Best Of

As I suspected.

Trump’s team did actually spend weeks calculating the true reciprocal tariff rates for each country, and then he just decided not to do that anymore and based it on trade deficits.

Absolutely absurd.
https://x.com/Geiger_Capital/status/1908318822349647872

DOGE, key appointments, Russia/Ukraine, Gaza, bombing the Houthis, tariffs ... there's a theme. No strategy or prep or planning or due diligence, all on the whim of a single individual. It's no way to carry on at the best of times and it's downright scary when the individual in question is not only lazy and borderline stupid but doesn't even mean well.

The only saving grace (and it's not much) is that lazy, stupid and malign is preferable to clever, hardworking and malign.

The best feature of autocracies is that they are usually incompetent. Indeed, competent people are seen as a threat to the Leader.

China being a very very notable exception

They made some of the most ruinous policy errors in world history under Mao. Then had a pretty sensible couple of decades. Xi has changed the dynamic again. I’m not sure that will end well.

CEO Xi is flexible and well advised.
Note his change of stance on the technocrats eg Jack Ma.
He has a strong board of Directors, appointed on merit , who have to retire at the age of 68 to ensure quality succession (except for him of course).

It's similar to a well run multinational. It can make long term plans eg the Belt and Road Initiative, as it doesn't face electors every few years who want short term goodies.

The big drawbacks are rampant corruption, suppression of personal freedom, indifference to the welfare of the masses from those at the top, and probably most important of all - inability for those at the bottom to criticise those at the top.

The ability to criticise freely is such an important function, in the modern State.

You're looking at it through Western eyes that values personal freedom over stability and a growing standard of living.
Many in the East value the latter.

Western values are changing too, and the appeal of a Nietzschean Übermensch is growing.
As a liberal, I watch with apprehension.

Well plenty of Eastern peoples (eg Taiwanese, South Koreans, Japanese, Indonesians) have turned out to favour democracy over autocracy, too. There's nothing inherent in Easterners that makes them favour autocracy, or in Westerners that makes them favour democracy.

In general, democracies deliver the goods more effectively than autocracies do. But, the flaws of democracies tend to be glaring and obvious, whereas the flaws of autocracies are hidden. Outsiders look at the shiny new cities, autobahns, thousands of people goose-stepping in synch, and think how impressive this all is, while overlooking the wretched lives of the peasantry, the concentration camps, the secret police.

Yeah, except I have travelled widely in China and they don't have wretched lives. Sorry

Also, the Chinese "peasantry" has largely disappeared. The idea there are hundreds of millions labouring away in dismal misery in the paddy fields is simply ludicrous

It is an ubanised society. There is much discontent, as there is anywhere. Humans are naturally discontented

Is China successfully delivering greater prosperity? Yes. And in cities that are crime-free and clean compared to many western cities

The argument is not whether Chinese living standards have increased impressively, since 1976, (obviously they have), the argument is whether this proves that autocracies do a better job at raising living standards than democracies do - where I would say the evidence shows that they do not.

Autocracies are not even better at waging war (which is the metric they usually want to be judged upon), than democracies are.

Intuitively a well run autocracy (Singapore, UAE) will be better at managing the economy than a well run democracy as it has the advantage of consistent long term planning and investment, but a typical democracy is better than a typical autocracy. More importantly a badly run democracy can quickly turn course whereas a badly run autocracy is far more likely to fall into a viscious circle and further decline that is hard to move on from.

David Davis's point about the crucial bit of democracy being the ability to change its mind.

On infrastructure we manage to change our mind a bit too often.....

"Amanda Spielman is a bad leader, an inept person, and has done enormous damage to the education of children not I think because she meant to but because she was profoundly ignorant, not especially intelligent and incredibly arrogant. You can see why she was a friend of Dominic Cummings."

This is the stuff of HIGNFY.

Are we to take the rest of it seriously?

A little bit of comedic high jinx doesn't detract from the fact that Spielman was wholly unsuitable to her role and Johnsonian era corruption has seen a vile, self-serving nincompoop on the cusp of being elevated to the House of Lords.

These personal vendettas are becoming a thing. If they're not funny they sound mean spirited. We've become adept in this country at creating monsters and it's not one of our attractive qualities.

Did the UK invent the stocks?

That is not the problem in the U.K. The problem is that we have, for far too long, had low expectations of those in charge. We have tolerated - and far too often rewarded - the incompetent, the malign, the self-serving, the dishonest, the unprofessional. We have allowed people in charge of public services to put their personal interests first or to treat the public sector as something to be plundered for profit without in return providing the quality of service we ought to expect. We have refused to hold leaders meaningfully accountable for their actions and failures to act. We have covered up gross incompetence and malfeasance and done everything possible to avoid providing effective compensation for those harmed by this.

And the result is that we have second and third rate public services, leaders who think only about what they can take rather than what they can give to those whom they are meant to serve and when any of this is pointed out to those who fail us we have to endure a load of self-pitying whining and laughable excuses. If anything works in this country it is down to those who do try to behave professionally and with some degree of responsibility and honesty and who, frankly, do not get properly recognised or rewarded.

Pointing this out is not putting people in the stocks or being mean-spirited. It is necessary and long overdue if we are even to begin changing this for the better.

We should expect and demand better.

I blame, to some extent anyway, Margaret Thatcher. I well remember her suggesting that graduates achieving highest grades should not enter public service but commerce, suggesting that the pursuit of profit was more important than public service.
As Ms Cyclefree points out, it isn't.

When I worked in the NHS there was a period in the mid 90's when some Trusts discouraged their staff from attending conferences, on the grounds that Trusts were competing, and discussing improvements at conferences would benefit competitors.

And Good Morning, one and all.

When Ted Cruz is the voice of reason...

Republican senator Ted Cruz warned of a potential “bloodbath” for his party in the 2026 midterm elections if Donald Trump’s tariffs send the US economy into recession.

The senator from Texas also predicted a “terrible” fate for the world’s largest economy should a full-blown trade war erupt and Trump’s tariffs, as well as any retaliatory measures on US goods, stay in place long-term.

Republican lawmakers have begun to worry about the effects of Trump’s tariffs on the economy and their party’s prospects for keeping control of both chambers of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections. Their concerns grew as Americans watched about $5.4tn of stock market capitalisation evaporate over a two-day Wall Street rout.

On Thursday, Republican Chuck Grassley introduced a bill in the Senate, alongside a Democrat, to reassert Congressional control of tariff policy. Under the proposed law, new levies would expire in 60 days unless approved by Congress, and there would be a mechanism for lawmakers to cancel tariffs at any point.

https://www.ft.com/content/00ee505e-57bb-4272-8b51-09ebb67dc5ee

"Amanda Spielman is a bad leader, an inept person, and has done enormous damage to the education of children not I think because she meant to but because she was profoundly ignorant, not especially intelligent and incredibly arrogant. You can see why she was a friend of Dominic Cummings."

This is the stuff of HIGNFY.

Are we to take the rest of it seriously?

A little bit of comedic high jinx doesn't detract from the fact that Spielman was wholly unsuitable to her role and Johnsonian era corruption has seen a vile, self-serving nincompoop on the cusp of being elevated to the House of Lords.

These personal vendettas are becoming a thing. If they're not funny they sound mean spirited. We've become adept in this country at creating monsters and it's not one of our attractive qualities.

Did the UK invent the stocks?

That is not the problem in the U.K. The problem is that we have, for far too long, had low expectations of those in charge. We have tolerated - and far too often rewarded - the incompetent, the malign, the self-serving, the dishonest, the unprofessional. We have allowed people in charge of public services to put their personal interests first or to treat the public sector as something to be plundered for profit without in return providing the quality of service we ought to expect. We have refused to hold leaders meaningfully accountable for their actions and failures to act. We have covered up gross incompetence and malfeasance and done everything possible to avoid providing effective compensation for those harmed by this.

And the result is that we have second and third rate public services, leaders who think only about what they can take rather than what they can give to those whom they are meant to serve and when any of this is pointed out to those who fail us we have to endure a load of self-pitying whining and laughable excuses. If anything works in this country it is down to those who do try to behave professionally and with some degree of responsibility and honesty and who, frankly, do not get properly recognised or rewarded.

Pointing this out is not putting people in the stocks or being mean-spirited. It is necessary and long overdue if we are even to begin changing this for the better.

We should expect and demand better.

I blame, to some extent anyway, Margaret Thatcher. I well remember her suggesting that graduates achieving highest grades should not enter public service but commerce, suggesting that the pursuit of profit was more important than public service.
As Ms Cyclefree points out, it isn't.

When I worked in the NHS there was a period in the mid 90's when some Trusts discouraged their staff from attending conferences, on the grounds that Trusts were competing, and discussing improvements at conferences would benefit competitors.

And Good Morning, one and all.

That's probably some of it. But there's also what I can only describe as old-fashioned morality.

Ofsted sits in judgement over schools, heads and teachers, in a professional-life-or-death way. That's necessary. But it only works if those doing the judgement are unimpeachable. And AS wasn't, for the reasons the good doctor listed. Had there been an OfstOfsted inspection, she would have failed.

(It's why I've never sought that sort of role. I've got the sort of temperament that takes "judge not, lest ye be judged" too seriously and I fear buckling under that load. Thank goodness there are others more robust than me.)

It's the "rules are for the little people, not for me" that grates. And something in the formation of the British Ruling Class promotes that attitude.

Off Topic. Betting Post. 🐎
Grand National. Hewick for me. We know the horse has quality, weather and going should help all the quality horses make a “modern National” race of it. So it’s the manner of the 3m4f Sandown win that swings it for me. https://www.sportinglife.com/racing/results/2022-04-23/sandown/677006/bet365-gold-cup-handicap-chase-grade-3-gbb-race

What makes the national such a pin sticker race is 30 fences add lots of jeopardy. But we know stats are that younger horses tend to fall, more than experienced ones - Hewick 3yr older than 7yr old Iroko for example. When looking at form, remember some courses are less challenging, whilst others - Cheltenham, Sandown - hold meetings with fields stronger in experience and quality, meaning it’s not quantity of wins and placings, but where and how. Also, if a horse is targeted at a particular race, their whole season is built around this, results in other races don’t matter much, like in football, pre season results. Further Grand jeopardy is the stamina test of the Nationals distance, especially as it’s a handicap, which should count against Hewick. Which makes me look to the linked Sandown race to counteract this.

Good Luck everyone.

As I suspected.

Trump’s team did actually spend weeks calculating the true reciprocal tariff rates for each country, and then he just decided not to do that anymore and based it on trade deficits.

Absolutely absurd.
https://x.com/Geiger_Capital/status/1908318822349647872

DOGE, key appointments, Russia/Ukraine, Gaza, bombing the Houthis, tariffs ... there's a theme. No strategy or prep or planning or due diligence, all on the whim of a single individual. It's no way to carry on at the best of times and it's downright scary when the individual in question is not only lazy and borderline stupid but doesn't even mean well.

And yet I was talking to a client yesterday who is convinced this is all 4D chess and a stroke of genius “even though I don’t agree with it”.

There is a great deal of sanewashing in a nation.

Trumpsplaining is becoming a disease. Radio 4 were at it this morning. A feature on the new hostility between the US and Canada, so off they go to Maine to record some cross lobster fishermen who don’t like the Canadians. The US equivalent of those barometer of British public opinion pieces that seem to focus entirely on Lancashire town centres at lunchtime on a working day.

Eg the reporting in our media of these as *reciprocal* tariffs. Taking his framing at face value.

Probably the most ridiculous example of Trumpsplaining I've come across was a recent piece for unHerd by Yanis Varoufakis. He knocked out 5000 words working up this byzantine theory taking in the gold price, the oil price, the currency markets, dollar reserves, global trade flows, yada yada, to arrive at some nirvana that the policy was seeking to realise here on earth. Made Trump sound like a visionary with a brain the size of Neptune.

I know he has to pay the rent and all but it was hogwash from start to finish. I think you get a lot of this with Trump. People much cleverer than him projecting their own 'SME' onto him. That Niall Ferguson guy does it a lot, I've noticed. On foreign policy in his case, rather than economics as with Yanis.

"Amanda Spielman is a bad leader, an inept person, and has done enormous damage to the education of children not I think because she meant to but because she was profoundly ignorant, not especially intelligent and incredibly arrogant. You can see why she was a friend of Dominic Cummings."

This is the stuff of HIGNFY.

Are we to take the rest of it seriously?

A little bit of comedic high jinx doesn't detract from the fact that Spielman was wholly unsuitable to her role and Johnsonian era corruption has seen a vile, self-serving nincompoop on the cusp of being elevated to the House of Lords.

These personal vendettas are becoming a thing. If they're not funny they sound mean spirited. We've become adept in this country at creating monsters and it's not one of our attractive qualities.

Did the UK invent the stocks?

That is not the problem in the U.K. The problem is that we have, for far too long, had low expectations of those in charge. We have tolerated - and far too often rewarded - the incompetent, the malign, the self-serving, the dishonest, the unprofessional. We have allowed people in charge of public services to put their personal interests first or to treat the public sector as something to be plundered for profit without in return providing the quality of service we ought to expect. We have refused to hold leaders meaningfully accountable for their actions and failures to act. We have covered up gross incompetence and malfeasance and done everything possible to avoid providing effective compensation for those harmed by this.

And the result is that we have second and third rate public services, leaders who think only about what they can take rather than what they can give to those whom they are meant to serve and when any of this is pointed out to those who fail us we have to endure a load of self-pitying whining and laughable excuses. If anything works in this country it is down to those who do try to behave professionally and with some degree of responsibility and honesty and who, frankly, do not get properly recognised or rewarded.

Pointing this out is not putting people in the stocks or being mean-spirited. It is necessary and long overdue if we are even to begin changing this for the better.

We should expect and demand better.