iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 12h

Remembering this feels like a mad fever dream nowadays. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Tell me you’re a middle aged dad without telling me…

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

If you go back to the original tapering away of the personal allowance at £100,000 at Budget 2009 it was such a piddlingly small measure. Why on earth bother for this little revenue?

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Yeah. Fundamentally the ECB will not let France blow up. But the politics of the next French government will play a big role here.

In such a scenario, the ECB’s capacity to buy huge quantities of bonds could provide the ultimate backstop on the basis that the central bank would not allow a big European economy to tip into a full-blown debt crisis.

ECB president Christine Lagarde, a former French finance minister, has in the past been reluctant to react when differences emerge between countries’ borrowing costs.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The real demonstration of the strength of Indian white ball cricket is that they can play a T20 and an ODI on the same day with two strong sides. Can’t imagine England managing that.

Shubman Gill (c)
Rohit Sharma
Virat Kohli
Ruturaj Gaikwad
KL Rahul (wk)
Nitish Kumar Reddy
Naman Dhir
Anshul Kamboj
Kuldeep Yadav
Mohammed Siraj
Gurnoor Brar

Vaibhav Sooryavanshi
Abhishek Sharma
Sanju Samson (wk)
Shreyas lyer (c)
Ishan Kishan
Tilak Varma
Shivam Dube
Axar Patel
Washington Sundar
Ravi Bishnoi
Jasprit Bumrah

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

England have the easier group here. www.icc-cricket.com/tournaments/...

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Something very striking about it being 2026, all the talk of AI and super intelligence and tech competition and here we are talking about diesel inventories. A useful reminder that these two books are a useful frame for understanding the world.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I find this fascinating. Connecting up my bank account to an AI agent is just a hard no for me. But maybe I’m just out of touch? I can remember being baffled about how wary my parents were about online banking for a long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/t...

To test Muse, I experimented with it nonstop for two weeks, giving over many aspects of my life to it. I had to trust Muse with my most personal data, which included connecting it to my bank accounts and email. Then I had it perform dozens or day-to-day tasks, including ordering my groceries, scheduling my meetings and setting my fantasy football lineups

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Whereas, in terms of early Sky comedy, Asylum was actually pretty good. And had a *ridiculously* good young cast. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asylum_...

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Putting the thoughts together. I think telling British consumers they need to pay substantially more for a Jaecoo or an Omoda is a tough sell. www.smmt.co.uk/vehicle-data...

SMMT top car models for August registrations Ford puma, Jaecoo 7, MG HS, Jaecoo 5, Kia Sportage, Omoda 5

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

In the end it’s a familiar story to the Eurozone crisis in the 2010s. We don’t really have mechanisms that force surplus countries to adjust.

In the immediate future, exchange-rate adjustment is the most direct remedy. The IMF, within its surveillance mandate, is uniquely placed to call for an appreciation of the renminbi, which is fully justified. Even though such a call would probably not directly influence China, it would help coordinate views and expectations about world imbalances and their consequences. Appreciation would reduce competitive pressure on China’s trading partners while shifting purchasing power toward Chinese households; it might feed deflationary trends, but in this case, it will give the government additional reasons to counter it with more proactive budget policies. Ideally, it should even be accompanied by an agreement about a credible path toward future appreciation as China continues to converge toward advanced-economy income levels. Together with stricter disciplines on subsidies, this would contribute both to external rebalancing and to the internal reallocation of resources from production toward consumption.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

As an aside: I don’t really like charts that focus on one good or sector. The car stuff is very striking but it doesn’t necessarily give the whole picture. Structure of the global auto sector is clearly changing but that doesn’t mean the structure of the whole global economy is changing.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The macro context matters a lot. The short to medium term upsides of cheap Chinese imports in a time of an energy price shock and a food price shock feel more valuable than they would have done a year ago.

Internationally, foreign consumers benefit from inexpensive Chinese electric cars, batteries, and solar equipment. They are subsidised, directly or indirectly, by Chinese workers and taxpayers. In the short run, this is a real gain. But importing countries also see cheap imports as a threat. While they raise purchasing power today, they may weaken the industrial base on which future income depends. The static gain comes at the cost of a dynamic loss.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Seized control of the television.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricke... Would just be incredibly petty if the ECB said no.

If Stokes wants to play for Durham, or signs a contract that includes any white-ball cricket in the T20 Blast or One-Day Cup, he would need a special No-Objection Certificate (NOC) from the ECB to play in a franchise league that clashes with domestic competitions for which they are contracted.
And the ECB has previously refused NOCs to former England players who have wanted to pursue freelance T20 careers.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

A bit from Wigmore’s Test Cricket: A History.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

BBC description of bodyline, I think, underplays it.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Glad I decided to try and find out if El Niño would make for a colder or a warmer British winter.

The so-called Big Freeze of winter 2009/2010 was, at the time, the coldest in three decades - and this coincided with an El Niño.
However, 2006/2007 was also an El Niño winter and that was unseasonably warm.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

And poor incentive alignment. Bad Sisters - superb first season, telling a complete story over several hours. Clearly did well, so the broadcasters ask ‘can you make another one?’. The better answer would have been no.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I remember getting some grief for tweeting about drinking a can of that circa 2017. But my real energy drink highlight was the shop next door to my then girl friend’s house selling this circa 1999 before such drinks were mainstream in the UK.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Also, my wife bought me a Luke Haines painting of Meg and Mog and Lou Reed for Xmas a few years ago. A treasured possession.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I’ve seen 64 of the NYT’s best 100 TV shows of the 21st century. And don’t really disagree with the inclusion of any of those. That’s a good hit rate.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Can’t believe no one has ever thought of the idea of selling us hot food. I, for one, am both excited and, if I’m honest, a little apprehensive about the idea of warm food. www.ft.com/content/bdb6... Subway rival bets hot sandwiches will sell in UK’s ‘cold and rain’

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

This isn’t a bad one chart history of almost a decade and a half of macroeconomic expectations. The short version: Things will be back to normal soon. Oh, maybe they won’t. Rates are never going back to the old normal. Oh, maybe they are.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Oof. www.pmi.spglobal.com/Public/Home/...

Flash US Composite PMI Output Index: 58.4
(August: 56.0). 62-month high.
Flash US Services PMI Business Activity Index:
58.7 (August: 56.5). 59-month high.
Flash US Manufacturing Output Index: 56.7
(August: 53.1). 53-month high.
Flash US Manufacturing PMI: 57.0 (August: 53.9).
52-month high.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Yeah. But American cars are mad. A Sportage is about 3,800 lbs.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Want a pay rise? The answer is attend more meetings and do less concentrated individual work.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

A book I really like is Kershaw’s Fateful Choices on 40-41. The Japan chapters make the German chapters look almost rational.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

This is my ‘favourite’ for dreadful driving.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Classic 7am Saturday broadcasting wear.

A leg in pyjamas, a work shirt visible over the top

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Really nice use of what was - on one level - an excellent macro experiment. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

This paper studies the macroeconomic impact of the Irish bank strike of 1966, which led to the closure of the major commercial banks for 3 months. We collect a variety of new evidence, such as high-frequency macro data, economic forecasts, micro data and narrative sources. Our findings suggest that the bank strike was associated with a shortfall in economic activity that punctuated a decade of robust growth. The qualitative evidence depicts the struggles of households and firms managing a credit crunch, a liquidity shock, and rising transaction costs. This case study highlights the importance of banks for economic performance.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

South African domestic cricket teams have the best names

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Headline is a 6-3 split. But really it’s a 2-4-3 split.

Six members (Andrew Bailey, Sarah Breeden, Swati Dhingra, Clare Lombardelli, Dave Ramsden and Alan Taylor) preferred to maintain Bank Rate at 3.75% at this meeting. These members were concerned about recent developments in a range of energy prices and their impact on holding CPI inflation above target for longer than had been previously expected. Domestic activity and tight financial conditions were restraining inflationary pressures, but the risk of second-round effects was growing in the absence of a lasting resolution of the conflict. Two members in this group (Swati Dhingra and Alan Taylor) acknowledged these risks, but placed particular weight on the role of slack in moderating inflation, evidence of restrained pass-through of costs to prices, and the restrictive level of Bank Rate, all of which would allow more time to observe further evidence.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Productivity: less puzzling than it used to be. Still quite puzzling though. blog.ons.gov.uk/2026/09/17/m...

The new improved figures show falling average actual hours worked per job and slower growth in total hours worked since 2008, and consequently higher growth in productivity per hour. Our previous estimates suggested UK labour productivity per hour grew at an average annual rate of 2.1% before 2008 and 0.7% thereafter. Today’s improved estimates indicate that productivity grew a little slower before 2008, at 2.0%, while it grew at an average of 1.3% from 2009 to 2019.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

www.researchgate.net/publication/... A great paper.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Been thinking about this bit of the von der Leyden speech since yesterday. I think she may well be right. Or at least, she isn’t obviously wrong despite some of the sneering from US tech types. ec.europa.eu/commission/p...

By limiting the risks of AI, we can maximise the benefits. We have already done a lot. On gigafactories and tech sovereignty, for example. But the next leg of this race is not only about frontier models. Just as was the case with the printing press in times gone by. It was invented by a German inventor, but was mastered and applied across Western Europe.

We do not need to be the ones who develop the frontier technology to be the ones who draw the greatest value from it. The key is creating the value that AI has not yet delivered. Moving AI from the screen to the real economy and society. On the factory floor. On the hospital ward. In precision agriculture. In our energy grids. Smart grids. For autonomous driving. For defence.

This is where the real value is hidden. And it is where Europe has big advantages. We have world-class industries that sit on the highest-quality data. These data are a precious European treasure. They are what can power tailor-made industrial AI models.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Claude from OECD data (and I haven’t checked this at all).

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

The appeal isn’t the financing. It’s the joint procurement rules. Done well, it changes the MoD incentives. Want this funding option? You buy this system. Want something bespoke? Have an argument with HMT about why you are right. Stops Ajax like disasters, forces them to buy off the shelf.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Very much a life comes at you fast day.

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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

File under: not good. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

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