Huge!
It is April 1st after all…
A well-timed update from the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee has stated today that the Iran war is making the UK gilt market particularly vulnerable. In addition to the dim view bond traders take of the Reeves rollercoaster…
The committee says the war in general represents a “substantial negative supply shock” to the global economy: “The conflict has made the global environment materially more unpredictable and followed a period in which global risks were already elevated. This increases the possibility of large, frequent and potentially overlapping shocks and periods of intense volatility.” In case you supposed otherwise…
It went further to note that the most leveraged hedge funds in UK gilts also hold large positions in US Treasuries and European government bonds in high-risk concentrations: “Cross-market positions, in addition to firms pursuing similar strategies, increased the risk of disorderly unwinds causing jumps to illiquidity in core UK markets, including through cross-border spillovers.” The BoE also warns of large gilt selloffs as share prices drop…
Buried at the end the committee says it wants to reduce its legally required minimum meetings from four to three per year. Feeling gilty…
Donald Trump has made his strongest comments yet against NATO just as Starmer prepares to give an address from Downing Street. The President has spoken to the Telegraph in another round of interviews before he addresses the nation at 2 a.m. BST…
Asked if the US’ membership of NATO would be reconsidered, he said: “Oh yes, I would say [it’s] beyond reconsideration… I was never swayed by Nato. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way.”
Trump said he is aggrieved by allied refusal to enter the Strait of Hormuz: “We’ve been there automatically, including Ukraine. Ukraine wasn’t our problem. It was a test, and we were there for them, and we would always have been there for them. They weren’t there for us.”
He attacked Starmer personally: “You don’t even have a navy. You’re too old and had aircraft carriers that didn’t work… I’m not going to tell [Starmer] what to do. He can do whatever he wants. It doesn’t matter. All Starmer wants is costly windmills that are driving your energy prices through the roof.”
Trump says the US will exit in between two and three weeks’ time. European allies’ decision to adopt a crouched trembling position has resulted in the President’s substantial anger…
Reeves has teed up the day by distributing what information currently exists on the government’s financial support plans to the BBC. In a pre-recorded interview she said…
Starmer has a press conference at 10 a.m. Expect more questions to not be answered there…
Former Guardian editor and media standards bloviator Alan Rusbridger has been spending his time appearing in broadcast studios and writing articles on his special investigation into GB News. He claims that the channel is “driving a coach and horses through the laws that were put in place to define broadcasting in the UK” and that Ofcom has “more or less given up the ghost”…
Rusbridger seems to have forgotten his own record on media accountability. In 2020 he was appointed to the Irish’s government “Future of Media” commission, which was tasked with upholding journalistic standards. One year later Rusbridger was was forced to resign from it over a piece that Guardian columnist Roy Greenslade had written in 2014 – while Rusbridger was editor…
Greenslade wrote a piece stating that the BBC had been “too willing to accept” a statement from Máiría Cahill, a former Labour Senator, that she was raped by an alleged member of the IRA when she was 16. Rusbridger reportedly said he knew at the time that Greenslade was a supporter of Sinn Fein. In 2021, the issue resurfaced when Greenslade admitted to being “in complete agreement about the right of the Irish people to engage in armed struggle.” Even the Guardian’s “readers editor” said Greenslade “ought to have been open about his position,” and Rusbridger’s successor Katherine Viner said it “was not handled appropriately.“ Something something glass houses…
Speaking to Sky News off the back of Rachel Reeves’ Air Passenger Duty hike, Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said:
“Labour is dependent on those Red Wall seats, and yet every move she makes poisons economic growth and damages the UK’s recovery… it’s the Chancellor who stumbles from policy misstep to policy misstep… I think her policy decisions are incredibly stupid.”