Tomorrow's Business Today
Vengeance awaits the Chancellor
How badly is Kwasi Kwarteng going to get it in the neck in the morning papers?
Pretty badly. For one thing, his last minute U-turn on the 45p tax rate left some of the morning papers looking close to foolish.
“Kwarteng to defy mounting Tory rebellion with defence of tax cuts”, is the FT headline on papers still for sale now.
Ouch.
So there’s a bunch of p***ed of editors across town looking for vengeance.
Newspapers have a fairly brutal idea of what constitutes justice which more or less comes down to: whatever we say it is.
What happens next?
Coverage wise, economics stories are usually an element of political reporting. At the moment they are a huge part of it.
When that happens commentators tend to move beyond their areas of expertise.
The political lot suddenly talk about economics. The economists talk about politics.
From the point of view of the hack trying to make sense of fast-moving events, this can be unhelpful.
What I and colleagues really needed at 11am last Wednesday when the Bank of England suddenly intervened in the market, was a pithy explanation of how the 30-year gilt market works and what all this meant for pension funds.
What we got was stuff which said: this is bad for Liz Truss. Yes, got that bit.
For as long as this story rolls, what business hacks want is commentary that explains market moves we might have missed.
We’ll let the political crowd do the politics.
Press release of the day
A list of the best and worst firms for diversity and inclusion here from Glassdoor. The tech and healthcare sectors seem to do best.
An ethnicity pay gap affects 43% of black employees, they believe.
More to do, plainly.
Stories that will keep rolling
1) Are gilts still steady? When will the Bank of England be able to talk about moving rates down again?
2) Is there a profit warning from Greggs?
3) Does anyone think Mike Ashley is really taking a back seat at Frasers?
4) Should there be a government bail-out of pubs?
