[petejh]

It's certainly been a good year to be invested in dollar-denomination shares all else being equal. Be that US$, C$ or Aus$ all have made significant gains against the pound and added a few percent to gains (or more likely offset a few percent in losses).


After this budget one thing is crystal clear: nobody commenting on ukb (or pretty much anywhere) is qualified to predict how this is going to play out over the next 12 - 24 months!

Reminds me of 'I don't make forecasts, and I never will.'

[teestub]

Do you think you can keep your whacking off about stocks in the ‘Pete whacks off about stocks thread’ please? It keeps on creeping out into other threads

[petejh]

Haha! 
It was relevant to the previous post and the pound falling, the economy/markets is pervasive in politics, and the topic being discussed is about economics and markets… but yeah sure whatever, I won’t mention shares again.

[TobyD]

Kwarteng is indeed a smart man, but like Truss he's also an ideologue and its hard to see how those two go together sometimes. 

The received wisdom certainly seems to be in favour of Kwarteng's smartness.  I wonder what this is based on? I know he got good university results and was on university challenge but not a lot else. Is there more I am unaware of?

A comment  on the budget https://twitter.com/DavidLammy/status/1573252138444128256?t=COwUeozUo8MFE6ZLYIdp7Q&s=19

[Fultonius]

Richard Murphy seems pretty scathing over on Taxresearch, but we're in unprecedented times!  In some ways lowering tax *should* stimulate growth, but I see his argument that due to the global, not local nature of the price rises - it (and interest rate increases) may not have the desired effect.). We'll see.

Absolute shiter  for hier rate paying scots.... If it goes well, the Tories get praise. If it goes badly, we don't even get a damn tax cut!

[battery]

I can not begin to express how utterly disgusted I am at the budget. It seems the Tories are now so arrogant and confident in their position that they have discarded the veil that covered their contempt for the working classes and low income households. Telling people that the reason they are poor is because they aren't working hard enough completely ignored the structural inequalities in our society - many of which were certainly not helped by and indeed some were created by austerity.

A lot of part time workers are female balancing work around childcare. Not everyone has family that can look after children unpaid whilst you work and childcare in our area is over £50 per day. Having more than one child can make it cost more than you earn. If children are of school age what job do you know of that only wants people from 9am to 3pm (and that assumes no travel time).

This sums it up for me.

https://twitter.com/RosieisaHolt/status/1573353483566288896?t=VMh_Z-wv4pF_RiNsd-bd1Q&s=19

[Fultonius]

I can not begin to express how utterly disgusted I am at the budget. It seems the Tories are now so arrogant and confident in their position that they have discarded the veil that covered their contempt for the working classes and low income households. Telling people that the reason they are poor is because they aren't working hard enough completely ignored the structural inequalities in our society - many of which were certainly not helped by and indeed some were created by austerity.

A lot of part time workers are female balancing work around childcare. Not everyone has family that can look after children unpaid whilst you work and childcare in our area is over £50 per day. Having more than one child can make it cost more than you earn. If children are of school age what job do you know of that only wants people from 9am to 3pm (and that assumes no travel time).

This sums it up for me.

https://twitter.com/RosieisaHolt/status/1573353483566288896?t=VMh_Z-wv4pF_RiNsd-bd1Q&s=19

I guess I'm not in any way surprised. True colours are showing now (I realise the irony of me saying that after my whingey comment above, but hey ho, no ones perfect).

18 months to the GE - let's hope this wakes everyone up to what the tories really stand for, but I don't hold much hope for some reason. If people haven't figured it out yet, will they ever?

[Bradders]

The received wisdom certainly seems to be in favour of Kwarteng's smartness.  I wonder what this is based on? I know he got good university results and was on university challenge but not a lot else. Is there more I am unaware of?

A quick glance at his Wikipedia page mentions:

- He was a King's scholar at Eton (elected on the basis of good academic performance)
- He won the Newcastle Scholarship (an annual prize awarded at Eton College in England for the highest performance in a series of special written examinations taken over the course of a week)
- Firsts in both Classics and History at Cambridge
- Awarded a Kennedy Scholarship at Harvard (a postgraduate programme for 10 British students to "offer exceptional students unique opportunities to broaden their intellectual and personal horizons, in ways that are more important than ever in an era defined by global interaction.")
- Completed a PhD in Economic History at Cambridge

And I simply don't think you can manage all of that without being very intelligent. What more evidence could you want?

There are different types of intelligence of course...

[mrjonathanr]

I guess I'm not in any way surprised. True colours are showing now

Now? It’s worth considering the redistribution from public assets to private that began in earnest in1980s, slowed somewhat for the decade to 2010, then accelerated with a massive boost from 2016 onwards. This is just its most naked expression.

18 months to the GE - let's hope this wakes everyone up to what the tories really stand for, but I don't hold much hope for some reason. If people haven't figured it out yet, will they ever?

Better late than never, I guess. Btw next GE must be held by Jan 2025, so more than 2 years is possible.

@Bradders. Intelligence is just a tool, it has no moral component. In what service is it to be used? The answers look clear to me here.

[Bradders]

@Bradders. Intelligence is just a tool, it has no moral component. In what service is it to be used? The answers look clear to me here.

I didn't say his intelligence was good or bad, moral or immoral. Toby asked what the consensus of Kwarteng's "smartness" was based on (presumably implying that he doubts it, most likely because he disagrees with Kwarteng's politics), so I outlined the ample evidence which indicates he is very smart indeed.

That underlying point is something I find distasteful and unhelpful in a lot of political discourse; that because people can reach different conclusions on political issues it must mean they're stupid, or at least unintelligent. It's simply not the case.

[seankenny]

Kwarteng is indeed very smart. But…

He may think he’s smarter than his officials. In fact, he probably is! But he lacks their domain specific knowledge and almost certainly lacks their technical skills. This wouldn’t be a problem if he listened to them or cared what they said.

What’s he done since his glittering academic career? Sure, his book on empire is supposed to be pretty good, but Britannia Unchained appears to be rubbish. Watching the BBC documentary on New Labour it was obvious how utterly engrossed in new policy formulation Gordon Brown was throughout the 80s and 90s. Same with Keith Joseph in the 70s. I’m not convinced that Kwarteng has been through that process.

Smart people can still do really bad politics. Trotsky was by all accounts very very intelligent but the Soviet Union was a very stupid system that eventually killed him and most of his colleagues. Political smarts and analytical smarts are not always the same thing.

[petejh]

Politically both he and Truss appear very dumb, or out of this world genius. It's hard to tell.

[Oldmanmatt]

And, just to complicate world affairs…
Dubai is a buzz with rumour of coup in China. Apparently many senior Chinese managers were absent from work yesterday. Flights, both domestic and international have been cancelled, the trains shut down and long military columns have been seen entering Beijing.
My company handled the interior design and furniture manufacture for the Samarkand summit (it has to be done in a neutral country, under joint security and observation/inspection. They shipped 50 heavy lift transport aircraft, under military escort, to Samarkand from Dubai) and my boss was in attendance for the summit social activities; he said last week that the atmosphere was odd and Xi didn’t show up for anything (including his scheduled meeting with Putin), then left before the summit wound up.
Around here, the rumour is, he was arrested there and has been under house arrest ever since. It looks like the driving force are democratic reformers and the catalyst was Xi pushing on Taiwan?
Rumour and speculation, of course.

[James Malloch]

Does this mini budget go to any kind of vote? Or can they just change taxes and all that stuff without one?

[mrjonathanr]

I didn't say his intelligence was good or bad, moral or immoral.
That underlying point is something I find distasteful and unhelpful in a lot of political discourse; that because people can reach different conclusions on political issues it must mean they're stupid, or at least unintelligent. It's simply not the case.

Obviously  We agree. Unless you disagree with me, in which case you are stupid, because I am infallibly right. Mostly.

[mrjonathanr]

Around here, the rumour is, he was arrested there and has been under house arrest ever since. It looks like the driving force are democratic reformers and the catalyst was Xi pushing on Taiwan?
Rumour and speculation, of course.

Well, that would be a scoop, OMM..

[petejh]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-23/china-security-official-gets-life-in-jail-as-xi-crushes-clique

[Oldmanmatt]

Around here, the rumour is, he was arrested there and has been under house arrest ever since. It looks like the driving force are democratic reformers and the catalyst was Xi pushing on Taiwan?
Rumour and speculation, of course.

Well, that would be a scoop, OMM..

Indian MSM are starting to pick up the story and they’re a couple of hours ahead of us:
https://newsroompost.com/world/chinese-president-xi-jinping-tops-twitter-trends-after-reports-of-him-being-under-house-arrest-surfaces/5192001.html

https://tfiglobalnews.com/2022/09/23/is-xi-jinping-under-house-arrest/

[petejh]

Does this mini budget go to any kind of vote?

Depends on your salary. Under £40k? Sorry nope.

[James Malloch]

Does this mini budget go to any kind of vote?

Depends on your salary. Under £40k? Sorry nope.

Currently unemployed so vote for me…

But will it go to the commons?

[petejh]

Not as far as I'm aware no.

But with the caveat that nobody knows what's going to happen least of all me, I'll be surprised if this government manage to carry out this set of policies. My guess is market sentiment is going to stop them before they get started. Maybe leading to yet another vote of no confidence, the shortest serving PM ever, and the end of this tory government's term?

[Fultonius]

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2022/09/24/the-best-hope-is-that-the-tories-will-boot-truss-out-otherwise-disaster-looms/

It seems tat there's going to be a lot more pain before the dust settles.

[mrjonathanr]

The £45bn of tax cuts announced by the chancellor would need to increase GDP in the long term by 4% to be self-funding. This, the thinktank (Resolution Foundaon} said, is implausible.
https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2022/sep/24/mini-budget-benefits-london-and-south-east-england-study-shows

[petejh]

Not as far as I'm aware no.

I was wrong, finance bill to be voted on in the commons either just before or just after the new year. Still think the markets will puke so much next week that it gets shelved.

[TobyD]

@Bradders. Intelligence is just a tool, it has no moral component. In what service is it to be used? The answers look clear to me here.

I didn't say his intelligence was good or bad, moral or immoral. Toby asked what the consensus of Kwarteng's "smartness" was based on (presumably implying that he doubts it, most likely because he disagrees with Kwarteng's politics), so I outlined the ample evidence which indicates he is very smart indeed.

That underlying point is something I find distasteful and unhelpful in a lot of political discourse; that because people can reach different conclusions on political issues it must mean they're stupid, or at least unintelligent. It's simply not the case.

That is simply not the case.  I resent the implication that you ascribe to my question,  I honestly just didn't know why everyone assumed that he is smart.  As you say,  his record is impressive and indicative of a considerable academic intelligence. 
I would,  for example,  say Michael Gove is a very clever person,  although I don't like his politics.  Boris Johnson,  on the other hand,  I really suspect is not terribly intelligent.