Coldwater Economics

On the end of ELO: has anyone mentioned the debt the Flaming Lips owe to them? Parts of 'Out of the Blue' could be slipped into Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots without any change and it would never be noticed. Flaming Lips v cool, ELO vs uncool. Still . . .

UK housebuilders look away now. In the US, June's median price for a newbuild was 7.7% lower than that of existing homes. They're selling at a discount. In the UK, May's average newbuild was selling at a premium of 58% to existing sales. Something v badly wrong!

China Is Disinvesting in Itself open.substack.com/pub/mtaylor/p/… China's current economic challenges are on a scale directly proportionate to its world-changing success since the 1990s. At this point, my estimate is that China is actually now disinvesting in itself!

As HK becomes China. . . China's June industrial output rose 6.8% yoy (no comment needed). But look: SOE output rose 5.7%, and HK/Taiwan invested +5.5%. The convergence has been tightening since 2024, but now it's absolute lockstep. That's control. . .

Whilst all US confidence surveys have gapped down since Trump, the one which really matters is surging. Business applications with a high payrolls propensity jumped 19.1% in June to the 2nd highest in history. Damn the torpedoes etc.

UK: Public Sector Inflation is the Fiscal Problem open.substack.com/pub/mtaylor/p/… Britain has an fiscal problem because of its interest rates. It's interest rates are high because of inflation. But inflation is high only where government is involved. That's the problem, and solution!

In 1942 Beveridge set out plans for a welfare state to banish 5 'great evils': Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.' Has the welfare estate managed this? If not, by Beveridge's own lights, we need a re-think. To banish Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.

Re: Starmer's claim about housing. The latest data (for April 2025) shows public sector housing construction down 8.7% yoy. ons.gov.uk/businessindust…

Now this is interesting: looks like fusion is finally arriving. Makes destroying your environment with intermittants even more perverse. Someone should tell Care-in-the -Community about it, quietly to keep him calm. . . interestingengineering.com/energy/google-…

China: It's Worse Than You Think open.substack.com/pub/mtaylor/p/… It's worth taking a little time to appreciate just how tough things are getting in China. Two aspects treated here: the accelerating slump in profits; the stagnation of the financial system.

US - Damn the Torpedoes! open.substack.com/pub/mtaylor/p/… US economic news has been poor for the last three months. How much of this is a result of Trump's volcano of policy instability, and how much of underlying weaknesses. My Economy Watcher's toolkit gives the answer.

It's a great time to bury bad news, which is probably why there's been so little attention to the monetary freeze emerging in Japan. M1 is falling yoy, banks including BOJ are shrinking loan portfolios. Nominal GDP slowdown to come! mtaylor.substack.com/p/japans-unrem…

Societies collapse when leaders undermine and break upholding core societal principles, morals and ideals. And 'good (democratic)' government break down more intensely than despotic regimes. That's what anthropologists find from history. Sound familiar? phys.org/news/2020-10-h…

Tyrannical regimes lie, openly, repeatedly, and preposterously in order to humiliate the populations they need to bully. Regime media comply and assist. I’d hate to see that happening in Britain.

Why have we not yet been granted Timothy Spalls Lear. Britains greatest actor currently on the boards. Directors. sort it!

Trump puts 50% tariffs on EU imports. EU has two big trade surpluses. In March US cEu40bn, UK cEu16bn. If EU is tariffed out of US markets, it will/must dump all its goods into UK, killing remaining UK industry. So UK should protect itself. But instead. . . the Reset!

C'mon, someone make the mix! No skulduggery, no flim-flam,no compromise, no sell out, no controlled show.

This Thursday, 15th of May, should be known, nationally as Lucy Connolly Day. The day we measure how far tyranny has advanced, or how far we may yet rescue liberty, fairness, humanity and justice for the British people.

More rubbish from Britain's wretched statistics office: this time the chaos erupts in the PPI calculations. 'Our quality assurance identified a problem with the chain-linking methods used to calculate these indices. This problem affects the years from 2008 onwards. No heads roll.