A chart of Brent crude oil showing the price spiking to above $90 per barrel.
Not great really.
06.03.2026 17:28
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A chart of Brent crude oil showing the price spiking to above $90 per barrel.
Not great really.
BlackRock limits redemptions at private credit fund as outflows swell.
🎶 There may be trouble ahead.... Let's Face the Music ...and wail. 🎶
@FT...
Absolutely right
Again, as with Guardian article, Mahmood's reliance on false/deliberately misleading claims about her "earned settlement" proposals suggests that she knows she can't defend them on the merits, in principle or in practice.
An economically, politically and morally bankrupt strategy.
Bad for individuals, bad for families, bad for businesses, bad for public services, bad for integration and cohesion.
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
Two days after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Brent was up 1% (black). In contrast, 2 days after the US launched attacks on Iran, we're up 15% (blue). This is an absolutely massive shock that's feeding through global markets. Disorderly conditions building...
robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/what-iran-...
This stinks at every level. What refugees desperately need after their claims are accepted is the stability to rebuild their lives. This change will cause immeasurable stress and anxiety to some of the most vulnerable people in the country
this policy is cruel and will make minimal difference to immigration numbers (as refugees are only a small % of overall immigrants, and most of them come from countries that aren't going to be safe any time soon [e.g. eritrea;afghanistan]).
It will actively harm integration and finding work.
But if the government had stuck firm to what we might call the technocratic approach to work visas, then there would remain a clear opportunity to marshall evidence in favour of international recruitment (while at the same time thinking seriously about the role of the higher education system in training the UK’s scientific, social, technical and cultural workforce, which isn’t a bad side-effect). Instead, Labour has continued to gesture at this via increases to the cost of the visa system and employing overseas staff, while in other areas – particularly, but not only, in the routes to settlement consultation – it has given in to populist tendencies that have little to do with what’s best for the UK either as an economy or a society, and everything to do with its political anxieties and factional power struggles.
An excellent analysis of immigration and the UK HE system by @wonkhe.bsky.social
wonkhe.com/blogs/immigr...
"If annual net migration were to be 200,000 lower on average than the OBR’s current assumption over the five years of its forecast, the cumulative 1mn hit to labour supply could add up to £20bn per year to forecast borrowing, the IFS noted."
The migration doom loop at work: does anyone in government seriously think that a strategy designed to keep out skilled workers and students makes either economic or political sense?
://www.ft.com/content/7408ad00-e4eb-41c7-8849-36061bc0eac1
Left figure: Year-on-year change (in %) of monthly Chinese exports to the EU and the US (in USD). Right figure: Average year-on-year growth rate (in %) of monthly Chinese export values/quantities/unit values to the EU (in USD) of all HS6 product groups; pre-tariff period is January 2024 to March 2025; post-tariff period is April 2025 to December 2025. High US tariffs on imports from China in the first half of 2025 led to concerns about a large-scale redirection of Chinese exports to the EU. This column argues that these tariffs have so far caused only limited trade diversion towards the EU. Effects appear confined to a small group of highly exposed products, for which export quantities to the EU have risen and prices appear to have edged down. Thus, the macroeconomic impact likely has been very limited so far. The recent increase in Chinese exports to the EU seems primarily driven by structural factors like China’s growing competitiveness.
Patrick Schulte, Almira Enders, Andreas Esser, and Felix Strobel (@bundesbank.de) show that US tariffs on China did not cause large-scale redirection of Chinese exports to the EU despite concerns. Effects appear confined to a small group of highly exposed products.
cepr.org/voxeu/column...
#EconSky
With all the chatter about AI disruption, I would have expected lower breakeven inflation to be driving the fall in nominal Treasury yields, since AI is a deflationary shock. But that's not what's happening at all. It's real yields that are tumbling...
robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/do-markets...
"Ministers need to wake up."
Indeed. Some shift away from the exceptional levels of overseas recruitment 21-24 was natural/desirable.
But current "strategy" - no new visas and making life as unpleasant as possible for migrants already here - is madness.
www.theguardian.com/society/2026...
This is excellent from @iandunt.bsky.social on the government's proposals on settlement: unsupported by evidence, counterproductive on integration, cohesion and economic growth.
As Ian says not too late for government to think again.
iandunt.substack.com/p/can-we-ext...
This week's post: How Labour makes fighting right wing populism harder mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2026/02/how-...
It is highly unlikely that a combination of socially liberal parties (Greens, LibDems and nationalists) can win a majority of seats in the House of Commons, even if they form a pact.
You've heard that something is going on with colon cancer. I'm working on a thing...let me know what you think!! Is it helpful? What would you do different?
hankgreen.com/crc
Migrants -both from EU and elsewhere -are more likely to be in work than the UK-born.
As @dsmitheconomics.bsky.social says, lots of other moving parts, but other things equal much lower migration means tax rises or spending cuts.
www.thetimes.com/business/eco...
It’s solving problems that are a mix of maths, economics and computer science and doing it faster than I can understand the solutions it produces.
But what does all this mean for theories of mind, consciousness and so on? Absolutely no idea.
🧵THREAD: A group of over 8000 migrants across the UK are preparing to take the UK Government to court over the proposed changes to immigration rules.
The group has raised £25k and taken advice from a barrister in preparation for a legal fight, The National has learned👇
This person does not understand the idea of a counterfactual. It's not true that the '4%' imagines a Britain that 'avoided every global shock, and followed a perfectly smooth pre-2016 trend forever.' It judges that on average, in all scenarios, shock or no shock, we'd eventually be 4% poorer.
Employment rates for non-EU born are now *above* those for the UK born.
Gap used be nearly 10 percentage points.
A tribute to the success of UK immigration/immigrants and labour market integration, especially in recent years.
Something government should celebrate..
Immigration and the limits of "control": me in @prospectmagazine.co.uk on why, and how, Labour has got both the economics *and* politics of migration so wrong.
www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/724...
Large retail deposit accounts are insensitive to interest rates because they are used as liquidity holding bins, from Bronson Argyle, Benjamin Iverson, Jason D. Kotter, Taylor D. Nadauld, and Christopher Palmer www.nber.org/papers/w34742
Very interesting research paper that shows that using AI with programming can significantly reduce mastery over topics. Perhaps unsurprising, but the lack of significant speed gains in this exercise are remarkable
www.anthropic.com/research/AI-...
NEW from me:
DOGE is officially the largest one-year cut in the federal workforce since the end of WWII, with 279k jobs lost—though it didn't come close to its supposed goal of reducing the deficit & cut some of the federal government's most effective programs 🧵
www.apricitas.io/p/the-econom...
My quote on the current mess:
"A classic boom-bust cycle....the result is a system that oscillates between openness and restriction. Employers, universities and migrants face uncertainty; public services face discontinuous shocks to labour supply; and public trust erodes.”
✍️ Please sign and share my latest petition!
In November, the government announced plans to amend the British Nationality Act to make citizenship harder to obtain.
So after migrants meet new ILR requirements, they'll wait longer, pay more, jump through MORE hoops.
🧵 Here's why this is unfair… /1
Mexico is a puzzle. Exports to the US are better than ever, but the country is back to the same kind of growth stagnation that defined the 5 years before COVID. The reason is weak private consumption, so the benefits from trade aren't reaching enough people.
robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/mexicos-gr...
Whoomp there is is! You knew this was coming…