Simon Cartledge

Sometimes thinking. Sometimes writing. Sometimes just loafing.

[Adrian Hilton @Adrian_Hilton]

The Oval Office has changed a bit since 1970.

[Adam Mockler @adammocklerr]

this your husband?

[Joel Chan @kjoules]

Hong Kong registered a total of 2,247 births in the month of February
• Disregarding the interruption in registrations due to the pandemic, it is the lowest monthly figure in decades.
• Hong Kong is on pace to register fewer than 30,000 births in 2026, the first time since 1945

[Aaron Busch @tripperhead]

HK01 with a list of places to avoid (due to expected crowds/XHS photo ops) during the Labour Day Golden Week:
1. K11 Musea
2. Exit B3 Mongkok MTR footbridge
3. Wan Chai Temporary Promenade
4. Central Market
5. Kennedy Town waterfront
6. Shek Tong Tsui
7. Stanley
8. Shui Long Wo/Ham Tin Wan, Sai Kung

https://t.co/vlL5EuJbpv

[John Collins @Logically_JC]

Where should we send him next?

[Simon Cartledge @HaYingsang]

"How does an investor process that?" A question for [late?] capitalism, not just America.

[Bruno Maçães @MacaesBruno]

Best summary of America I have seen

[roula khalaf @khalafroula]

Crispin Odey abandons £79mn libel case against the FT over sexual misconduct claims

https://t.co/9ni3SpoljC

[Ben @benjaminqiu]

Spot the difference between airports in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

[Tom Grundy @tomgrundy]

BREAKING: A relentless activist, who embodied the idea of "fight to the end," Koo Sze-yiu has died aged 80... https://t.co/myUHEFKVzL Photos: AFP + Me/HKFP.

[David Moser @david__moser]

"Dr. Strangelove" is always relevant.

[Simon Cartledge @HaYingsang]

Today's leçon de vocabulaire français.

[𝐀𝐧𝐧𝐚 𝐊𝐨𝐦𝐬𝐚 🇪🇺🇵🇱🇺🇦 @Tweet4AnnaNAFO]

🇫🇷🇺🇸 French Gen. Richoux on Trump begging Europe for Hormuz help:
“He can go fuck himself.”

[Kanis Leung @kanis_leung]

Probe of Hong Kong's deadliest fire in decades begins evidence hearings. The independent committee’s lead lawyer Victor Dawes said: “Nearly all fire safety systems meant to protect lives failed because of human factors.”

https://t.co/Jzsf5N44LP

[Jessie Pang @JessiePang0125]

Human factors rendered ineffective almost all the fire safety measures at the site of a Hong Kong blaze that killed 168 people in November, the lead ‌lawyer for a panel led by a judge that is investigating the inferno said on Thursday.
https://t.co/sZi0BIANEP

[Tom Grundy @tomgrundy]

Tomorrow: a talk by historian, and former @hkfp columnist, Vaudine England. HK$100 at Bookazine. https://t.co/RsJ8KlRvDL

[Alicia GarciaHerrero 艾西亞 @Aligarciaherrer]

This is our conversation on #China's Five-Year Plan (#FYP). The goals are crystal clear: doubling down on what appears to have worked well, moving up the ladder, and securing self-reliance. European companies should take note of this and stop thinking China is going to #rebalance its economy any time soon, not in the next five years. Rebalancing is not the priority.
Thanks to @berthofmanecon for the great conversation and to Yuyun Zhan for being such a wonderful host of #ZhonghuaMundus Bruegel podcasts. https://t.co/VLLdhbAU6h

[Timothy Snyder @TimothyDSnyder]

The latest step, and a major one, in the Trump administration’s consistent efforts to keep the Russian army in the field against Ukraine.
https://t.co/MqTmJvkAc4

[Philip Proudfoot @PhilipProudfoot]

I want there to be a day when I don’t have to share this speech anymore

[Michael Pettis @michaelxpettis]

FT: “China’s rubber-stamp parliament has approved government plans to build an “employment-friendly growth model”, language that underlines the ruling Communist Party’s growing concern over unemployment.”

This may seem a no-brainer for an interventionist government worried about high youth unemployment levels, but it also implies an inconsistency with Beijing’s promise to rebalance the economy towards consumption.

That’s because, broadly, the only ways to increase the consumption share of GDP by a meaningful amount over the next decade is either with an acceleration in consumption growth (to roughly 6-7 %) or with a deceleration in GDP growth (probably to under 2%). Needless to say, Beijing is implacably opposed to the latter, at least for now.

But how do you get such a sharp acceleration in consumption growth? One way would require a massive redistribution of wealth from government to households equal to about 12-15 percentage points of GDP over a decade. This is likely not just to be hard, but also to be politically disruptive.

The other way, and the one that policymakers and analysts have implicitly counted on (although I don’t think many have done the math), is to pray for a productivity miracle that causes productivity per worker to surge by 2.5 percentage points or more for at least a decade. By any historical precedent, this would a pretty astonishing accomplishment.

What China needs, in other words, would be a technology- and capital-intensive growth push of historical portions, but this is almost the opposite of the labor-intensive growth push Beijing seems now to be hoping for.

There is nothing wrong with labor-intensive growth, especially when rising unemployment is a problem, but it requires a very different set of policies, and it is not clear to me that Beijing has thought through the inconsistencies. If it had, it would probably be preparing the economy and political system for the slower growth associated with a sharp reduction in the role of infrastructure and manufacturing investment.

https://t.co/ExlXsTMRO2 via @ft

[Simon Cartledge @HaYingsang]

Shameful.

[Tom Grundy @tomgrundy]

Hong Kong bars journalists and human rights figures at the border.

But Tate welcome - charges including trafficking, rape, actual bodily harm, sex with a minor, and forming an organised crime group.

[Brian Allen @allenanalysis]

Laura Loomer flew to India.

Before she left she deleted all of her anti-Indian tweets. Thousands of them. Gone.
She thought nobody would notice.

An Indian uncle noticed.

He read them back to her on camera.
Every one. Her own words. Her own bigotry. Directed at the people whose country she was visiting as a guest.

This is the woman who has the personal cell phone number of the President of the United States.

This is the woman who shaped immigration policy from Mar-a-Lago.
She deleted the evidence before crossing the border.

The internet is forever.

The uncle is a hero.