Andy Bruce (Reuters)

What is going on in that second sentence? It's a real mouthful

Remember David Davis would come out with actual mad boasts about his past (like how the FT ran a front-page headline declaring him a "charming bastard")

And it was all "Oh, that's DD for you - he's a card!"

Cute baby

4-month-old babies are cute but they are not very good at sleeping, which makes work hard.

I will try to have a word.

But Miles cast doubt on the veracity of briefings given to media later in which government sources said improvements to the OBR's forecasts meant the they could avoid raising income tax rates.
"It certainly didn't reflect anything that was news from the OBR being fed into the government."

"I don't think it was misleading for the Chancellor to say that the fiscal position was very challenging at the beginning of that week," the OBR's David Miles tells Treasury Committee.

Well I showed them.

By joining er... City Car Club.

Zipcar rinsed me for £450 in 2009 over a teeny scratch.

Anyways, not really sure what point I'm trying to make here. "GRIEF IS A SNEAKY BASTARD?"

Ach, just read Marie's piece instead!

And that was very upsetting, for both of us. A complete curve ball.

You sort of fool yourself into having thoughts like: "Well, I'm probably at the stage now where I can probably talk about this stuff now without drawing attention to myself!"

But really, you don't get to decide.

We lost a v dear friend in 2018, out of the blue. Hard to read about Marie going through that repeatedly.

A little while ago I'd reconnected with a US friend who I'd lost touch with. After a great few hours in the pub, he just pipes up with: "So what's your friend Godfrey up to these days?"

Obviously, grief affects everyone differently.

One thing I didn't expect: although time passing gives you a sense of perspective, it resurfaces in unexpected ways.

Which I should have expected, because everyone says that - but it's more that it resurfaces in ways YOU don't expect.

I had so many thoughts and emotions reading this. I wanted to write to Marie about it but I wasn't sure what to say.

But you should read it, it's brilliant.

Suggestion Rachel Reeves exaggerated fiscal pressures is absurd Chancellor was instead far too optimistic about public finances and government’s ability to secure cuts

Feel like I'm going mad. The Budget's 'headroom' is based on frankly irresponsible and wildly optimistic claims about what Labour will do in the final year of the forecast, and on ignoring a bunch of upward pressures on spending, and the claim is that she was being exaggeratedly *pessimistic*?

That was a fascinating read. Thanks!

The Winner's Curse A discussion with Nobel Laureate Richard Thaler

New post just out:

A discussion with Nobel prize winner Richard Thaler on behavioural economics, nudging, organ donations, Bitcoin, mental accounting and much more...

(Free to read)

open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/t...

Those cans we kept kicking down the road - there's a big pile of them that are coming into view!

Another way of describing the trap: these painful contortions to meet the fiscal rules, intended to anchor confidence, have become pro-cyclical events that undermine credibility.

The act of "scrambling to meet them" tells you the framework has failed.

That's a bad place to be because it means past policy failings or bad luck - usually both - have led you to a point where something has to give.

It also leaves no margin for error in making budgets.

These anchors that smaller economies use to demonstrate credibility to attract investment ARE always arbitrary - but that arbitrariness only truly becomes tangible when they are being tested.

I wasn't really around during previous times when the UK economy's nominal anchors were being tested.

But I am sure lots of people were also commenting: "Why are we hurting people to chase an arbitrary peg against the Deutschmark?"

Or

"But why do we have to keep the pound at $2.80?"

Which is funny because when there was large amounts of headroom against the fiscal targets, no-one really talking about that as "money to play with" - it was just a background variable of interest maybe to people in the gilt market and economists who warned UK budgets were fiscal fiction anyway!

One unintended consequence of the Bad Equilibrium (great band) is the way people interpret fiscal rules, now that they are in the spotlight.

I heard Laura K say to Reeves that pre-budget OBR forecasts showed "£4 billion" to "play with" - which is a total misunderstanding of what headroom is.

I know some Smart People are urgently working on ways to get out of this bad equilibrium to smoothe the way to a better one in a different fiscal framework (before it all breaks in the classic way: Rolling crisis... SNAP! A painful reset/recession, bad times, and then better times)

But obvs it would have been better to say that (as that is now what they are having to say anyway). Hindsight's easy.

Broader point - the whole thing shows what a bad place we are in, regarding the way the fiscal rules are set up (and how closely they're met). Lots of weird, unintended outcomes.

I understand why they didn't say pre-budget: "The main reason we need to raise tax is to build headroom against the fiscal rules - we want to put the markets to bed and move on."

As that sounds like an arbitrary use of people's taxes - plugging a conceptual gap.

Aaahhhh - DO our politics good. bsky.app/profile/bruc...

As we know, social media corrupts. If all you do is quick-hit, meme/vibe snippets, then there's a good chance your politics will soon end up that way too.

It's such a political comms problem: the answer to "What should we stick on the socials?" is usually only quick-hit, visual, vibey stuff.

But I think you should do the other stuff too. It might not get the clicks, but at least it's out there in that world too.

Of course threads about productivity and policy detail won't have mass appeal. But if we live in a world where social media is the main/only means of political exposure.

You should do it anyway.

Personal view alert:

It would our politics good if more politicians - whatever their allegiance - posted to social media more in this way. Stick the soundbites to one side and demonstrate the intent and the rationale.

You might still disagree with it, but it's a better start for a debate.