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- Never liked her - now I’m speaking out
Never liked her - now I’m speaking out
Lagarde's in trouble, and she's not alone
Tim Vollans
January 22, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
🧠 The Big Brain
The New Jobs Narrative
Weakening with 20% odds of 5% unemployment
Wall Street’s starting to question the jobs data. Are things really as rosy as they seem?
In true sellside style, Goldman reckons, errrm like, 20% odds no, they’re not.
That’s just high enough odds to flag it without worrying people too much…
Genius. They’re not alone though.
The jobs narrative is starting to shift…
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⚡ The Spark
Never liked her - now I’m speaking out
Lagarde bodied by ECB staff…
Looks like European Central Bank Chief Leatherface Christine Lagarde is as popular at work as she is with traders…
“Mario Draghi was there for the ECB while the ECB seems to be there for Christine Lagarde”
Roughly half of the respondents say she’s doing a poor to very poor job:
Comments in the survey, which included responses from 1,159 of the ECB's roughly 4,500 staff, point to widespread unhappiness about her wading too deeply into politics and using the ECB to boost her personal agenda, which hasn't helped the central bank’s reputation
There’s nothing especially damning in the report. Just clear evidence of a broken workplace culture…
… staff were scathing about Lagarde, with almost three-quarters expressing unhappiness about her approach to management. Some of that was mundane grumbling over things like hot desking, restrictions on working from home and, ahem, pay rises that don’t keep up with inflation.
So, is this the beginning of the end for Lagarde?
Probably not, but we can always hope.
Not that I really care who’s in charge.
All I want is shorter press conferences.
The kind that don’t make me contemplate 1001 less painful ways to die. I’m a simple man.
💡 The Lightbulb
UK inflation PLUMMETS
Well, it will…
We checked our crystal ball, commonly known as the natural gas market, and well, it’s pretty cheap.
Cornwall Insights say that typical UK household energy bills will drop by about 16% from April.
Which will play out in the inflation data.
Economist Julian Jessop reminded us that the Bank of England’s terrible at forecasting, and that the next set of inflation forecasts should be far lower…
… this [OFGEM cap] would be much lower than the Bank of England had been expecting.
The Bank's November MPR forecast assumed that natural gas prices would average 142p/therm in 2024 (based, entirely reasonably, on what the futures market was saying at the time).
Gas prices are currently 50% lower than the Bank of England had forecast…
Wondering what this might mean for GBP, especially as positioning data approaches stretched levels:
