More pointers towards a coming crash(and this time it’s from someone much cleverer than us)

Over the years we’ve ventured a series of blogs (LSS 23 4 25;30 6 25 18 5 26) in which we suggested that another financial crash on the scale of 1929 or 2007-8 may be approaching. We shared our concerns about the long-term viability of US Treasuries, pointing to weaknesses in the property market and the effects this might have on general confidence and demand. We also speculated that rising tides of nationalism and protectionism vitiated the possibilities of co-operative global responses in the style of 2008. Our view alone; and we swiftly moved on to to other matters.

Yet the risks have not gone away. Eduardo Porter, in an excellent article for the Guardian, [1] does not dismiss the possibility of the AI stocks bubble bursting. But for him:

The largest risk, at this moment, revolves around the federal government’s accumulation of debt, now in excess of 120% of the nation’s gross domestic product, a near unprecedented level. It is likely to keep on growing at a fast clip given massive built in budget deficits for the next decade……a global context: the US’s insatiable appetite for capital – to finance data centers or the federal deficit – is met by China’s export of capital to recycle its huge trade surplus. A coarse, schematic way to think of it is China sells stuff to the US and invests the proceeds in the US. Then, Americans take money from China and use it to buy Chinese stuff.

That’s how the world works in May 2026. What happens next? Now Porter gets really interesting, pointing to deep political risks which might trigger a sell off of US debt.[2] Astute readers will not be surprised to learn that many of them revolve around a the actions of President Donald J Trump. An invasion of Greenland? Stepping the war in Iran up again? Attempting to meddle with the Federal Reserve, sending the dollar into a tailspin? Mr Trump is a democratically elected politician and has every right to do these things. But if he does, the consequences will be global. And Porter is equally merciless on the shortcomings of other nations. Like us, he sees no collective escape this time. Ouch indeed.

[1] The world is heading toward a financial crisis – the state of US politics has left us ill-prepared | Business | The Guardian

[2] https://www.aei.org/economics/brewing-government-bond-market-crises/?_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8u2PIGjNg8Q6fBS5RzfUnOeM9txpv7fI9NjE9uC1veq4UgmUkPS-0YDGyIk7m_WiFx

#economics #politics #USA #Federal Reserve #economic crisis #dollar #world trade

Friday Night: Rum Punch could be a big hit for a hot weekend

Photo by Tanhauser Vu00e1zquez R. on Pexels.com

Phew what a scorcher! And Met Men say there’s more to come. We’ve waited nearly six years to finally drop those lines in. And given the state of the weather in Southern England this weekend, you could be forgiven for feeling decidedly tropical. Caribbean, even. So much so, that one of our regular interlocutors* suggested the Rum Punch as this weekend’s cocktail. If only, she said, because it lends itself to so much ice if the temperature really starts soaring this Bank Holiday.

Our recipe this week comes from Richard Godwin of BBC Good Food. You should click on it for some really easy-to-follow instructions. But the basic ingredients are Rum, lemons, tea leaves and brown sugar, plus a little Angostura and various garnishes. Nothing beyond the supply capacity of a good supermarket in fact. We’ve even seen nifty little punch sets with jugs and glasses and all the works in some of our local ones.

So now imagine you have mixed up your drink and are enjoying that authentic Caribbean Pirate ambience, strolling the foc’sle or the mizzen deck or whatever they called it, glass in hand watching the sun set over the nearest palm-clad tropical paradise. Yet with none of those early eighteenth-century drawbacks such as the toilets, the food, the weevils in the biscuits and prospect of being hung at Wapping Dock. Lucky you!

Rum punch recipe – BBC Food

* with thanks to Mrs H H of Shooters Hill Slopes

#Friday night #cocktail #rum #caribbean

Round Up for Bank Holiday Weekend: Climate Migrants, Migrating whales, Wales’ climate-and more

Stories we liked but never had time to cover this week

Every Immigrant an Emigrant If you’re really serious about migration, tackle the causes, we say. This article from the Conversation makes our point rather well. Economics and ecology: tackle those and you will have solved the problem.

https://theconversation.com/who-moves-away-when-climate-change-hits-the-hidden-household-politics-of-migration-281470?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversa

Wandering whale The immense migrations that some animals make have always impressed us none more so than the journeys of this remarkable humpback whale as chronicled by The Guardian. Incidentally, cetacean fans will be delighted by the forthcoming edition of that remarkable magazine Sussex Local, which carries a tour de force of in-depth reporting on dolphins and other large mammals in the English Channel. Don’t miss it!

Twenty-two years and 15,000km later: fluke discovery sets new record for humpback whale journey | Marine life | The Guardian wandering whale

Was T Rex fairly armless? Sorry we couldn’t think of a single Marc Bolan gag that we could decently publish here, so we’ll let you read this article about one of the more famous unsolved puzzles in science.

Why did T. rex have such small arms? Scientists finally SOLVE the mystery – and say the answer may lie in their giant heads | Daily Mail Online

How long can a civilisation last anyway? If you’re one of those types who thinks “I don’t give a monkey’s about climate change, I’ll be dead before it happens” then this article from EL País may give pause for thought.(note-in Spanish)

https://elpais.com/ciencia/2026-05-20/cuanto-tiempo-puede-vivir-una-civilizacion-antes-de-colapsar-las-utopias-estables-son-los-escenarios-menos-probables.

Fortress Britain People in Britain used to sneer at the disasters-climatic, political, economic-which befell less fortunate countries. Not any more, as climate change erodes their complacency in many forms, including biting insects, burning summers and flashing floods. Even in cool green Wales, as this link from the BBC makes clear

‘Negligence’ not to prepare for climate change emergencies in Wales – BBC News

Basically, it’s reckless indulgence in our beastly pleasures that have brought the climate crisis upon us. Shakespeare had this to say

“Thou art so fat-witted with drinking of old sack… that thou hast forgotten to demand that which thou wouldst truly know.” — Henry IV, Part 1 (Act 1, Scene 2)

#climate change #global warming #whales #dolphins #dinosaurs #economics #sociology

Hats off to the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, doing so much to make a sustainable world

Give us credit: we’re always trying to cover organisations who are trying to make a difference to the enormous toxic mountain of stuff that everyone throws away every day. We’ve no ideological bias- we’ve lauded the efforts of governments, charities and universities down the years. One thing though: we’ve always had a soft spot for is start-up companies, because they are often where the best and the brightest are to be found. Over the years we’ve looked for them in places as diverse as Nigeria (LSS 23 12 25) Australia (LSS 13 11 25) and the UK (19 9 23;3 3 25) A tiny sample of what’s out there, but we know it gives you all hope. And if you want more hope, we have discovered an amazing place to look: The Ellen Macarthur Foundation.

Because their website [1] is a cornucopia of good news about companies, initiatives, and projects all designed to create a circular economy, which is, in their words:

a system where materials never become waste and nature is regenerated……. products and materials are kept in circulation through processes like maintenance, reuse, refurbishment, remanufacture, recycling, and composting. The circular economy tackles climate change and other global challenges, like biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution, by decoupling economic activity from the consumption of finite resources.

And there is a truly encyclopaedic guide to the vast range organisations they work with to achieve this laudable end Click for yourself, it’s so far up our LSS street we could put our brass plate on one of the doors. It’s always unfair to pick examples: but we could not resist telling you about Arda Biomaterials of the UK who are transforming waste barley grains from the drinks industry into new types of fabric. And a Spanish outfit called AOS who build advanced insect bioconversion plants using larvae to recycle food waste and by‑products into organic fertilisers and animal feed ingredients.

It’s funny where people get their hope from, isn’t it? Some from a bottle, some from various white and brown vegetable products. Ours comes from knowing there are still many intelligent and rational people labouring their utmost to overcome this sorry mess which the ignorance and greed of others has landed us all into. And the Ellen Macarthur foundation is a big part of the solution.

[1] Leading the Transition to a Circular Economy | Ellen MacArthur Foundation

#circular economy #recycling #sustainability #waste #commerce #business #green economy #The Ellen Macarthur Foundation

Why Adam Smith thought immigration controls were Creeping Socialism

Many people who call themselves free‑marketeers begin from a sincere fear of “creeping socialism.” They see every new regulation, planning rule, workplace standard, environmental requirement and every tax as another brick in a wall that hems in enterprise and erodes liberty. They believe that once government starts managing economic life, it rarely stops. Which creates a contradiction at the heart of a lot of modern political rhetoric. Parties, especially of the Right, describe themselves as advocates of free‑market nations, committed to open trade, open capital, open competition, lower taxes — and then insist that immigration must be tightly controlled. It sounds like a reasonable compromise, a balancing act between global economics and local sentiment. But it’s also a rejection of the classical liberal tradition we claim to inherit. Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Bastiat — none of them imagined markets as a buffet where you could pick capital and goods but decline labour. For them, the free movement of labour was not an optional extra but a structural necessity. Capital moves to where it earns the highest return; goods move to where they are most valued; labour moves to where it is most productive. These are not moral preferences but mechanical facts. Remove one gear and the machine does not slow down politely; it compensates, strains, and distorts.

Yet modern politicians try to keep the first two gears spinning while jamming a stick into the third. Where capital must be free, goods must be free, but labour must be fenced, filtered, and rationed. The economic equivalent of declaring your devotion to physics while exempting yourself from gravity on weekends. Once you restrict labour mobility, you are no longer operating a free market. You are operating a managed economy with selective liberalisation. This may be politically popular. It may even be economically defensible in certain circumstances. But it is not classical liberalism.

And the distortions appear everywhere. If labour cannot move, something else must. Capital moves instead: offshoring, outsourcing, investing abroad. Goods move instead: imports rise to fill the gap. Wages diverge between protected insiders and excluded outsiders. Productivity stagnates as firms rely on scarcity rather than innovation. Regions hollow out as young workers leave and old workers remain. Demographics collapse as fertility falls and dependency ratios rise. Ironic, really: anti‑immigration sentiment produces the very globalisation its supporters resent. Block the worker, and the factory moves, the goods arrive instead, the demographic pyramid inverts. You can restrain labour, but you cannot restrain arithmetic.

Adam Smith warned that restrictions on labour mobility were a violation of natural liberty — an eighteenth‑century way of saying that such rules protect incumbents at the expense of everyone else. Immigration controls raise domestic wages artificially, raise prices for consumers, reduce competition, entrench inefficiency, and subsidise native labour at the expense of the global poor. This is protectionism by another name. And once you accept protectionism in labour, you have accepted the principle that economic policy must be directed by the Government for the public good. And that free markets do not deliver the optimum national outcomes. A country can choose many things — a managed economy, a protectionist economy, a high‑skill selective system, a low‑migration demographic strategy. All of these are legitimate political choices. But what a country cannot choose is to restrict labour while claiming to champion free markets. That is not a philosophy; it is a branding exercise.

Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter 10

#Adam Smith #David Ricardo #free markets #liberty #economics #politics #capitalism

Nature Briefing on the hopeful hunt for new antibiotics

Today we are more than pleased to turn our blog over lock, stock and barrel to that excellent website Nature Briefing. For they are showcasing a short but very-well made video showing some really exciting new developments in the race to find new antibiotics before resistant organisms kill us all. You should be able to find it easily via the link below, gentle readers, and their text will tell you most of what you need to know. But watch it in particular for the efforts of Dr Gerry Quinn and his colleagues in Ulster University who have been poking around the grave yards of faith healers in Fermanagh to look for new antibiotic producing organisms. Plus the efforts of researchers at London’s Imperial College who are trying to harness the power of Artificial Intelligence to help this vital quest.

Some of you always accuse us if bringing nothing but doom and gloom to your screens. OK-here’s a bit of light and sunshine for once. Happy now?

Video: The Hunt for the next antibiotics is what they call it. Good title!

To battle antibiotic resistance, researchers are leaving no stone unturned and harnessing AI to find new antibiotics. Nature filmmaker Nick Petrić Howe went to a remote graveyard in Northern Ireland in the pouring rain to learn how one researcher discovered a source of antibiotic-producing bacteria closer to home — at the grave of a faith healer.Nature | 19 min video
This editorially independent video is part of Nature Outlook: Antimicrobial resistance, a supplement produced with financial support from Meiji Seika Pharma.

#antibiotic resistance #microbiology #health #medicine #ulster university #imperial college

The Crash of 2028-an old blog revisited

It’s our occasional habit here to make serious points in a light-hearted sort of way. So when last summer (LSS 30 6 25) we published a piece called Why the Crash of 2028 was so bad….. , we felt we’d made our peace with certain worrying trends in the insurance market, and duly moved on. Except-we must have hit a raw nerve with some of you, because you keep reading it. So what did that old blog say-and has anything changed to make its predictions more accurate?

It was based on some pretty reliable sources [1] [2] including McKinsey and the Finacial Times. In a nutshell, we argued that continuing destruction due to climate change would make property uninsurable in large areas. That this in turn would cause some insurers to go bankrupt, leading to demands for Government bailouts just as the US Government was running at the fiscal limit. Confidence, we said, would fall quickly. Leading to fire sales in asset prices of all sorts, especially Equities and Bonds. Above all we predicted that recovery would be much more difficult than it had been in 2008, because nations had turned away from co operation and towards nationalist, tariff driven positions, a bit like the autarchy that proceeded the Second World War How then have we shaped up? Have thing got worse, better or stayed the same?

One constant is the risk from climate change.[3] When something as staid, solid and utterly unexcitable as the Yale Law Journal publishes something like this [4] we know we’re in for a bumpy ride. As for International Co operation-ask them in the Middle East how that has changed since 2025. And Taiwan ? Nothing in the recent summit suggests Mr Trump has achieved anything to deter Mr Xi from his long term ambitions. But most worrying of all is all the warning lights suddenly flashing “Red” in the Bond Markets today. [5] If you’re wondering why anyone should care about a so‑called “bond market rout”, the answer is simple: government bonds are the bedrock of the entire financial system. When their prices fall sharply, the cost of money rises everywhere else — mortgages, business loans, pensions, bank funding, all of it. A sudden jump in yields isn’t just market noise; it’s the system quietly saying it now trusts governments a little less than it did yesterday. And when the safest assets start to look less safe, everything built on top of them has to be repriced. That’s why experts twitch.

LSS does not give financial advice-we are not financially trained. But we have read our economics. And our History. And today, our worries have grown just that little bit more.

[1] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/climate-change-and-p-and-c-insurance-the-threat-and-opportunity

this piece by pitilla clark of the Financial Times is well worth jumping the paywall:

[2]https://www.ft.com/content/9e5df375-650d-492e-ba51-fb5a34e6ddd6

#global warming #climate change #financial markets #stock market crash #investor #economics

New references

[3] There has been a sudden increase in the rate of sea level rise | New Scientist

[4]The Uninsurable Future: The Climate Threat to Property Insurance, and How to Stop It | Yale Law Journal

[5] Bond market rout deepens as investors fear ‘stagflationary shock’ from higher oil prices – business live

#global warming #insurance #property #bond market #finacial system #middle east #geopolitics

Friday Night: We salute Italy in Cocktails

Of all the countries of the world, surely Italy has made the greatest contribution to Civilisation. Most nations only get one go at the top, as social cultural and economic leader,-but Italy did it twice (Roman Empire, Renaissance) And the food’s not bad by the way. So to celebrate this marvellous achievement, we are going to offer you a look at not one, not two but THREE great Italian cocktails.. We won’t include the Limoncello Spritz as we have covered that twice (LSS 24 6 22; 9 8 24) But do include three others that would have undoubtedly delighted Dante, pleasured Plautus or Charmed Camilleri

Negroni A delightful blend of gin and those classic Italian ingredients of vermouth and Campari The orange slices make it thrice as refreshing Our recipe is from Jack Wakelin of the BBC

Negroni recipe – BBC Food

Bellini Our recipe comes from the erudite Nick Polotninko of the marvellous cocktail wave website So simple, largely peach puree and prosecco, making it easy to scale up for receptions, soirées, weddings, christenings and the like:

Bellini Cocktail Recipe | How to Make the perfect Bellini

Aperol Spritz Jack Wakelin strikes again! Dead easy, just Aperol and prosecco essentially, and plenty of ice. Quite the in-drink with the pub crowd lately, probably because its so easy to make, that you don’t even need a shaker

Aperol spritz recipe – BBC Food

And so we hope you’ll join us in saying Salute to a great country and its achievements in Art, Science, Religion, Music, Philosophy, Gastronomy, Literature, Architecture, Design-and some great drinks.

#italy #cocktails #human civilisation #lord clark

Round up: Paleolithic passions, Exmoor eagles, Mars missions and Milton

Paleolithic passions We’ve known for some time that Homo sapiens sometimes liked a bit of rough trade,such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. But not until now that Denisovans in turn were having hank panky with that much older species, Homo erectus, as El País explains:

Una proteína desvela el episodio de sexo y procreación más antiguo entre especies humanas | Ciencia | EL PAÍS

Exmoor Eagles Exmoor National Park in Southwest England has just taken a massive stride forward by re-introducing the magnificent white tailed eagle(Haliaetus albicilla) into its majestic landscape. Has to be a hit for tourists and everyone else who wants to see a thriving economy in the region (Bird of prey extinct for over 200 years returns to southern England The Independent via MSN

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/bird-of-prey-extinct-for-over-200-years-returns-to-southern-england/ar-AA2350wQ?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=HCTS&cvid=6a

Cleaner, Greener, Richer One of the tropes you still hear trotted out in the local pub is that green technologies will somehow vitiate economic growth. Rubbish, as this piece from Nature Briefing called The cities getting ‘richer and cleaner’ makes abundantly clear

Thousands of cities are decoupling economic growth from the burning of fossil fuels. Researchers compared levels of the greenhouse gas nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) with information on gross domestic product (GDP) to track the green development trajectories of more than 5,000 of the world’s biggest cities. About 2,000 cities showed improvement in both metrics between 2019 and 2024 — most of them in China. Nature | 6 min read

Clear New way to Mars We remember discussions about nuclear powered ships powering the way to Mars nearly 60 years ago, following the heady excitement of the Apollo Programme. Then the idea shrivelled and died. Now it’s back, more practicable than ever, according to this article in The Conversation

https://theconversation.com/nasa-bets-big-on-nuclear-engines-to-cut-journey-times-to-mars-28274

Killing Kelp? We’ve always supported valiant efforts now being made to restore the UK’s coastal seaweed orests, even contributing articles to local newspapers and websites to help this worthy cause. Progress has been made, especially in our own area of Sussex. But now sewage and agricultural run off may be starting to slow the general advance, as this piece from the BBC makes clear

Sewage having ‘alarming’ impact on underwater forests in UK rivers – BBC News

Quote of the week

“He trusted to have equalled the Most High, If he opposed; and with ambitious aim Against the throne and monarchy of God Raised impious war.”

Paradise Lost Book 1 40-44

#pollution #environment #paleontology #evolution #space travel #nuclear power #mars #conservation #exmoor #eagle

Labour’s troubles are historic, not just economic

One thing we like about Larry Elliott of the Guardian: he always looks for deeper reasons behind the news stories flashing across our screens. For him, they’re often economic reasons. .[1] Today he examines the plight of UK Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the sea of troubles against which he has tried to take arms. Brexit,(“not done properly” Elliott asseverates ) globalisation (“has mainly benefitted the South East”), too much financial services ,and of course de-industrialisation. Especially in the old manufacturing areas like the Midlands, the North of England and the Scottish river valleys. Where Starmer and his party received such a kicking in the recent local elections. It was that last one that caught our eye, gentle readers.

For what was the Labour Party but a Party of the mass industrialised workers? From its foundation, in deep partnership with the Trades Unions and Co-Operative movement, but a Party of workers, who had been torn off their farms and thrown together into mass agglomerations in things like factories, mines and ports? Whose consciousness and very lives were collective, where sharing was a more certain way to survive hardship. But now those factories are gone. And the industrial unions with them. (for the benefit of foreign readers, Britain has an atrophied group of unions, but they now largely represent small groups of white collar workers and count for little in the balance of power).

For us the clue is in the name: the party of Keir Hardie grew from an organised, industrial membership. The Party of Keir Starmer exists in a very different nation. The politics of the 20th century were all about economics Those of the 21^st about Identity. No wonder Labour got such a kicking. No wonder the Conservatives did too. A very different road now lies ahead. In every country.

[1] Labour is being destroyed by dithering: it should either do Brexit properly or rejoin the EU | Larry Elliott | The Guardian

[2] Labour Party (UK) – Wikipedia

#Keir Starmer #Keir Hardie #Labour Party #economics #politics #history #society #britain