Sovereign Finance

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...

Rob’s comments are in italics. Derek’s comments are in normal font. I've got a short quote from Caitlin Johnson to share today. We both follow Caitlin, she's at https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/. She says in one of her articles : Market forces are not guided by wisdom, they are guided by greed and fear, and by the unresolved early childhood trauma of the Musks and Theils and Bezoses of this world....

Rob’s comments are in italics. Derek’s comments are in normal font. Today we're going to be talking about several frameworks you've got in mind for life operating an enterprise, all sorts of things. So, where do we need to start? I thought I'd return to the focus, which is the core of what we set out to do with sovereign finance, which is to show some light on the whole nature of wealth and the cr...

Rob’s comments are in italics. Derek’s comments are in normal font. Today at the time of recording is the 7th of February. Things continue to move at pace, so we thought we'd do a quick roundup of recent events in the last week and see what's relevant from a sovereign finance lens. Where do we need to start? Well, I mean, I think the most obvious thing from this week is Donald Trump's bull-in-a-Ch...

Rob’s comments are in italics. Derek’s comments are in normal font. Right, okay, so we've had another week of Trump's presidency. Lots of squeals of outrage from all directions. The Senate confirmation hearings are going ahead now. Predictably enough, Robert Kennedy's been given a hard time by several of the senators... Several of the senators who are notably being paid by Big Pharma. Most reports...

Rob’s comments are in italics. Derek’s comments are in normal font. Today is the 24th of January, so we are on day five of the Donald Trump administration, its second time round. There's definitely a lot going on. What do we need to recap from a Sovereign Finance lens? Well, I think there's a lot which will have implications for all of us, particularly with Trump's pronouncements. The word constan...

Rob’s comments are in italics. Derek’s comments are in normal font. We're going to do a bit of a recap as we approach the end of January. We keep saying every week on the show, if you don't like what's going on this week, come back next week because the world might be different. We were having a chat before the call, we established that I've been head down in my bunker, not paying attention to wor...

Key: Rob’s comments are in italics, Derek’s comments are in normal font. We're talking today about a book that personally has really helped me on my business journey. It's a fast book to read and that book is Profit First. Why are we covering ‘ Profit First ’ and what do people need to know about it? Right, because this is the best summary that I've found of an actual concrete proposal for methods...

In this episode, Rob and Derek reflect on the significant economic changes of 2024, particularly the rise in inflation and its impact on everyday life. We discuss the growing divide between the financial world and the real economy, the limits to growth in a finite world, and the implications of warfare on energy consumption. The conversation also touches on the increasing awareness among the publi...

This conversation rounds up goings-on in mid-December 2024, including events in Syria. This episode is audio-only, please use the ‘transcript’ button above to read an automatically generated transcript. Thanks for joining us in 2024, Sovereign Finance will be back in January! Thanks for listening this episode of Sovereign Finance. For more episodes, transcripts, in-depth articles, and the communit...

Kay: Rob’s comments in italics Derek’s comments in normal font Our topic today is farming, some of the changes coming in the agricultural sector and BlackRock's potential involvement and firms like BlackRock. I wondered if I should just start. This topic was requested by a listener who pointed us towards one of Daniel Priestley's LinkedIn posts. I'm going to start by reading that out just as a sta...

Key: Rob’s comments are in italics, Derek’s are in normal font. Our topic today is Labour's plans for the British economy and how those plans appear to be highly divorced from reality. Which sounds like a big topic. Where do we need to start with this one? The best place to start might be Rachel Reeves' statement in the budget. She said the only way to deliver economic growth is to invest, invest,...

Rob’s comments are in italics Derek’s comments are in normal font You were telling me about a letter you wrote to Apple once that generated a lot of revenue... Being an Apple dealer was possible as a small player once, although they rapidly weeded out those not operating at their desired scale. My letter aimed to retain my dealership, which provided a tidy revenue. Apple relayed the contents of th...

Rob’s comments are in italics Derek’s comments are in normal font Our topic today then is "stock" and "flow". Right, this is a fundamental point. I sometimes worry whether I'm labouring the point in our broadcast series by stating the obvious. This concept will provide clarity to every aspect of what you examine once you're clear on it. A stock is the measurement of any quantity. We think immediat...

Rob’s comments are in italics Derek’s comments are in normal font Initial Comments on the US Election The American election results on November 8th produced a Trump landslide. Many people tried to convince themselves it was neck and neck. Not to anyone paying attention - I had it fairly nailed on that it was quite likely. The significance for our discussion lies in the effect this outcome has had...

Key: Rob’s comments are in italics, Derek’s are in normal font. So we're going to talk about doughnut economics today. And you mentioned before the call that there's a topical item for us to talk about too. So what is that topical item? Developments in the BRICS Alliance… Well, the topical item is that already it must be a year since the last time this was happening because they've just had a conf...

Key: Rob’s comments are in italics. Derek’s comments are normal font. As the world is rapidly changing around us, I thought we could maybe comment on some current affairs items on this episode... Terrorism Under The “Anti-Terrorism” Act Yeah, it's been quite a week. One bit of news that really struck me is that a journalist in London had their house raided by 10 metropolitan police officers from t...

Key: Rob’s comments are in italics. Derek’s comments are normal font. Our topic today is energy, which on the face of it may not seem to relate that obviously to sovereign finance, but we think it does. So where do we need to start? Why We Need Energy Let's start first off with why we actually need energy. We need energy first and foremost for staying alive in the form of food. We need energy for...