Duncan Weldon

@duncanweldon.bsky.social

26077 Followers 1625 Following

Economics writer. Author. Expect history, economics, finance and other stuff. Some cricket. Wrote Two Hundred Years of Muddling Through. Blood and Treasure, on the economics of war, out now.

An axe on a wooden bench.
A restaurant sign in Copenhagen. “A Hereford beefstouw”.
Copenhagen harbour on a sunny-ish day.
If two countries are competing over the location of a global financier’s regional hub it isn’t some sort of adolescent hunt for prestige, but an attempt to align incentives as closely as possible. Strategic capital might be patient capital; but patient does not mean undiscriminating.
A church
The street leading from the station to the pub. Trees and garden centres
Bradman then visited South Africa, meeting Vorster to discuss why black people were barred from representing their country. Vorster said that they were intellectually inferior and lacked feel for cricket. Bradman asked Vorster, ‘Have you ever heard of Garry Sobers?’
Chart showing the ONS cost of living measure falling 6% in June
Higher utilisation explains the recent surge in productivity growth Shane Boyle John Fernald Huiyu Li / 16 Jul 2026 US labour productivity has accelerated since 2022. Output per hour grew around 2.5% per year from the end of 2022 to the start of 2026, exceeding its pre-pandemic pace by 1 percentage point. A natural conjecture is that artificial intelligence has raised production efficiency. This column argues that the data suggest otherwise. Higher utilisation – that is, more intense use of labour and capital already in place – accounts for much of the recent acceleration. AI may have contributed to the higher utilisation rate, but through strong demand and heightened uncertainty rather than through efficiency.
The regulatory cycles view, according to which periods of deregulation encourage greater risk-taking and credit booms, which culminate in financial crises and are followed by renewed regulation, rests largely on case studies of individual countries or particular crises. This column uses a new dataset covering 14 countries over the past century to show that the pattern observed after the Great Depression has been much weaker since the Global Financial Crisis. The authors argue that the reason is not simply a change in political priorities or regulatory philosophy. Increasing financial integration has made effective banking regulation at the national level progressively more difficult, shifting regulatory authority from national governments towards international coordination.
Cows
Washington Sundar and Shreyas Iyer exchange singles. One of the shots hits a seagull in the outfield and the injured bird is carried from the field by Jacob Bethell. Washington is down receiving treatment to his right hamstring. Extensive taping going on.
Blank Padme meme
“There are unprecedented levels of speculation about cabinet positions and the hysteria around appointments is leading to a lot of pent-up demand for engagement,” one public affairs adviser said. “Who do we call to discuss policies? We don’t know and aren’t being told,” said a government affairs adviser to several FTSE companies.
Clouds
In one chapter entitled “The Art of the Bribe”, Cottrell and Files set out how politicians can be bought. They argue that bribes, if in the form of small gifts rather than cash, can be passed off as “a mistake of overexuberance in friendship”. They add: “Long-term relationships keep the bought person in hand while you’re making money and the cohort is making money . . . Money from corruption is a bit like fiscal heroin; one fix and you know you need more.”
A Mexican salad
Me, presenting at an event
A map of the Anglo Saxon kingdoms
However happy and well off the slaves may be as a general rule, yet there must be many instances (like that of Mr Sargent) of ill-treatment and cruelty. Mr Sargent is a Northerner by birth, and is without any of the kind feeling which is nearly always felt by Southerners for negroes.—July 1863.
The cover of THREE MONTHS IN THE SOUTHERN STATES APRIL-JUNE 1863 BY LIEUT.-COL. FREMANTLE
4 mini stotties for £1
Ongoing construction work on a train platform
A Mumbai Indians shirt
Overall, the rise of the Medici family in Florence can easily be seen as a story about the super-rich members of a republican polity acquiring the control of the local institutions and the government, and thereafter being able to maintain such control over time until all vestiges of real republicanism disappear, all while their country begins experiencing secular stagnation. This historical example, then, speaks directly against the idea that we can expect the super-rich in power to provide for everybody – in fact, the Medici appear to have provided mostly for themselves, and for their immediate clients and associates, in a context of social immobility and growing economic inequality. Quite clearly, the case of the Medici (similar to that of the Venetian and Dutch elites) also serves to exemplify how we can make use of insights from economic history, even from a relatively remote period, to address pressing challenges faced by our own societies. If one also comes to the depressing conclusion that humankind never truly learns from history, we should counter that ignorance of history only makes it easier to repeat the same mistakes, and to believe the same old lies: in the economic arena, as well as in any other area of human activity.
Clearly emotional as he spoke in the England dressing room, Stokes said: "The reasons can wait, why, but I've had many trips to the well before for this team, for you blokes, for people beforehand and I've got one more trip to do. "The only that I ask, please, is can everyone do the same. "We've got a lot of hard work to do and the only thing I want is to be able to walk off that field, regardless of the result, knowing that I've had this group give everything for the last two days. "That's the only thing I want, for everyone to give it not only for me, selfishly, but also for this team. "I've got the emotional side out of it. Now it's time to go to work. Please, everyone else come with me."
With the players out on the field, some pretty dramatic news coming out of the ECB. Ben Stokes, the England Test captain since 2022, has announced he will retire from international cricket at the end of this Test. The 35-year-old announced his decision to his team-mates in the Trent Bridge dressing room today. Stokes is playing in his 122nd Test, and he also featured in 114 ODIs, winning the World Cup in 2019, plus 43 T20s. We'll have plenty of reaction to this story over the next few hours, no doubt.
Bank of Burnham: The wannabe PM will promise to “rewire Britain” and put devolution at the “heart of Downing Street,” according to a trail of the speech in the Sunday Mirror. That could include allowing combined authorities to keep 100 percent of any increase in business rates they make to attract investment — and a significant beefing-up of powers and funding for regional mayors.
Winviz for the test match. England 35%, draw 30%, New Zealand 35%
It may be worth considering appointing a newly created joint Treasury and defence minister, empowered to make swift, informed decisions on procurement. This could be done by establishing a joint agency, led by the minister and supported by the two departments. Too often, MoD and Treasury teams see each other as adversaries. By bringing them together under clear leadership, we can bulldoze that mindset and build a new way forward.
In a stormy Senate debate in 1858, South Carolina Senator James Henry Hammond declared that: Without firing a gun, without drawing a sword, should they make war on us, we could bring the whole world to our feet. What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years? I will not stop to depict what everyone can imagine, but this is certain: England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilised world with her, save the South. No, you dare not make war on cotton! No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is King.
Secessionists in America's South were convinced that Britain's mills could not survive without their cotton. They had not reckoned with how adaptable an economy under strain can be.
The fiscal dominance view holds that politically captured central banks are more likely to be pushed into taking risky positions, while independent ones resist. This column presents new estimates of the value at risk in the balance sheets of 18 advanced economies’ central banks over two decades which suggest the opposite: more independent central banks take more financial risk, and they do so most aggressively when fiscal policy tightens. Independence, it seems, frees central banks to deploy their balance sheets in pursuit of their mandates, whatever the cost to profits.
With Starmer giving the green light to access talks, No 10 sources said they would use them to encourage Burnham to reconsider defence bonds, which have consistently been blocked by the Treasury amid warnings over the impact of higher borrowing. The government had come close to issuing war bonds to pay for higher defence spending before. The Guardian understands that Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s former chief of staff, had started pushing for them before he quit. But the plan was rejected by the Treasury. Under the plans drawn up in No 10 and championed by Starmer’s business adviser Varun Chandra, the government would have issued up to £20bn of bonds which would have been exempt from inheritance tax.
Burnham may well end up tweaking the fiscal rules in the coming years. But this would not be anything out of the ordinary. Fiscal rules have been changed more than half a dozen times since 2010. As long as the framework is credible in the medium term, markets will adjust. What he will not do is carry out a major fiscal loosening — especially without any scrutiny from the Office for Budget Responsibility — in the face of already sharply rising inflation. A repeat of the Truss episode is simply not on the cards.
Weather forecast for the next hour. Temperature is 32 degrees. Feels like 39.
But high streets are no longer the best indicator of prosperity. The rise of internet shopping and the impact of the pandemic has reshaped how people spend their time and money. A few kilometres to the north, on the edge of town, the Festival Leisure Park was this week doing a booming half-term trade. The sprawling car park was almost full as families ventured to the multiplex cinema, bowling alley, soft-play area and indoor mini-golf course. The highlight for some was the new branch of Five Guys, an American burger chain—“only the second one in all of Essex”, as one mum put it.
The war time “what did you do in the war daddy” poster. Text changed to “did you back oasis or blur daddy”