It’s been an honour to represent Orpington for 9 years & to serve as a minister under three PMs. In recent weeks I’ve been torn between family loyalty and the national interest - it’s an unresolvable tension & time for others to take on my roles as MP & Minister.
#overandout
Proud dad moment: My daughter, who has had to put up with a lot in her life, just totally aced her Leaving Cert.
Once I wipe away these tears of joy, I'll spend the rest of the month beaming with pride :)
China Daily on Saturday: Russia's "special operation" in Ukraine.
China Daily just now: Russia's "invasion" of Ukraine.
I'm not saying it is significant, but I'm definitely not saying it's not either...
Personal News
After seven and a half wonderful years at
@business
I am moving on to the next thing.
It was a great time at a great company, but the road onward beckons.
Managed to set the scale on my Bloomberg chart of the Rhine river level so one centimeter drop in the river means a 1 cm move in the line in my chart.
This may be my greatest ever achievement.
Cc
@tracyalloway
Ok, by popular demand, here's a work from home thread.
First things first. Who you are working for will go a long way towards defining your experience.
I've had four very different bosses since 2008
In case anyone is in need of something cute..
Just saw these baby foxes sticking their noses out into the evening air. One shy one, and one brave one :)
Meaning (very much back-of-the-envelop and based on f-all detail in this evening's announcement) the useful reserves of Russia's central bank could have just dropped by more than $400 billion.
Powell - "central banks are doing what they seem necessary within their institutional contexts."
Fed - BIG CUT
BOJ - BUY EVERYTHING
RBA - CUT
PBOC - MASSIVE LIQUIDITY
ECB - Woo! You go guys! Hashtag coordination
*Personal News Klaxon*
From Monday I will be joining Bloomberg's Markets Live blog as a strategist.
So lots less web stuff from me, but more ideas backed-up with arguments (and charts) on
@TheTerminal
(I will still write the weekly Quiz)
Amazing paper from
@ecb
researchers this morning.
The paper talks about central bank independence, which is fine. But then at the end it decides to rate a selection of central banks.
(which obviously I am now going to do a thread on)
Can just imagine Ed looking at that tweet for the last 7 years thinking "Will I quote tweet it now with a clown face?"
And deciding every time, until today, that "no, they can be even more chaotic than this"
And being right every time...
Just a check on this.
@ECB
monthly purchases will be
€20 bn per month (announce in Dec)
€120 bn to year end (announced earlier this month)
€750 bn to year end announced just now.
So, the ECB will buy €1.11 TRILLION of assets this year.
That's, um, quite a lot.
The "wait calculation" suggest that we should not do interstellar travel if we can't get to our destination within 50 years because if we can advance in propulsion system velocity, a future mission will pass the previous one and get there faster
Personal news:
After a long six months, the best pub in the world - Casey's in Sixmilebridge - just reopened.
I can confirm the Guinness is better than ever.
These emergency rate cuts from central banks are the "your cat giving you a dead mouse as a present" of things we need right now.
Like, yea, their heart is in the right place, but other than giving everyone a bit of a fright when its seen, unlikely to be actually very useful
Someone suggested a long time ago that maybe the UK should just say really loudly in the Mail that it has left, but not change anything at all.
Turns out that might actually be the plan..
Sometimes it worth reminding ourselves that, for all its faults, twitter is really amazing..
Where else can you be having what is basically a pub conversation on a topic, decide to ask one of world's leading experts on it, and they pop in to answer
Ok.
Talked to the experts at Animal Magic (those wonderful people who took my baby otters a few years ago).
And looks like I'm going to be a heron-daddy for a few weeks...
That Varadkar speech is here for anyone not in Ireland or that might have missed it.
Pretty sure it would worth everyone watching no matter where you are
When Draghi said "whatever it takes" nobody doubted his commitment.
But I don't think any of us thought he'd go as far as actually taking over the running of the euro area's third-largest economy.
Still, gotta say, it seems effective so far.