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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 2m

There are ways of pricing implicit guarantees, but they are pretty controversial in the banking sector where they've been most developed, I'm not aware of anyone having applied them to utilities yet.

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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 2m

Complicated by the fact that in many cases, the current equity owners don't feel like they've been bailed out because they bought the thing at an absurd secondary market price, but so far we've allowed very few actual bankruptcies.

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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 4m

It even reached the point where iirc somebody launched a publisher who was going to concentrate on finding and printing novels by male authors and most of the book world went "actually fairs, we do need someone to do that too"

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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 6m

and the rest! (Formula assumes that most of the difference reflects risk bearing by the private sector, but I think nearly 30 years into the privatisation experiment we can admit that this is partial at best)

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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 7m

Absolutely wild to have thought "old white men", then gone "no I can push it a bit further than that, there aren't any widely respected gay novelists"

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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 11m

You can even get a handy breakdown by looking at the Ofwat formula - we're paying a 5% equity risk premium (with a little bit of arithmetic hocus pocus to do with the asset beta and gearing assumptions but it turns out at around 5% anyway)

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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 15m

I feel like we've reached the end of the road on "allows you to do stuff quicker" now that Thames Water are asking for a 15 year mulligan

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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 35m

rent (as land value tax types like to remind us) is mainly determined by human capital social capital and the value of public amenity. strangely, a lot of land value tax types seem to believe you could change these things by building houses.

Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 1h

If you were starting from a blank page with a budget of only £100m to protect nature ... you'd be in a very weird counterfactual situation with no relevance to any actual project.

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Reposted by Dan Davies

Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 1h

Interesting post. If this is indeed an award for method, then what's rewarded, in terms of theoretical method, is 'try and say something interesting while sticking to the accepted -- indeed required -- method of representative agent inter-temporal optimisation'.

undercoverhist.bsky.social @undercoverhist.bsky.social · 10h

What does a Nobel Prize on ‘innovation-driven economic growth’ actually reward?

A historian’s perspective on how to deal with the Nobel frenzy

beatricecherrier.wordpress.com/2025/10/13/w...

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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 1h

Always think this is a rather silly way to think about habitat protection, and very biased because obviously no one is going to say "I think you'd be hard-pressed to find Buckinghamshire householders who thought that tunnel was the best way to preserve views of the Chilterns"

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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 12h

Oh dear, take care of yourself

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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 13h

opinions differ! Since the original "long arms" doctrine is by no means on the soundest legal footing itself, it is hard to be sure. But USDT doesn't have "well we'll just pull your New York banking license and let you appeal in 90 days time, how do you like that" as a means of enforcement

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Reposted by Dan Davies

Alex Andreou @sturdyalex.bsky.social · 13h

I really don’t know how a British-Palestinian like @laylamoran.bsky.social, someone so close to and personally affected by everything that happened, finds those reserves of empathy, while people with much less skin in the game take it upon themselves to strike the most strident pose.

Best for Britain @bestforbritain.org · 13h

As so often, @laylamoran.bsky.social finds gracious, unifying words.

"I choose to believe that peace is possible. Everyone who went on a protest, wrote to their MP, cares about it, shouted at their TV - from whatever point of view - what were those deaths for, if not for a sustainable peace?" ~AA

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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 13h

bro i got bad news about those Danes

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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 13h

A picture of my son pretending to be excited by it was the main profile picture of the Bude Tunnel on TripAdvisor for two years and I still maintain it is not a tunnel.

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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 13h

"the official purpose of the digital euro is strategic independence; the true purpose is to create a credible threat for merchant acquirers" is a take I'm in the process of writing up

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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 13h

It's a series of arches connected with wire mesh. Actually looks pretty cool. Tunnel would have been hugely more expensive; Bucks Council wanted one but were turned down by the planning inspectors. Lots and lots of tunnels on the route, mainly because of homeowners who wanted their view preserved.

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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 13h

It is possible to buy gold coins and jewellery and have them in your house, although you might then need to buy some insurance on your insurance

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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 13h

The business is literally doing you a favor for the money. That is what commerce means.

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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 13h

Homeostasis is not easy to break

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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 14h

I choose to believe that this is a cover of the Minnie Ripperton classic, and that Ashcroft defies expectations by hitting the high F perfectly

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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 14h

Like Spanish football teams, Spanish railway builders are really good at getting the score up against uncompetitive opposition

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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 14h

Looking back at what I was saying the time it was definitely in the post - Duncan Weldon was saying the same thing, and although we couldn't have foreseen the Truss crisis (and house prices never did worse than 6% peak/trough) the good times were getting decidedly aged

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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 14h

They had previously been forced to rent it below market value though?

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