Category Archives for "Politics"

If the Tories are heading for extinction, what next – Corbyn for PM?

Can it get much worse for Theresa May? Having botched an unnecessary general election, her grand solution to the Brexit negotiations is basically to try and do nothing.  Having been sucked into the EU’s negotiating agenda of pay now, talk later on trade (or perhaps not at all), her ‘Florence’ proposal is now to seek […]

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“Carney warns fall in migrant workers could push up wages and inflation” – Doh!

“There’s an old saying. Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining” (The Outlaw Josey Wales – 1976)   The headlines, such as the one above from the Guardian may have juiced up the point a little, but underlying the attempted prevarication in his recent speech on Globalisation and inflation, this is pretty […]

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US adds +205k jobs in July – normally a positive for the US dollar, but now?

The problem of communicating a softening macro outlook is that it lowers interest rate expectations which in turn is a buy signal for not just investors, but also recruiters.  So while the IMF cut its US GDP expectations for 2017 and 2018 by -20bps and -30bps respectively (both now to +2.1%) and currency markets have ‘drumfped’ […]

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Yellen does virtuous – 5 years too late!

Confused?  Well you should be be if you’ve been believing the usual output from the Federal Reserve. Contrary to the narrative of robust US economic growth and tightening labour markets requiring a normalisation of interest rates, things aren’t quite as rosy as Ms Yellen had been suggesting.  Behind the increasingly absurd non-farm payroll data with […]

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UK election result – ‘hard brexit’ no less likely

So what now? The nightmare scenario, whereby Labour could form a Government looks unlikely. With 317 out of the 648 seats (of the 650 seats total) now counted, the Tories are clearly short of an overall majority, but with their historic allies, the DUP with 10 seats they can just scrape through, particularly should Sinn […]

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UK election special – Theresa May, or perhaps not!

Oh Theresa, why oh why? Was it personal ambition and vanity that led you to risk an overall party majority for what YouGov is now projecting will be another hung Parliament, including the possibility of a Labour led administration? And this would not be the Labour of Blair or Brown, but a return to the […]

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