Archive

October 14, 2025
2025-10-14 UK_head.png

UK: Mixed Messages On Labour Market

  • Most narratives can find some support in the latest labour market report, preserving uncertainty that should keep the BoE on hold at least until some clarity emerges.
  • Unemployment has increased (LFS) or stabilised (payrolls), while pay is shockingly resurgent (inc-bonuses), slowing as expected (ex-bonus) or stagnating (private pay).
  • Weakness isn’t as clear as the consensus and press sometimes make out, but concerns aren’t invalidated. We still expect resilience to preserve excess inflation hawkishly.

By Philip Rush

October 09, 2025
2025-10-09 UK_head.png

UK: Poor Productivity Paradigms

  • The OBR looks likely to trim its productivity trend assumption to 1%, which would still be a bullish break from the current stagnation. Trends rarely break outside recessions.
  • High taxes are squeezing the most productive and being transferred to the inactive. It should not be surprising that the UK’s political choices have stalled productivity.
  • We see no reason to think the UK will pull off an internationally exceptional jobs-light boom from here. Ongoing stagnation would extend the UK’s rule for fiscal slippage.

By Philip Rush

October 08, 2025
2025-10-08 AN_head.png

US Shutdown: A Means To An End

  • The Democrats opted for a US government shutdown despite the Administration being well prepared for what it sees as an opportunity to promote its longer-term agenda.
  • While they hold out, the president’s ‘grim reaper’, OMB Director Russell Vought, will have a free hand to cut the size of government and pursue his unitary executive vision.
  • Some of his actions will undoubtedly be challenged in the courts, but the signs are that the Supreme Court will continue to side firmly with the Administration.

By Alastair Newton

October 07, 2025
2025-10-07 US_head.png

US: Steady As She Shuts

  • The US government shutdown causes vital economic data to go dark, leaving the Fed facing market pressure to blindly cut rates as priced, creating risks of policy error.
  • Both parties see strategic value in prolonging the shutdown, risking disruption that lasts well beyond historical norms. But levels will rebound when it inevitably ends.
  • In the interim, private surveys signal weakness, and this picture is unlikely to improve significantly enough to block cuts in 2025, but that won’t drive more Fed cuts in 2026.

By Philip Rush

By country