Dom White
domw.bsky.social
Dom White
@domw.bsky.social
Chief economist at Absolute Strategy Research in London. But all of the nonsense I spout on here is mine and mine alone. RTs are not endorsements unless they are.
The crazy thing is that most Brits would agree that the UK is a mess - just not in the ways that most internet morons suggest.
November 11, 2025 at 7:26 PM
I haven’t been over there in quite a long time, so I’ve managed to avoid that problem.
November 11, 2025 at 5:53 PM
Agreed. The question they should be asking is whether the series they’re including provide information over and above jobless claims when trying to track the JOLTS or implied CPS measures of layoffs. If the answer is “no” they’re just polluting the signal.
November 11, 2025 at 5:52 PM
My take - just by eyeballing it - is that it’s not good. Just because you can extract a principal component from a set of series it doesn’t mean you should.
November 11, 2025 at 5:28 PM
… and now I’ve just followed your actual instructions 😬
November 11, 2025 at 2:16 PM
I am not Murican and I prefer the white one.
November 11, 2025 at 2:15 PM
They’re nearly all bad. LAX and O’Hare are the same.

It’s funny though, I had an interaction with NS years ago, in which I politely pointed out that something he’d written was factually incorrect. He dismissed it so flippantly that I unfollowed him. No desire to talk to people like that.
November 11, 2025 at 2:14 PM
Haha, me either!
November 11, 2025 at 9:26 AM
Think they need to really do some work educating their audience on the differences between balance and impartiality. Having fact checkers on opinion programs would be a good start.
November 11, 2025 at 9:22 AM
One of the long term problems with commentary about the BBC is that many other media outlets have a vested interest in undermining the public’s trust in it. And the BBC are often quite happy to swim along with that tide for fear of not appearing impartial.
November 11, 2025 at 9:02 AM
They pay blue tick accounts for the total amount generated by advertising under their posts. More impressions = more money.
November 10, 2025 at 8:32 PM
Congrats!
November 10, 2025 at 8:04 PM
My theory is that there's a price level effect being reflected in the responses to the UMich survey.
November 10, 2025 at 11:42 AM
So when you read headlines saying things like "sentiment across the country is close to the lowest its ever been", it's worth asking what that's actually based on.
November 10, 2025 at 11:34 AM
In this case, maybe just an example of understanding what the data is actually telling you. The two measures capture responses to quite different underlying questions.
November 10, 2025 at 11:32 AM
The difference between the two? The Conference Board combines questions about the current business and employment conditions, whereas the UMich index averages responses about financial health vs a year ago and the environment for buying big consumer durables.
November 10, 2025 at 11:30 AM
"The cruelty is the point"
November 7, 2025 at 3:37 PM
I think my brain works like this too. Whenever I've used AI in trying to understand something it's usually been to help pick apart a method rather than to substitute for it.
November 7, 2025 at 11:49 AM
Like, you don't actually need to be in receipt of the dollars paid out to be influenced by the tone of the content.
November 7, 2025 at 10:33 AM
Well, yes. g > r and the long average maturity of the debt does, at least, mean the govt doesn't have to sprint there.
November 7, 2025 at 10:06 AM
Would make sense. Congrats!
November 7, 2025 at 8:53 AM