Sanewashing & Starmaggedon. Congress really is at an impasse & would Lenin really have approved of the IMF?
Great links, images, and reading from Chartbook Newsletter by Adam Tooze
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Paul Rebeyrolle (France, 1926-2005). “Paysage” (1950-1953). Source: La Gazette Drouot
Is Britain Priced For Starmageddon?
Horror stories about British bond yields soaring to their 2008 “crisis levels” made no mention of the fact that US yields broke through this supposedly unbearable level back in 2022 and have stayed ever since in the pre-2008 range.
In fact, as the chart on the prior page shows, today’s spread between US and UK bond yields is far below where it was in the 2022 Truss fiasco and has settled at exactly its long-term average, after narrowing in the past two months. This suggests that the much wider spread between gilt and bund yields is mainly a function of Germany’s economic weakness, not of conditions in Britain.
Source: Gavekal Research
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“Sanewashing” is a good phrase!
Source: Brad DeLong’s Grasping Reality
China is Nigeria’s largest trading partner. And the PBOC also provides Nigeria with a 15 billion yuan ($2 billion) currency-swap arrangement.
Source: Anthony Osae-Brown and Phila Siu in Bloomberg
Paul Rebeyrolle (France, 1926-2005). “Trout” (1956). Source: Tate Britain
On October 1 1924, Carter was the first future US President to be born in a hospital.
“Carter was born on Oct. 1, 1924, in the small farming town of Plains at a hospital where his mother worked as a nurse. He was the first future president born in a hospital.”
Source: Emma Hurt, Jacob Knutson, and Erin Doherty in Axios
The electoral damage done to incumbents across the developed world in 2024 was utterly unprecedented.
Source: John Burn-Murdoch in FT
Polarization really does render government in the US increasingly difficult.
The outgoing US Congress was the least productive of legislation of any in the last forty years.
Source: Andrew Solender in Axios
How Israel erased a town of 200,000 people.
Old maps, illustrations and videos of destruction tell the story of refugee camp levelled in Gaza offensive.
Source: Mehul Srivastava, Heba Saleh, Malaika Kanaaneh Tapper and Aditi Bhandari in FT
Would Lenin have approved of the IMF?
This by Branko Milanović is provocative, and I think insufficient as an answer. It is insufficient because, at the very least, it does not take account of the historically specific conjuncture in 1922 in which the nascent Soviet Union sent a delegation to the Genoa financial conference. But, it is definitely worth your time
Just how deep is the London underground? Amazing website this! And you can order the charts as wall displays!
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Paul Rebeyrolle (France, 1926-2005). “Smoking character” (1959). Source: Ysebaert Louisseize Arts
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