UK government borrowing costs have dropped today, after chancellor Rachel Reeves indicated she could raise taxes in the budget,The yield, or interest rate, on 10-year UK gilts has dropped by 4 basis points to 4,54%, down from 4,58% last night,That’s the lowest level since mid-August:Longer-dated borrowing costs are also lower, with the yield on 30-year gilts dropping by 3 basis points to 5.

35%.Yields, which measure the rate of return on a bond, fall when bond prices rise in the markets.Bond traders will have noted Reeves’s comments to Sky News that “Of course, we’re looking at tax and spending as well,” when explaining her approach to closing UK’s fiscal black hole in her November budget.Those comments could reassure the City that the government really is committed to sticking to its fiscal rules, rather than allowing borrowing to rise even higher than planned…Time to wrap upUK borrowing costs have fallen, helped by hints that taxes will rise in the budget to keep the government within its fiscal rules.Both 10 and 30-year bond yields fell today, after Rachel Reeves told Sky News that “Of course, we’re looking at tax and spending as well,” when asked about plans for her budget on 26 November.

Cautious comments from Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey about the weakness in the UK jobs market also boosted UK debt, lifting expectations of further interest rate cuts.Reeves also announced new sanctions on Russia’s oil industry, during her visit to the International Monetary Fund’s annual meeting.The IMF warned that government debt across the world is on course to hit 100% of global gross domestic product (GDP) by 2029, the highest level since the aftermath of the second world war.In its Fiscal Monitor report, the IMF said aggregate government debt had risen more rapidly than expected before the Covid pandemic, when policymakers stepped into protect citizens and bail out hard-hit businesses.It urged governments to switch spending to growth-friendly areas such as infrastructure and education to help bolster the world economy and make debts more sustainable.

President Donald Trump has suggested his administration is considering terminating cooking oil purchases from China, in retaliation for Beijing refusing to buy U.S.soybeans.UK regulators will speed up bonus payouts for high-earning bankers, watering down another important change introduced after the 2008 financial crisis.Vets in the UK could be forced to cap prescription prices after an investigation by the markets watchdog found pet owners may be paying twice as much for some common medicines from practices than online.

A farely subdued day’s trading in London ended with the FTSE 100 share index down 28 points, or 0.3%, at 9424 points.EasyJet (which had been lifted by some flaky takeover speculation earlier this week) was the top faller, down 4%, followed by defence companies Babcock (-3.2%) and BAE Systems (-2.7%).

Advertising firm WPP led the risers (+3.6%) followed by Burberry (+3.4%), which benefitted from strong results from fellow luxury firm LVMH.Ukraine’s prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko has revealed she has discussed a new four-year lending program with the International Monetary Fund’s chief, Kristalina Georgieva, during her trip to Washington.Ukraine currently has a four-year $15.

5bn program with the Fund, one of the country’s key lenders, and has already received $10.6bn from it.Posting on X, Svyrydenko explains:“It is important for us that the next program seamlessly continue the previous one.We agreed to arrange a new visit from a negotiating team soon, as our government continues implementing the necessary reforms.”The team and I held meetings with the leadership of the International Monetary Fund — Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva and newly appointed First Deputy Managing Director Dan Katz.

We continued the practical implementation of the agreements initiated last week by the… pic.twitter.com/06AUIKjelvGold’s sizzling rally is continuing today.The price of bullion has jumped another 1.45% to abover $4,200 per ounce, driven (it appears) by rising expectations for interest rate cuts in the US and the UK.

Fawad Razaqzada, market analyst at City Index, says:“Investors appear largely unfazed by renewed US–China trade tensions, brushing off President Trump’s latest warning on cooking oil imports,But this seems to have helped gold, if anything,Meanwhile, solid US bank earnings have bolstered confidence in corporate resilience, keeping equities supported despite the ongoing US government shutdown,The dollar’s pullback mirrors both improving global risk sentiment and dovish remarks from Fed Chair Powell, who suggested that rising labour market risks justify another rate cut,”Wall Street is shaking off its trade war fears today, with investors pushing shares higher.

The Dow Jones industrial average has gained 344 points, or 0.75%, in early trading to reach 46,615 points.The broader S&P 500 share index is up 1.1%.This morning’s solid results from Dutch firm ASML is bosting the US tech sector, reports Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB:The S&P 500’S tech sector is higher by 1.

5% led by semiconductors, after ASML reported strong earnings earlier this morning.Overall, the fact that stocks have managed to rally this week, and investors are now ignoring the tariff risks between the US and China is a sign of how strong market sentiment is.A strong earnings season is helping to boost sentiment.Earnings season in the US has got off to a good start.So far, 39 out of the 500 companies listed on the S&P 500 have reported positive sales and growth surprises.

Sales growth is higher by 7,9% and earnings growth by 14%, largely led by the finance sector,While it is early days in the Q3 earnings season, this is a fantastic start,Although there is a lot of geopolitics and geoeconomic noise in the background, investors are focusing on the fundamentals, and so far this points to further gains for stocks as it boosts the market mood,U.

S.Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said he doesn’t believe Beijing wants to be an “agent of chaos.”, when asked about the row over China’s restrictions on rare earth minerals.“It’s very difficult to know,” Bessent said in a press conference in Washington on the sidelines of the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.Bessent told reporters:“[a Chinese official] showed up uninvited in Washington and said, quote, ‘China will cause global chaos if the port shipping fees go through.

’ I don’t believe China wants to be an agent of chaos.”Vitor Gaspar, director of the Fiscal Affairs Department at the IMF, is concerned that government debt is heading for its highest level since 1948 (see earlier post).Gaspar says policymakers must act now to keep debt under control and contain debt risks, explaining:“The years between the global financial crisis and the pandemic were marked by unusually easy conditions for sustaining debt.Rising debt was accompanied by falling interest rates, leading to an overall stable interest bill on budget.But the situation is now starkly different.

Interest rates have increased considerably in global markets, and their path forward is highly uncertain.”Top US and Chinese officials are expected to join a meeting of the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable today, where a key topic will be the lack of transparency about bank loans that have complicated developing countries’ debt restructuring efforts.International Monetary Fund strategy chief Ceyla Pazarbasioglu said the continued participation of the world’s two largest economies in the roundtable, despite a fierce trade war dividing them, showed their commitment to keep addressing the high debt levels hurting developing countries, Reuters reports.While in Washington for the IMF annual meetings, where she will attend a roundtable on Ukraine later today, Rachel Reeves has announced fresh sanctions on major Russian oil companies.The measures, which will also be announced by foreign secretary Yvette Cooper in the House of Commons, cover the oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil, which between them export 3.

1m barrels a day.Other sanctioned entities include eight LNG tankers and a Chinese LNG terminal, which the UK claims is importing Russian gas.Reeves said:“We are sending a clear signal: Russian oil is off the market.As Putin’s aggression intensifies, we are stepping up our response.The UK will continue to strip away the funding that fuels his war machine.

We will hold to account all those enabling his illegal invasion of Ukraine.”Global growth is subdued and debt is rising.Governments must act now—improving how money is spent and reallocating resources to infrastructure, human capital, and R&D—to boost resilience and build a more prosperous future.Read our latest Fiscal Monitor: https://t.co/encwYC9tbI pic.

twitter.com/cnbtIc0gV9Bloomberg have spotted that UK government bonds are on track for their best four-day run in six months.They reckon that dovish comments from the UK’s top central banker are helping:UK bonds jumped and investors bet on more Bank of England interest-rate reductions after Governor Andrew Bailey flagged a weaker jobs market.Ten-year gilt yields — already at a two-month low — slid five basis points to 4.54% and are headed for their biggest four-day drop since April.

Money markets, meanwhile, are wagering on policymakers delivering a quarter-point cut by February to spur the economy — with another to follow by the third quarter next year, according to swaps tied to policy-meeting dates.Government debt across the world is on course to hit 100% of global gross domestic by 2029, according to analysis by the International Monetary Fund, the highest level since the aftermath of the second world war.In its Fiscal Monitor report, just released, the IMF said aggregate government debt had risen more rapidly than expected before the Covid pandemic, when policymakers stepped into protect citizens and bail out hard-hit businesses.It urged governments to switch spending to growth-friendly areas such as infrastructure and education to help bolster the world economy and make debts more sustainable.A 100% global debt-to-GDP ratio would be the highest since 1948, when the world’s large economies had been devastated by six years of war and the costs of rebuilding their ravaged countries.

The report named the UK as among the G20 countries whose ratio would peak above 100% of GDP on the IMF’s definition in the coming years – alongside France, Japan, Canada, China and the US,Credit Suisse has lost its $440m London lawsuit against Japan’s SoftBank Group over losses linked to collapsed finance firm Greensill Capital,Greensill’s collapse made Credit Suisse close $10bn of funds linked to the financial firm and, along with other scandals, led to the 2023 state-backed rescue of the 167-year-old Swiss bank by rival UBS Group,UBS pursued the case against SoftBank, with a trial heard at London’s High Court in June,Judge Robert Miles said in a written ruling that he had dismissed the lawsuit, Reuters reports.

The case, which centred on funds Greensill lent to Katerra, a SoftBank-backed U.S.construction group, was the latest concerning Greensill’s demise, which caused heavy losses for investors and prompted lawsuits and regulatory probes.Credit Suisse alleged that Greensill, at SoftBank’s behest, gave up rights to Katerra’s debts in return for shares which it then passed on to a SoftBank Group entity, leaving Credit Suisse out of pocket in relation to $440m of notes.But Miles said in a summary of his ruling that SoftBank “believed in good faith” that the $440m would be used to pay noteholders.

Analysts at Investec say tax rises are Rachel Reeves’s only ‘way out’ of the fiscal black hole.They told clients that the government may be forced to break its manifesto commitments (it pledged not to increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT).They told clients today:Longer-term we suspect that the government will attempt to make savings on welfare expenditure, but this sits uncomfortably with backbench MP rebellions on attempts to scrap Winter Fuel Payments and on the Welfare Bill.For now, lifting taxation remains the only way out.But even here it is limited by its election manifesto pledges not to increase Corporation Tax, VAT, employees’ National Insurance Contributions or the basic, higher or additional rates of income tax.

Taking measures such as freezing personal allowances, limiting tax relief on pension contributions and reforming Stamp Duty Land Tax could raise considerable sums,The risk is clear though that the sum of all that is politically feasible from measures such as these is not sufficient, and that the government retreats from some of its manifestos promises to tap into more substantive revenue rises,Former chancellor George Osborne has said the UK has “missed the boat on crypto” in the 10 years since he left government,Osborne, speaking at a forum hosted by the cryptocurrency platform Coinbase, said:“Britain has missed the boat on the crypto, and other jurisdictions have kind of taken a lead, for example, in the Middle East or in Asia,“I think there was a kind of laziness that said, well, the US is so hostile that we can just be a little bit less hostile.

“This is not a partisan point, this was true of previous successor governments and various Conservative prime ministers.“They kept saying, we’re going to do lots of things for crypto and then this Labour government came in and said: we’re going to be all for innovation.And nothing happened…until very, very recently retail customers can’t get a Bitcoin ETF.”“The UK is sitting way behind the US and that is not the right place for us to be.“In the last few weeks, you’ve begun to hear from the Chancellor, from the governor of the Bank of England, from the [Prudential Regulatory Authority] and the [Financial Conduct Authority] in particular, a kind of more ambitious approach