Sovereign Finance

Rob’s comments below are in italics. Derek’s comments below are in normal font. We’re going to talk about energy today. Where do we need to start with energy? Well, on YouTube lately, I don’t know whether you’ve noticed the same thing, but I get an enormous number of ads for heaters that supposedly heat your room in seconds for next to nothing in energy costs. They work by magic. Yeah, exactly. I...

Rob’s comments below are in italics. Derek’s comments below are in normal font. Today, we’re going to talk about how wealth is seemingly represented by weaponry and other destructive elements of society, and relate that to some current events. So what do people need to know? “Ilth” and the Futility of War Well, it’s worth reminding ourselves of the definition we settled on: wealth is what people w...

Rob’s comments below are in italics. Derek’s comments below are in normal font. We’re talking about inflation today. I was talking with my wife Linzi the other night about how we basically can’t go to Aldi, which is our local supermarket, and spend less than a hundred pounds, no matter how hard you try these days. She was like, well, where does this end? Because people can’t carry on doing this. I...

Rob’s comments below are in italics. Derek’s comments below are in normal font. So we thought we would pass comment on current events today. What’s going on that people should pay attention to? Well, probably at the top of the list would be alleged incursions by Russia into the airspace of various NATO countries. We briefly discussed this a couple of weeks ago when the drones appeared in Poland. A...

Rob’s comments below are in italics. Derek’s comments below are in normal font. We thought we'd comment on the state of the world and some goings on today that relate to Sovereign Finance. So what's been going on that people should be paying attention to? Well, there are lots of things that don't seem to be working. Rather than addressing them, our wonderful leaders seem to be simply doubling down...

Rob’s comments below are in italics. Derek’s comments below are in normal font. We’ve got some thoughts to share on the SCO Summit, which before this call, I was not aware of. So what is it, and what do people need to know? Well, it's the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, an organisation which is oriented towards both defence and trade. It's another thing which has expanded enormously over the la...

Rob’s comments below are in italics. Derek’s comments below are in normal font. We're talking about debt today. Last time out, we were talking about how debt can be a good thing or a bad thing at individual, business and national level. It appears in the last week or so that Britain is in a much worse state than the authorities have led us to believe. It seems we might actually be bailed out by th...

Rob’s comments below are in italics. Derek’s comments below are in normal font. We're going to revisit a topic today that we've been talking about quite a bit recently - debt. So yeah, what's going on that people need to know about? What prompted me to think about this again was a broadcast I listened to the other day. It gave a rundown of the state of the United Kingdom's finances, which are in a...

Rob’s comments below are in italics. Derek’s comments below are in normal font. We're discussing big numbers today, a topic we've explored before in how billions and trillions are used in public discourse. We're going to talk about that today in the context of US debt. So what do people need to know about this? Right, so I'll just give a bit of a recap. When we talked about an idea of how to get a...

Rob’s comments below are in italics. Derek’s comments below are in normal font. We're going to talk a little bit about a book called the Mighty Micro? This is a book written in 1979. As far as I was concerned, he was preaching to the converted. I'd already been using microcomputers and indeed designing with microprocessors for two or three years at the time the book came out. But I've kept it on t...

A quick announcement: We’re holding a free live Sovereign Finance discussion on Sunday 20th July, at 7.30PM on Zoom. We’ll discuss global trends, things you might do, and answer questions from the podcast so far. Register for free here . Rob’s comments below are in italics. Derek’s comments below are in normal font. The news this week has been dominated by Trump backtracking on his commitment to b...

A quick announcement: We’re holding a free live Sovereign Finance discussion on Sunday 20th July, at 7.30PM on Zoom. We’ll discuss global trends, things you might do, and answer questions from the podcast so far. Register for free here . Rob’s comments below are in italics. Derek’s comments below are in normal font. Okay, so it’s the 10th of July. It's a full moon rising today or tomorrow. We'll r...

A quick announcement: We’re holding a free live Sovereign Finance discussion on Sunday 20th July, at 7.30PM on Zoom. We’ll discuss global trends, things you might do, and answer questions from the podcast so far. Register for free here . Rob’s comments below are in italics. Derek’s comments below are in normal font. Our topic today is the BRICS annual conference, which started a few days ago. We'v...

Rob’s comments below are in italics. Derek’s comments below are in normal font. We're talking about warfare today, which is definitely a relevant topic, given worldly goings on and the connection to the financial system. So what do we need to know? We had the so-called 12 days of what you could call it, Israel and Iran, terminated by a ceasefire that Donald Trump is taking credit for. It's worth e...

Reminder: We’re holding a free live Sovereign Finance discussion on Sunday 22nd June, at 7.30PM on Zoom. We’ll discuss global trends, things you might do, and answer questions from the podcast so far. Register for free here . Rob’s comments below are in italics. Derek’s comments below are in normal font. We're talking about wealth creation and wealth acquisition today. Where do we need to begin? W...

Reminder: We’re holding a free live Sovereign Finance discussion on Sunday 22nd June, at 7.30PM on Zoom. We’ll discuss global trends, things you might do, and answer questions from the podcast so far. Register for free here . Rob’s comments below are in italics. Derek’s comments below are in normal font. I’d like to discuss how interest rates would work in a sane world, and how they have in fact b...

A quick announcement: We’re holding a free live Sovereign Finance discussion on Sunday 22nd June, at 7.30PM on Zoom. We’ll discuss global trends, things you might do, and answer questions from the podcast so far. Register for free here . Rob’s comments below are in italics. Derek’s comments below are in normal font. We're going to do another weekly recap this week, which is useful for me because I...

A quick announcement: We’re holding a free live Sovereign Finance discussion on Sunday 22nd June, at 7.30PM on Zoom. We’ll discuss global trends, things you might do, and answer questions from the podcast so far. Register for free here . Rob’s comments below are in italics. Derek’s comments below are in normal font. We thought we'd examine current events from a sovereign finance perspective today....

Rob’s comments are in italics. Derek’s comments are in normal font. We're going to reminisce about your past today and explore some of the lessons from working in finance. So what happened and where do we need to start? W hen I came down from university, I got a job in a firm of stockbrokers. It was one of the large firms, had about 40 partners and 400 staff. Its primary business was for instituti...

Rob’s comments are in italics. Derek’s comments are in normal font. We're going to take a swipe at current events, current goings on, because as usual, things are running apace. We're also going to touch on inflation, which is coming back into the realm of relevance. Where do we need to start? Okay, I think we've had things running at a pace on numerous geopolitical fronts. It's been more of the s...

Rob’s comments are in italics. Derek’s comments are in normal font. Things on every front appear to be getting more chaotic. Nearly everything I am going to run over today are things I have mentioned before over the last few weeks and months, but it seems that the temperature is steadily rising. It is like groundhog day. I think the main development, if you can call it that, over the war in Ukrain...

Rob’s comments are in italics. Derek’s comments are in normal font. Thanks for reading Sovereign Finance! Subscribe for free to receive new posts. Well, it's been a pretty hectic week since Donald Trump announced his swinging tariffs on the rest of the world. Using this word tariff is a bit of obscurity. These things used to be called import duties. They're not paid by the foreign governments, whi...

Rob’s comments are in italics. Derek’s comments are in normal font. Subscribe free to be notified of new episodes: We're going to continue today with our tour of our forthcoming book, Demystifying the Money Puzzle. This week, we're going to examine the nature of an enterprise, which is something we take for granted and maybe shouldn't? Yeah, according to the Oxford dictionary, an enterprise, the t...

Rob’s comments are in italics. Derek’s comments are in normal font. So last time out we were outlining our forthcoming book, Unravelling the Money Puzzle, and we thought we'd continue tugging on some of those threads today. What's on the agenda? Well, as I said last week, we gave an outline of the structure of the book as a whole. I mentioned that there are going to be three sections. One is about...

Rob’s comments are in italics. Derek’s comments are in normal font. I wanted to give a summary of my plan for the book and for the listeners to this podcast today. If you've been listening for the last year or so that we've been running this, we'll have already covered some of the material that will go into it. We will probably go through it again in a more systematic, structured way. Provisionall...