“Fatta la legge, trovato l’inganno.” Every law has a loophole. Though many Italians view it less as a description, more an order, a necessity, even, if life is to be bearable. Find the loopholes and stretch the rules to their limits. It is an approach which comes from a long history of mistrust of often distant, capricious, arbitrary rulers, a belief that the state’s benefits are, as has often been the case, doled out to favourites, to those clever enough…
Chart Smarkets Of all the big political events coming up in the run up to Christmas and beyond the biggest for the UK surely is whether there will there be a deal with the EU. If agreement is not reached by the end of the month then the UK will be leaving without a deal and all the associated challenges that creates and worries about the supply chain of things that we rely on that come from Europe. But if…
Chart Betdata.io The betting exchange has become almost become complicit in Trump’s desperate bid to deny defeat As I write at 1635 GMT on December 1st, almost a month after the election, Betfair continues to keep its WH2020 market open which has now seen an incredible £1,173,990,726 of matched bets – a sum that has almost doubled since other bookies and betting exchanges settled their markets the weekend after the election. Trump and his shameless lackeys continue to mount an…
Wikimedia Commons During the hearings of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, any number of senior bank officials were rightly chastised for their failures, particularly in relation to creating a culture in which wrongdoing flourished, many people were aware and yet no-one said anything. (“Poor governance and controls are illustrated by the rarity of whistle-blowing, either within or beyond the firm, even where, such as in the case of Libor manipulation, prolonged and blatant misconduct has been evident.”) If anyone…
How big a faction does this represent?
Gallup is reporting this afternoon that President-elect Joe Biden’s favourability rating has risen six percentage points to 55% since the election compared with his final pre-election reading. At the same time, President Donald Trump’s favourability has edged down three points to 42%. Biden’s current rating is the highest it has been since February 2019, two months before he declared his candidacy for president, when it was 56%. Trump’s latest favourability falls short of the highest of his presidency, 49% in April,…
The term “Trump” will be used forever to describe a poor loser Trump’s continuing denial of the outcome the 2020 Presidential Election looks set to continue right through to January 20th when Joe Biden will be inaugurated. No doubt there will be more antics from the White House in the weeks that remain but all the avenues that he’d sought to overturn the result appear to be blocked. This isn’t surprising. For really it was quite ridiculous for his team…
These types of markets on whether X will still be in the cabinet on certain date is the sort of market I much prefer over next out of the cabinet markets because of the dead heat rules the value can be extinguished. So will Patel be in the cabinet on the 1st of March 2021? After his backing of Priti Patel after the report into her bullying across more than one department you’d think she was safe but I was…