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Nasdaq has plunged -11% in the past month, so it's already in correction territory. Could be the start of another "tech wreck" as the AI bubble deflates.

The £20b fiscal "black hole" is just a tiny 1-2% of UK state debt and GDP...

The UK state blows a sickening £1.2T of your taxpayer cash every 12 months, and has a further £3T of state debt, and an additional £3T of unfunded state pension liabilities for gold council pensions.

The £20b is but a minuscule part of that £7T fiscal totality.

The tiny 1-2% "hole" is being wildly exaggerated to cloak massive 10-20% hikes in CGT and pension tax theft that are coming in Oct 2024. Few understand what is happening. Few are challenging it.

The UK public are gullible suckers.

The FTSE 100 is tanking. The £ is tanking. LLOY is tanking. Good old Labour 👍

The BoE cut looks risky. UK inflation will spike again in the coming months, as fuel costs are scheduled to leap +10% in Oct, millions of civil "servants" are about to get ridiculous 5-22% payrises, while the "Red Sea ripple" of local Middle East war is now starting to clog up major global ports like Singapore and hike import-export costs. The BoE has taken a big risk here. Given its appalling record in the past decade, the BoE may well have got it wrong again.

It won't kick off in the Middle East, beyond a few token retaliatory bomb strikes for the evening TV news. Iran is too poor to fight a long war. Iran couldn't even beat little Iraq. Israel has nukes. And the US, UK and France will just step in, if a conventional attack from Iran is launched.

The challenge is, LLOY is heavily analysed and there is little new to talk about on a daily basis.

We all know the LLOY share price is being dragged up to 60p+, not by fundamentals, but by the huge rally in US regional bank shares... UK interest rates are coming down, mortgages are once again cheapening, and LLOY will be able to sell way more mortgages in 2025 as the green countryside gets obliterated with godawful newbuilds... We all know the DCA car-loan scandal is going to get expensive for LLOY in 2025-26, and we all know a bank windfall tax will eventually be back on the table.

If everyone just sticks to LLOY chat, this forum will be tumbleweeds in days.

Lol.

The vast majority of people can't even predict their financials beyond the end of next week, let alone what's happening to them in 10-50 years' time. Half the UK adult population today holds less than £500 in savings!

Thus, the idea that young or middle-aged voters will understand their pensions are about to vapourise in old age is laughable. Labour only has to cloak the state-pension delete in pseudo-technical speak -- we are rightsizing social security for hardworking families in the community -- and it will wash right over the heads of almost everyone.

You'd have to be very naive to believe the state pension is here to stay. Pensioners vote Tory. Labour hate Tories and pensioners. The dripfeed politics of envy and spite are alive and kicking among the reds. Today, they take your fuel payments. Tomorrow, your TV licence and bus pass. The day after, your pension...

Labour hates pensioners. With a passion. Brown wrecked their private pensions with a vicious dividend tax from the 1990s. Reeves is taking away their heating funds in the 2020s. It wouldn't be a surprise to see Labour take away their state pension by the 2030s. Anyone under 60yo really needs to start planning (now) for "zero state pension" when they retire.

No chance the UK BoE will cut rates in Aug 2024. Millions of NHS staff are about to get inflation-busting payrises of 5-22%. It would be reckless to cut rates before there is a full understanding of what Labour has planned for its drunken-sailor spending binge.

The US Fed will defo cut rates in Sep 2024. The Chicago futures markets just priced in a 100% certainty last week. US inflation is back under control and back around the 1-3% range.

OAPs are being used to fund obscene payrises for fat-cat unions.

Snatch £2b from grandma, and gift £2b to red Ken.

Anyone who voted Labour or Reform should be ashamed.

Caution needed. The ONS places UK manufacturing size around $550 billion for 2022. Double the $259 billion claimed today. It is a weird press release. A trade body, whose role is to talk up UK manufacturing, is loudly talking it down. Urge caution here on the definitions of the numbers quoted. This doesn't pass the smell test.

State workers (doctors) downing tools unless they get more free money... Taxing other people's money like wartime hysteria... Spending other people's money like a drunken sailor... Sounds a lot like a Maoist revolution...

Those who swallowed Starmer's pretence of moderation, and his Chancellor's smiley pledges of responsibility and restraint, can now regret their folly at leisure.

There is no "black hole". The (wildly exaggerated) £10-20b is just a tiny 1-2% of state budget and state debt. It is not a hole. And it is certainly not black.

Labour here is fostering artificial hysteria, to pave the way for (vastly) more tax for them -- and less money for you.

We are only a few weeks into a Labour term, and the mood music is only about tax, tax and more tax. Labour is about to spend your money like a drunken sailor.

Looks like the bull run of the US Magnificent 7 -- Alphabet, Tesla, etc. -- is coming to an end for now. Tesla crashing -12% today.

The UK car-finance industry lent around £100-400b during the 2014-2021 window of the DCA car-loan scandal. It only takes a modest 10% of those loans to make a mis-selling claim, and you're talking telephone numbers. We now also have a Labour govt, who are desperate to soak the fat-cat exploiters of the capitalist West. It's shaping up for a perfect storm.

LLOY looks very strong right now. But keep in mind that the FCA ruling on the car-loan scandal is just around the corner. Noticed yesterday that one of the claim-management firms is now projecting the total DCA costs could run up to £40b for the banks! That's roughly the same as PPI. And roughly 100 times more than LLOY has currently budgeted for. The potential for a car-loan shock here remains high. Dyor, etc.

Yes, the UK has a proud and magical history of state-led mega-investment... such as, err, British Leyland 1970s, Network Rail 2000s ($100b debt), Woking Council 2000s ($1b debt), and CalMac Ferries 2020s.

The only "interesting" things about the National "Wealth" Fund is how many tens of billions of taxpayer cash they will blow before anyone notices, how many absurd vanity projects they will back, and how many years before it's quietly sold off to foreign vulture funds for a breathtaking loss.

Good report on lab-made butter, created from CO2 and thin air, by Savor / Orca Sciences / Bill Gates in the US. Tastes like the real thing (allegedly). Cheese, milk and ice cream also under pre-commercial development. Could mean the end of the cow 🐄

https://www.iflscience.com/lab-made-butter-created-from-co2-tastes-like-the-real-thing-says-bill-gates-75144

https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/jul/16/us-startup-lab-made-climate-friendly-butter-savor-bill-gates

LLOY looks ready to punch thru the 60p level. But keep in mind that the FCA ruling for the DCA car-loan scandal is just a few weeks away (September).