the subject of "Central Bankism". Motivating paragraphs and link below,
"It is perfectly true that real incomes and real wealth cannot be created by printing money, that inflation hurts the poor disproportionately as well as everyone who lives on a fixed income (‘the cruellest tax’) and wealthy rentiers who live on bond incomes. Inflation enriches all who are already rich enough to own real estate and other marketable assets, while disproportionately enriching smart speculators – but so does deflation. It is also true that, if unchecked, inflation naturally accelerates into hyper-inflation, which not only destroys currencies but also degrades economic efficiency – as people run to spend their suitcases of banknotes instead of working – and may even wreck the entire financial structure of a society. This being the worst manifestation of the devil, the ultimate Beelzebub, it is not surprising that in 1996, with inflation ultra-low at 1.5 per cent, the Bundesbank, when refusing to cut interest rates, still invokes the hyper-inflation of the early Twenties ‘that led to Hitler’ (it was followed by ten years of democracy, but never mind).
Inflation, then, is bad and hyper-inflation very bad indeed; but it is just as true that deflation is bad, and that hyper-deflation is disastrous. In economic theory deflation should have no consequences at all, because any upward movement in the value of money can be nullified by a compensating reduction in prices and wages. In practice, however, prices are downwardly sticky while very few employees anywhere at any time accept wage cuts without the most bitter resistance – even in the US with its mass immigration, increasingly unfavourable labour market and weak unions. Contrary to theory, deflation starves economies, even without taking into account the purely subjective mechanism that reduces real demand, and therefore real production and real employment, when people feel poorer just because the nominal value of their houses and other assets is falling. Inflation and deflation should therefore be viewed as equally objectionable by politicians and the public; they should resound in our ears as equivalent evils, like flood and drought, or theft and robbery. It is the greatest triumph of central bankism that only inflation is viewed as sinful.
...
How did this come about? How did the employees of one public institution among many assume a priestly status, becoming more powerful in many ways than prime ministers or Presidents? One heard very little about them in the three post-war decades of rapid economic growth, sharply rising incomes and widening prosperity. Only during the Thirties, not coincidentally the years of the Great Depression, were they as prominent as they are now. A world in crisis followed with bated breath every pronouncement from the lips of the Bank of England’s Montagu Norman, Germany’s Hjalmar Schacht and their lesser colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic. With tragic consequences for millions of American families, and far more terrible repercussions in Europe, governments almost everywhere accepted their remedy for the Depression, which was to deflate, deflate, deflate, by cutting public spending and restricting credit. One result was that Hitler’s rise to power was accelerated by mass unemployment.
We now know that the central bankers were totally wrong. The only way to refloat the sinking economies of the Thirties was to start off the chain-reaction of demand by sharply increasing government spending, and never mind a bit of inflation. Had the big boys of the world economy led the way, by inflating and importing first, to generate more demand for their own exports, everyone would have come out just fine. But only a few adventurous souls, and only one reputable economist, John Maynard Keynes, dared to contradict what seemed to be common sense, and even they were hesitant. The central bankers, by contrast, were utterly certain that they were right, just as they are now; and they gave exactly the same advice they are giving now; the only advice central bankers ever give: tighten credit, restrict spending, hold back demand. Old Sigmund had a term for that. "
The other Incredibly Prescient Luttwawk LRB of course "Why Fascism Is the Way of the Future", tho' the left-wing half of his argument has been completely disproven (as these parties just became facsimiles of what he describes on the right).
"In this situation, what does the moderate Right – mainstream US Republicans, British Tories and all their counterparts elsewhere – have to offer? Only more free trade and globalisation, more deregulation and structural change, thus more dislocation of lives and social relations. It is only mildly amusing that nowadays the standard Republican/Tory after-dinner speech is a two-part affair, in which part one celebrates the virtues of unimpeded competition and dynamic structural change, while part two mourns the decline of the family and community ‘values’ that were eroded precisely by the forces commended in part one. Thus at the present time the core of Republican/Tory beliefs is a perfect non-sequitur. "
What I learnt today (in combination of Chartbook and Mason) was some more about the basic mechanisms how the bond market and policies “interact”.
I must say that I have not yet read any books by Mason, I only know certain articles from the time when he was frequently working for the Guardian.
What I knew about the economic development of the UK since Covid-times (the political I follow relatively closely) was indeed patchy ever since I didn’t regularly read The New Statesman anymore.
I had so much hope for a new start under Starmer (I realised that Corbyn could not win over the majority of voters and made several grave strategic mistakes) and Reeves but I had also for a long time missed the fact that they had neoliberal donors to answer to.
The various scandals (Mandelstam/Epstein, benefit caps for families with children, cuts to disability aid, Palestine etc.) I had of course read about.
My friend in London and myself (German) voted (for the first time in his case - I have nearly all of my life voted for the German Green party) both Green to show that we wished a turn to the left and to a sustainable ecologically conscious policy which is - in my opinion - the best and most intelligent way out of the problems both of our countries are faced with.
But again: I have already learnt a lot about various economic mechanisms here as a Chartbook subscriber. I don’t follow the exact numbers and developments closely enough myself (Bloomberg, The Economist, FT etc.) to be able to analyse why Labour, as a party in a country which issues it’s own currency, could not “easily” (here I cite Adam Tooze in Ones and Tooze) “kick the can a bit further down the road” to fund investments in the economy and to keep infrastructure and social services “healthy” at the same time.
I am only beginning to become “literate” in economic topics. I merely “took in” some additional facts from Mason. Btw, I also don’t believe I should form any “final” opinion on complex situations I am only now beginning to learn about 😉.
What struck me: Mason seemed to be intent on “getting all hands on deck” in terms of employment.
To illustrate my point: my friend, nearing 60, overall not very healthy (so he can’t just take “any” job) but a very intelligent, industrious professional (with a B.A. in film and photography - for years he had been working in several different museums and libraries; every time, usually exactly after six months, he had lost his work again. His various employers never gave out steady contracts - it was literally systematic) is desperately looking for jobs but it is getting more and more difficult for “average ppl” like him to find anything which simply “pays the rent” and provides a certain degree of financial stability.
I think it is wrong to think that this will change without clear interference from the state - otherwise there will be a race to the bottom.
Well - I hope you understand that I am very cautious in evaluating what I learn.
If you would like to “teach” me some more 😊 - I am always open to learn something worthwhile and/or new (and, btw, I completely trust Adam Tooze’s newsletter and podcasting to update me on “the factual” ever since I read pieces from him in the New Statesman and the LRB roundabout 2015/2016. I have been a subscriber since 2024. It already helped me a lot to understand more than I had ever learnt before as an avid reader of newspapers and consumer of countless other podcasts, tv-documentaries and other media etc., for decades - and there is still so much economic (and other) intellectual “terra incognita” for me to “conquer” here, that I don’t suppose I will ever “leave” again 😉 - it is simply too valuable and too much fun as well!)
Anyways - feel free to lecture me about anything you think I “got” completely “wrong” in your opinion, please! 😊
I don’t think you got things wrong and I completely respect your openness to learning. I’m not going to lecture you on anything because I’m not that arrogant and I don’t pretend to know everything (although I do know the difference between gravity and bond markets!). But here are a couple of things that might help understand why Paul Mason is wrong about bond markets. https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=35685
When Burnham says 'not in hock to bond markets' he means exactly this. The question is whether a Burnham government would have the political capital to attempt a new BoE concordat, or whether the gilt market reaction to his candidacy - 10bp this morning alone on the 10yr - makes that conversation impossible before it starts.
He'll be inheriting Starmerite Labour's mandate, not his own - and a party that just tore itself apart won't suddenly unite behind such a significant leftward shift on fiscal policy
Any move to change HMG's relationship with the BoE should be made cautiously, carefully, and deliberately. Central bank independence is a huge accomplishment and must not be compromised (for a sample caveat, just think "Prime Minister Farage", then think again). I would much rather have the future in the hands of Andrew Bailey than any of the party leaders, even Starmer who, despite it all, is the best of the lot. Fundamentally, the country IS "in hock to bond markets", no matter what a politician might pretend to think. The Bank can help manage and mitigate that relationship, but only if it has its own credibility and legitimacy as an independent, analytical, technical operator. We will soon see how much damage even a marginal reduction of independence will do with Warsh at the Fed. Let's not take too many chances with the much more fragile UK economy.
This is giving slippery slope to high moral hazard / high fiscal dominance. It might work in this crisis, but if the country is just inherently riskier now, why should the Bank of England stop the quite reasonable repricing? And who’s to stop a populist party from misusing the cap on yields imparted by the BoE.
The Truss-era memory keeps the BoE policy band tight — every successive UK government now has to price the bond market reaction into its first 100 days, not its first parliament. The interesting question is whether the same dynamic shows up in the US in the next fiscal cycle. The 30-year is already trading like the gilt market did in 2022, just slower.
The pattern from mur d'argent to the Truss-LDI episode is fiscal dominance choosing the timing. Bond markets only veto democratic politics once the debt-to-GDP arithmetic narrows the policy space below the political pain threshold. The US ratio is on the same trajectory, only later in the curve.
I agree with forcing the BoE to fulfil its macroprudential mandate. It's just that before that happens we have to stop politicians mouthing off about defying the bond market.
The UK and US run current account deficits and so must rely on the kindness of strangers to fund those deficits. No so Japan and the Eurozone trio of Germany, France and Italy whose surpluses afford them a degree of day-to-day funding cover.... Are foreign strangers losing patience with the fiscally incontinent West? If there are, it is hardly surprising that the UK is the weakest link...
What German surplus? Isn’t German debt 60%+ of its GDP? Chancellor Merz seems to think so. Is he wrong?
Eurozone current account surplus: about 1.6% of EZ GDP in 2025 (some Euros 255bn) and forecast to be 2.0% of GDP in 2026.
Yes good for Uk to rejoin the EU, but this time give up the sterling and go Full Monty! Adopt the Euro and make Britain a slave to Brussels! Restore the Western Roman Empire!🤣🤣
I was with you right up until you suggested the horrific undemocratic idea of PR, your reference to it being especially horrific as it’s followed 2 sentences later acknowledging governments without majorities are a problem
Not that the majority issue is the issue with PR the issue is in a FPTP (yuck) or ideally preference or AV system the voters go to an election knowing what the coalition (a large broad based party that can in FPTP is a coalition) and policy program are BEFORE the election, with the horrific anti-democratic PR the coalition and policy program are formed AFTER the election
What is needed is for voters and party leaders to recognise politics isn’t like an iPhone you don’t get to tailor it specifically to your idiosyncratic preferences and for broad based parties to form again
The Voldemort framing is perfect and it reveals a structural pattern. The gold standard in the interwar period and the ERM in the early 1990s both imposed policy constraints on elected governments while appearing to be neutral technical arrangements, deflationary discipline dressed up as monetary architecture. BoE independence plus aggressive QT is the 2020s iteration. The constraint changes each generation but the political function is identical, it provides cover for governments to say "we have no choice" when they mean "we've chosen not to choose."
The Robin Brooks comparison is the sharpest part of this because it makes the argument from the other direction entirely. If UK yields are higher than Italy's partly because the BoE refuses to cap them while the ECB does, then the gilt market premium is measuring the BoE's willingness to let elected governments feel pain rather than UK fiscal risk in isolation. thats a policy choice being read as a market signal, and the entire UK fiscal debate is being conducted on the basis of that misreading. The haunted house metaphor works precisely because the ghost is real. it just lives in Threadneedle Street rather than in the deficit figures.
Austerity strip mined the value from Britain and handed that value to the wealthiest members of society. Now Britain needs to raise taxes dramatically to claw-back that value, and to spend it aggressively to repair the damage -- repair infrastructure, invest in the NHS and education, and renationalize critical functions such as water supply.
Unfortunately, rejoining the EU may require also joining the Eurozone. And, we know what a disaster that was, and continues to be. Britain had a very special deal with the EU which is unlikely to be offered the second time around.
(My view from across the pond.)
Well said Adam. We wrote about this recently as well (link below). When you think how much ink has been spilt on 'fiscal dominance', it's remarkable that the UK has monetary dominance to the point of treason! If the Bank of England is no longer operationally independent in 5 years' time, QT will be why, and deservedly so!
https://hybrideconomics.substack.com/p/gilt-y-of-sabotage?r=6re4p8&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Today's 10Y close above 4.5% extends the precedent further — the bond market is no longer reacting to budgets, it is pre-empting them. Once that becomes the operative dynamic, fiscal-political space collapses without a single policy announcement. The Voldemort-on-Threadneedle frame travels well beyond London.
I would say that the Americans don't regard the uk as a "basket case" but that on a continent of slaves, the british are perhaps most slavish of all.
Take away the United States and the uk goes from America's Special Little Buddy to a flavor challenged backwater nominally ruled by a character out of a comic opera, poor, backward, pompous and won't shut up about long past glories and Male Buggery.
As a historical point, one of the Two Incredibly Prescient 1990s Edward Luttwak LRB Essays is on the subject of "Central Bankism". Motivating paragraphs and link below,
"It is perfectly true that real incomes and real wealth cannot be created by printing money, that inflation hurts the poor disproportionately as well as everyone who lives on a fixed income (‘the cruellest tax’) and wealthy rentiers who live on bond incomes. Inflation enriches all who are already rich enough to own real estate and other marketable assets, while disproportionately enriching smart speculators – but so does deflation. It is also true that, if unchecked, inflation naturally accelerates into hyper-inflation, which not only destroys currencies but also degrades economic efficiency – as people run to spend their suitcases of banknotes instead of working – and may even wreck the entire financial structure of a society. This being the worst manifestation of the devil, the ultimate Beelzebub, it is not surprising that in 1996, with inflation ultra-low at 1.5 per cent, the Bundesbank, when refusing to cut interest rates, still invokes the hyper-inflation of the early Twenties ‘that led to Hitler’ (it was followed by ten years of democracy, but never mind).
Inflation, then, is bad and hyper-inflation very bad indeed; but it is just as true that deflation is bad, and that hyper-deflation is disastrous. In economic theory deflation should have no consequences at all, because any upward movement in the value of money can be nullified by a compensating reduction in prices and wages. In practice, however, prices are downwardly sticky while very few employees anywhere at any time accept wage cuts without the most bitter resistance – even in the US with its mass immigration, increasingly unfavourable labour market and weak unions. Contrary to theory, deflation starves economies, even without taking into account the purely subjective mechanism that reduces real demand, and therefore real production and real employment, when people feel poorer just because the nominal value of their houses and other assets is falling. Inflation and deflation should therefore be viewed as equally objectionable by politicians and the public; they should resound in our ears as equivalent evils, like flood and drought, or theft and robbery. It is the greatest triumph of central bankism that only inflation is viewed as sinful.
...
How did this come about? How did the employees of one public institution among many assume a priestly status, becoming more powerful in many ways than prime ministers or Presidents? One heard very little about them in the three post-war decades of rapid economic growth, sharply rising incomes and widening prosperity. Only during the Thirties, not coincidentally the years of the Great Depression, were they as prominent as they are now. A world in crisis followed with bated breath every pronouncement from the lips of the Bank of England’s Montagu Norman, Germany’s Hjalmar Schacht and their lesser colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic. With tragic consequences for millions of American families, and far more terrible repercussions in Europe, governments almost everywhere accepted their remedy for the Depression, which was to deflate, deflate, deflate, by cutting public spending and restricting credit. One result was that Hitler’s rise to power was accelerated by mass unemployment.
We now know that the central bankers were totally wrong. The only way to refloat the sinking economies of the Thirties was to start off the chain-reaction of demand by sharply increasing government spending, and never mind a bit of inflation. Had the big boys of the world economy led the way, by inflating and importing first, to generate more demand for their own exports, everyone would have come out just fine. But only a few adventurous souls, and only one reputable economist, John Maynard Keynes, dared to contradict what seemed to be common sense, and even they were hesitant. The central bankers, by contrast, were utterly certain that they were right, just as they are now; and they gave exactly the same advice they are giving now; the only advice central bankers ever give: tighten credit, restrict spending, hold back demand. Old Sigmund had a term for that. "
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v18/n22/edward-luttwak/central-bankism
The other Incredibly Prescient Luttwawk LRB of course "Why Fascism Is the Way of the Future", tho' the left-wing half of his argument has been completely disproven (as these parties just became facsimiles of what he describes on the right).
"In this situation, what does the moderate Right – mainstream US Republicans, British Tories and all their counterparts elsewhere – have to offer? Only more free trade and globalisation, more deregulation and structural change, thus more dislocation of lives and social relations. It is only mildly amusing that nowadays the standard Republican/Tory after-dinner speech is a two-part affair, in which part one celebrates the virtues of unimpeded competition and dynamic structural change, while part two mourns the decline of the family and community ‘values’ that were eroded precisely by the forces commended in part one. Thus at the present time the core of Republican/Tory beliefs is a perfect non-sequitur. "
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v16/n07/edward-luttwak/why-fascism-is-the-wave-of-the-future
Thanks, that was excellent (also the link to Paul Mason - that provided a great explanation for amateurs like myself) and I have learnt a lot!
Mason is entirely wrong, though, so I hope you didn’t learn the wrong lesson from him.
What I learnt today (in combination of Chartbook and Mason) was some more about the basic mechanisms how the bond market and policies “interact”.
I must say that I have not yet read any books by Mason, I only know certain articles from the time when he was frequently working for the Guardian.
What I knew about the economic development of the UK since Covid-times (the political I follow relatively closely) was indeed patchy ever since I didn’t regularly read The New Statesman anymore.
I had so much hope for a new start under Starmer (I realised that Corbyn could not win over the majority of voters and made several grave strategic mistakes) and Reeves but I had also for a long time missed the fact that they had neoliberal donors to answer to.
The various scandals (Mandelstam/Epstein, benefit caps for families with children, cuts to disability aid, Palestine etc.) I had of course read about.
My friend in London and myself (German) voted (for the first time in his case - I have nearly all of my life voted for the German Green party) both Green to show that we wished a turn to the left and to a sustainable ecologically conscious policy which is - in my opinion - the best and most intelligent way out of the problems both of our countries are faced with.
But again: I have already learnt a lot about various economic mechanisms here as a Chartbook subscriber. I don’t follow the exact numbers and developments closely enough myself (Bloomberg, The Economist, FT etc.) to be able to analyse why Labour, as a party in a country which issues it’s own currency, could not “easily” (here I cite Adam Tooze in Ones and Tooze) “kick the can a bit further down the road” to fund investments in the economy and to keep infrastructure and social services “healthy” at the same time.
I am only beginning to become “literate” in economic topics. I merely “took in” some additional facts from Mason. Btw, I also don’t believe I should form any “final” opinion on complex situations I am only now beginning to learn about 😉.
What struck me: Mason seemed to be intent on “getting all hands on deck” in terms of employment.
To illustrate my point: my friend, nearing 60, overall not very healthy (so he can’t just take “any” job) but a very intelligent, industrious professional (with a B.A. in film and photography - for years he had been working in several different museums and libraries; every time, usually exactly after six months, he had lost his work again. His various employers never gave out steady contracts - it was literally systematic) is desperately looking for jobs but it is getting more and more difficult for “average ppl” like him to find anything which simply “pays the rent” and provides a certain degree of financial stability.
I think it is wrong to think that this will change without clear interference from the state - otherwise there will be a race to the bottom.
Well - I hope you understand that I am very cautious in evaluating what I learn.
If you would like to “teach” me some more 😊 - I am always open to learn something worthwhile and/or new (and, btw, I completely trust Adam Tooze’s newsletter and podcasting to update me on “the factual” ever since I read pieces from him in the New Statesman and the LRB roundabout 2015/2016. I have been a subscriber since 2024. It already helped me a lot to understand more than I had ever learnt before as an avid reader of newspapers and consumer of countless other podcasts, tv-documentaries and other media etc., for decades - and there is still so much economic (and other) intellectual “terra incognita” for me to “conquer” here, that I don’t suppose I will ever “leave” again 😉 - it is simply too valuable and too much fun as well!)
Anyways - feel free to lecture me about anything you think I “got” completely “wrong” in your opinion, please! 😊
I don’t think you got things wrong and I completely respect your openness to learning. I’m not going to lecture you on anything because I’m not that arrogant and I don’t pretend to know everything (although I do know the difference between gravity and bond markets!). But here are a couple of things that might help understand why Paul Mason is wrong about bond markets. https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=35685
https://youtu.be/ou1SyzPi_nA?si=sHxX51Ec4VRgYsjz