Jo Michell
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jomichell.bsky.social
Jo Michell
@jomichell.bsky.social
7.9K followers 900 following 3.8K posts
Professor of economics at UWE Bristol. Chair of Post-Keynesian Economics Society. Interested in macro, finance, banking, climate change, inequality, demographics.

https://people.uwe.ac.uk/Person/JoMichell
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jomichell.bsky.social
This is an interesting take.
The JPMorgan GBI-EM index of bonds in local currencies currently yields about 5.92 per cent, versus 3.45 per cent for the Bloomberg Global Aggregate. That premium is increasingly difficult to justify.
November 11, 2025 at 7:45 AM
jomichell.bsky.social
Found a fox trapped in a fence earlier today. Unfortunately I was not wearing a kimono.
November 8, 2025 at 4:59 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
Interested by this comment: what is it about the language of economics that seems insincere in this context, even to an economist?
Her manifesto - to recognise the value of "having it almost" - is empowering, but she risks sounding insincere by wrapping advice in the language of economics; she writes of women "figuring out ….. your utility function" "investing in a partner" and "outsourcing". The message is sound, but economics jargon may not be the best fit for a self-help manual.
November 8, 2025 at 9:38 AM
jomichell.bsky.social
Does this really warrant a fully FTified visualisation?
November 7, 2025 at 9:45 AM
jomichell.bsky.social
The Fed piece is here. The authors don't give any details of how they generated their chart, but I struggle to see how there is more to it than 'we drew a line that went up and a line that went down and called them "singularity".

www.dallasfed.org/research/eco...
November 7, 2025 at 9:43 AM
jomichell.bsky.social
Odd article. The research paper cited is more like a blog post. And 'model the impact of extinction' is overstating it. As far as I can tell, the Fed authors have just drawn a line on a chart.

www.ft.com/content/60df...
It is rare for a central banking institution to model the economic impact of human extinction (spoiler alert: GDP goes to zero). But a startling chart depicting that scenario was shown in a recent research paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Forecasting the likely impact of artificial intelligence on US economic growth, the researchers presented three scenarios. Their central forecast was that AI might boost the trend growth of US GDP per capita to 2.1 per cent for 10 years. “Not trivial but not earth shattering either,” the report’s authors, Mark Wynne and Lillian Derr, wrote. But the bank also considered what might happen if AI achieved the technological singularity, when machine intelligence surpasses the human kind and becomes ever smarter. In a good case, that superintelligence could trigger a massive rise in GDP and end scarcity. In a bad one, it could lead to the rise of malevolent machines and end humanity. There was, the authors noted, little empirical evidence behind either of these extreme scenarios, although some economists have been exploring both possibilities.
November 7, 2025 at 9:41 AM
jomichell.bsky.social
Piketty: “I’m sorry that I wrote such long books”. www.ft.com/content/860f...
JS: You've said your recent book, A Brief History of Equality, is an optimistic book... TP: It is optimistic and I strongly recommend it to everyone, especially people who feel depressed about the [current] political situation. Also because it's a short book - I'm sorry that I wrote such long books previously.
November 5, 2025 at 11:36 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
British lenders have posted bumper profits in recent years largely thanks to higher interest rates, which have boosted their net interest income - the difference between the interest banks receive from borrowers and pay out to depositors. This has propelled bank share prices to their highest levels in more than a decade, with shares in Barclays and NatWest climbing almost 200 per cent over the past two years.
November 5, 2025 at 8:23 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
From the other place, a takedown of the 'top 10% account for 50% of consumption' statistic which has been doing the rounds.
November 4, 2025 at 3:19 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
Late period Osborne: interest rates at zero and 50-80bn of headroom: and his priority was “don’t invest”.
November 4, 2025 at 8:21 AM
jomichell.bsky.social
I guess I must have imagined a decade of austerity premised on the claim that the bond markets leave us no alternative.
“The linkage between fiscal policy and bond markets is something that hasn’t been considered in the last 15 years and now needs to be considered,” the Starmer ally said.
October 31, 2025 at 9:16 AM
jomichell.bsky.social
How dare you accuse me of saying “threshold”.
Our analysis divided countries into two groups: those with debt levels above 90% of gross domestic product and those below. But the 90% mark was never a "threshold" where growth suddenly collapses, it was merely a divide to illustrate that high-debt countries as a group underperform, on average. As we explained repeatedly, 21 hits for “threshold” in the paper including one on the abstract referring to the 90% figure.
October 27, 2025 at 7:46 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
I hope that the new Deputy Leader will continue to hold the Leader to account, as she does here.
"We won't win by trying to out-Reform Reform, but by building a broad progressive consensus," Powell said.
October 25, 2025 at 10:33 AM
jomichell.bsky.social
October 24, 2025 at 9:42 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
The first thing she can do is not take office immediately after someone who cut 20bn off national insurance.
October 24, 2025 at 9:27 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
Here’s the citation.
October 24, 2025 at 5:08 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
What fresh hell is this?
October 24, 2025 at 4:36 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
Killer chart from Gregor Semeiniuk and co-authors showing where in the income distribution pandemic windfall oil profits ended up.
October 24, 2025 at 4:30 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
I guess this point on 'how to defeat the populist right' got dropped and replaced with 'adopt all their policies and explain why you agree with them'.
October 21, 2025 at 2:27 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
hard to think of a less apt description of the current incumbents' communication style
October 21, 2025 at 2:25 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
so tediously predictable
October 21, 2025 at 2:23 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
From the McSweeney memo. Try replacing 'Biden' with 'Starmer'.
With an eye to the next election, Biden has adopted a tougher posture, calling for stricter enforcement at the border. But it looks inauthentic, and as a result, is not working. Voters sense, correctly, that Biden’s first instinct was to adopt a compassionate approach to migrants, not to secure America’s borders. His conversion to tougher action looks cynical – something he has been forced to do because of public pressure, not because he really believes it.
October 21, 2025 at 2:21 PM
jomichell.bsky.social
The technology/innovation part is disaggregated, as you say, but the consumer preference part is very close to standard RA: the single subjective discount rate determines the 'interest rate' of the model.
October 21, 2025 at 9:21 AM
jomichell.bsky.social
He’s not wrong about the nonsense: “if the government borrowed a near record amount it did no such thing”.
Richard Murphy declaring that nonsense will be spoken. Richard Murphy talking nonsense: “Then appreciate, firstly, that if the government "borrowed" a near record amount, it did no such thing. Financial institution placed a near record amount d deposit with the government, lapping up all the bonds it had to offer in the process.”
October 21, 2025 at 7:58 AM
jomichell.bsky.social
Did a double take in Lidl: thought Matt Goodwin had gone into the sausage business for a moment.
October 18, 2025 at 10:53 AM