Loveless, but entertaining.

 "Nvidia, run by Jensen Huang, has become the world's most valuable company," and "now sits above the GDPs of United Kingdom and France, both of which are over $3 trillion, and is closing fast on India's economy." However, "A company's market value reflects how much investors believe it can earn in future, while a nation's GDP measures the total value of all goods and services produced in a year." ET. Since then, "Nvidia becomes the first $4 trillion public traded company, outpacing Apple and Microsoft in AI-driven race." ET. "The UK's economy shrank by 0.3% in April, according to the latest official figures, which was more than expected." "In April, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cut its forecast for 2025 global growth - and reduced its forecast for the UK from 1.6% to 1.1%." BBC. One week back, "All eyes are now on the UK's ruling Labour Party," as "UK bond yields spiked and the pound sank against the dollar and euro as tears fell down Chancellor Rachel Reeves' face, as an apparently unaware Prime Minister Keir Starmer failed to back her when asked about her position during a heated parliamentary debate." CNBC. "Reeves was attending Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday (last week) following the government's decision to sharply scale back plans to cut benefits. The sharp plunge in British assets immediately drew comparisons with Liz Truss's short-lived premiership three years ago, which was derailed by a bond market selloff." Reuters. "Truss, 47, quit after just 45 days in office, becoming the shortest-ruling prime minister in British history." "The central mistake of Truss's term was a massive 45 billion pounds ($50) package of tax cuts amid the strongest inflation in four decades...unveiled without any independent analysis of how it would be funded." TOI. The collapse of the bond market was because of Liability-Driven Investment (LDI) funds in the pension industry, which were based on buying long-term bonds, with higher interest rates, with money from short-term borrowing, using the same bonds as collateral. capx.co. As bond prices fell, it triggered margin calls (Investopedia), leading to further falls in bond prices and massive losses for pension funds. Last week, Starmer "won a vote on his welfare reform...at significant political cost as he suffered the biggest parliamentary rebellion of his premiership and was forced to back down on key parts of the package." "But the scale of the rebellion - with 49 Labour lawmakers voting against his reforms - underlined the prime minister's waning authority." Reuters. On 4 July 2024, Starmer won, what has been described as a "loveless landslide", "Gaining only a third of the total vote, Labour benefited from the first-past-the-post system, with the Tories and Nigel Farage's hard-right nationalist Reform UK party splitting the remainder of the ballots between them." NZZ. Will Starmer face a leadership challenge? Perhaps not this year. But, the plotting may have started already. Entertaining.