Karl Whelan

1/Kevin Hassett had long ago discredited himself as a scholar by parroting claims about the economy he knew to be false. Even so, parroting the lie about rigged statistics, is a new low. The academy should ostracize him the same way a fabricator of research should be ostracized.

Jenkins’s relentless commitment to being the worst Guardian columnist of all time gets taken to new levels. Airs of “Sure Adolf might be a bit of a rum bloke but look at the lovely architecture…”

And yet this is somehow actually worse. Would it have killed someone from UCD HR to sit in front of a camera for 3 minutes and read a script?

Ah, look, my university has decided to get a scary AI robot to tell me that doing research, admin and teaching preparation from home (which I've done forever) is apparently a "hybrid" arrangement that I need to fill out a form to get approval for.

www.ucd.ie/hr/a-z/hybri...

Two bottom lines.

- Don't accept offers on prediction markets. If you want to have any chance of making money, you have to make the offers.

- Don't buy low-priced contracts. And there is some evidence you can make money offering them.

Lately, I've been working on betting and prediction markets. Here's a working paper on this topic written with two UCD colleagues -- it is (AFAIK) the only systematic analysis of the prices on the Kalshi prediction market. We're still in pre-submission mode so comments\critiques welcome.

Uncontested: Dazn’s $1bn story reveals why the Club World Cup is really here Saudi-backed streaming superpower’s broadcasting deal for Fifa’s global project is the next expansionist step towards a world super league

Basically, yes. The money came from DAZN who seem to have got the money from Saudi.

www.theguardian.com/football/202...

And it worked fine to control rates. It would work fine now also.

Commercial banks, of course, like earning big profits on the large amount of reserves still in existence. So the lobbying here is asymmetric. Banks like tiering when the rate is negative but denounce it when the rate is positive.

3. If these hawkish guys cared so much about Eurosystem profits, they'd ask why they are paying interest on every single euros of reserves, rather than exempting a tier of them and paying on the marginal reserves. They did tiering when the rate was negative to protect commercial bank profits.

2. Making profits isn't anywhere in the Eurosystem's list of things it should be doing according to the Treaty. If bond purchases are a tool to bring inflation towards its target, then they should be an option.

3 points on this.

1. Eurosystem made profits due to bond buying for years because there was generally a positive spread between the bond yields and the rate it paid on reserves (which was negative for years). You can't look at losses without factoring in profits.

www.reuters.com/business/fin...

Crystal Palace: John Textor to sell stake to New York Jets owner Woody Johnson Crystal Palace part-owner John Textor signs an agreement to sell Woody Johnson his stake in the club, believed to be worth close to £190m.

Exciting for Crystal Palace. I hear this guy is a great owner!

www.bbc.com/sport/footba...

Thanks. I’ve advocated for a tiering framework for years as have other serious people like Paul Tucker and Paul de Grauwe. Whatever Ted Cruz may think (and who cares right?) it’s not a nutty position.

Hi Toby. Leave aside the crazy people. You know the alternative most sensible people have proposed to interest on all reserves is a tiering system, right? And you know this has been implemented in a negative rate environment by BoJ and ECB and works fine to control market rates. So why this framing?

‘There’s a menace, an edge to life in America that wasn’t there before. And the possibility of dark stuff’ Journalist Edward Luce on his biography of ‘cold war prophet’ Zbigniew Brzezinski, the fearful state of the US today, and ‘Lilliputian’ post-Brexit UK

Source www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

I continue to be glad I cancelled my @financialtimes.com
subscription over their Trump\Musk coverage.

Witness this heap of rubbish from Edward Luce.

To summarise ... Nazis are bad so it's best if they win so they don't get violent when they don't.

Really?

Incredible that it took a backbench rebellion to make this happen. Good for those who forced it but is this how they plan to govern for the next 4 years? Tory-in-disguise policies until rebellions get rid of them. Aren't they just better off to get rid of Starmer? It's not like he's popular.

Clearly governments need to be answerable to the public. But opposition TDs? Either way whatever the arguments are here they are not about “free speech” and the headline is essentially defamatory to Ruth Coppinger.

So people who decide they don’t want to talk to the Facist Racist Daily need to wake up and realise they are part of the problem?

Bothsides-ing journalism at its worst.

Jennifer O’Connell: Ruth Coppinger seems to think free speech applies only to views she likes Do you believe in free speech? Do you believe in it for views and people you loathe? Unless you answer ‘yes’ to both questions, you don’t believe in it

Sorry @jenoconnell.bsky.social but how is not wanting to talk to people you don’t want to talk to a violation of free speech? Are people not free to choose who they speak to? Whose freedom are you defending?

www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025...

New post: Starmer’s Disgraceful and Damaging Remarks
mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2025/05/star...
As with austerity in the 2010s, if none of the main parties can be honest about immigration then the public debate will be equally dishonest.

These guys don't care about universities. They just want to make showy splashes and get some headlines.

If they actually cared about Irish universities attracting talent they would allow us to offer reasonable contracts and provide better funding per student and better funding for research.

This stuff is hilarious.

Ah yes bring the best and brightest to Irish universities! Meanwhile the same government makes it impossible to recruit people on proper permanent contracts due to an Employment Control Framework introduced 15 years ago.

Meanwhile, funding per student is pitifully low.

I always tell my wife they're called America's team because everyone in America apart from Dallas hates them! But maybe all the years of losing has ended that.

At almost 30 years remove from living in Boston and not caring a jot about the NBA, my reaction to the news about the Celtics blowing two 20 point leads in a row in the playoffs to the Knicks was still a visceral oh my Jesus No.

REPORTER: But we're seeing as a result that ports here in the US, the traffic has really slowed and now thousands of dockworkers are truck drivers are worried about their jobs

TRUMP: That means we lose less money ... when you say it slowed down, that's a good thing, not a bad thing

Is this bad? I'm no international shipping expert, but this sounds bad.

A Tidal Wave of Change Is Headed for the U.S. Economy American consumers are not yet seeing much evidence of the drastic changes President Trump has made on trade. But they are on their way.

"It’s almost like we’re speeding towards a brick wall but the driver of the car doesn’t see it yet": Container ships from China fell by a third in April. By late May or early June, Americans may find less on the shelves. @anaswanson.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/b...

Outlook is undeniably bleak. bsky.app/profile/sean...

BESSENT SAYS NOT WORRIED ABOUT EMPTY SHELVES BESSENT SAYS WE'LL SEE ELASTICITIES, WE'LL SEE REPLACEMENTS