Genius Act

The USA passed the Genius Act on 18th July. Did you know? Me neither. Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) is its title.

I have been struggling for literally months to figure out how to write a blog post about stablecoins, given that I don't know what they are and I don't understand any explanation offered. But, in the Reithian spirit of inform, educate and entertain, I am trying. Today is not the first time that Mehreen Khan, the Economics Editor of the Times, has written about this subject and today's article is headlined "Fear of missing out may convince central banks to embrace stablecoin". She writes "A stablecoin is a digital asset whose value is meant to be guaranteed by a peg to a traditional currency such as the dollar". She compares this with cryptocurrency, which has no such (notionally) intrinsic value.

Through the Genius Act the US government seeks to regulate, enable, perhaps even promote the issuance of stablecoins by non-governmental bodies - perhaps the likes of Amazon. But it's the central banks that are now considering the "opportunities". The Bank of England, initially sceptical, is now pursuing the possibility of a "digital pound". Khan asserts that the Bank "changed its tune...probably driven by the potential fiscal and financial benefits of the goldrush into stablecoins, which seems too lucrative to miss".

It seems to me that "goldrush" should raise a huge red flag. Isn't it true that the 2008 financial crisis was caused by the creation of new financial instruments which ultimately fell apart? Is the world at risk of doing it again? Why is the stablecoin concept necessary?

Another of my regular TV programmes has been Dragon's Den and the "dragons" frequently make the criticism of a pitch that "it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist". Could stablecoins be one of those? The cynically minded amongst us would ask "who benefits from their existence?" The answer is almost certainly not you or me.

The whole thing is like those theoretical concepts in maths and physics - the square root of minus one, imaginary time, the Higgs Boson, multiple dimensions - which have no reality or meaning except in the minds of weird people.

I used to want to be one of those weird people - existing only in a non-corporeal state - but my natural patience and low boredom threshold make it an impossible dream. However, I shall continue trying to bring difficult concepts to you, dear readers. Mostly in the hope that one of you can explain better than I can.

Latest quiz night

Last night on BBC2:

7:30 Mastermind

This week's specialist subjects:

• The Jurassic Coast - not too far away from me but I really have no idea.
• The major plays of Molière - I may as well snooze until the next contestant; but this one scored barely more than me.
• Queen (that's the band, not the Queen) - this is more like it but I still got zero.
• Mickey Mouse cartoons 1928 to 1935. He should get out more.

The second half of the show is general knowledge questions, in which I have a chance of scoring higher than zero. I should probably just switch on at 7:45.

I'm baffled as to why people watch this programme but it's been going since the 1980s when it got over 20 million viewers. Latest viewership is around 1.5 million. I imagine it's pretty cheap to produce so it'll still be going in the next century.

8:00 Only Connect

Whereas I know that I know nothing on Mastermind, on this programme I expect to be able to solve the mind puzzles but I think, like cryptic crosswords, untangling them is a matter of practice and familiarity. Sadly I'm not there yet. Whereas I don't care about Mastermind, I do care about this impossible quiz.

8:30 University Challenge

I rather like the range of personalities in the teams, and occasionally I'll shout out some answers  - particularly if I know the answer and they don't. For some reason I find it enjoyable. When the team members introduce themselves, I pay attention to the discipline each is studying, in order to assess the balance of knowledge you need to cover all sorts of questions, much as you would to build a pub quiz team. If you have four mathematicians, you're going to struggle. I don't know if this is a recent pattern but it seems as if there are more postgrad students than in earlier years. Not sure that's a good thing.

Fortunately there are plenty of Monday evenings when there is football, so that gets preference.

Of the three questionmasters/mistresses/persons, Clive Myrie doesn't really have much to do except ask the questions so his unassuming persona is what's required, Victoria Coren Mitchell is clever but annoying and Amol Rajan is perfection.

Things I can't find out #2

The French government has fallen (again) because they decided to get rid of two of the country's 11 bank holidays. Non!

It seemed to me I should know a bit more about bank holidays. Why do they exist? Who invented them? Given economists consider poor productivity to be a key driver of the UK's weak economy, shouldn't we ban them? How much does a bank holiday cost the country?

We can blame Sir John Lubbock, who introduced the Bank Holidays Act of 1871, which created the first official bank holidays in England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. I asked ChatGPT why?

In addition to the “sacred” days (Christmas, Good Friday, Sundays), the Act designated Easter Monday, Whit Monday, first Monday in August and Boxing Day (Scotland has always had different days, let's ignore that for the moment). Funnily enough, Christmas Day (a traditional holiday) didn't become an official Bank Holiday until 1974, although banks had always closed on that day.

Later additions to the list were New Year's Day, May Day and the last Monday in August. The Spring Bank Holiday replaced Whit Monday.

What is it with bankers? Are they so rich they need extra time in which to spend their money? Just get back in, get rid of all these unnecessary holidays except Christmas Day and GET THE COUNTRY BACK TO WORK! (I know, I've gone all Trumpish).

Given that we all bank online nowadays, do we need high street banks at all? Maybe we should call these holidays Public Entitlement Days instead of Bank Holidays; perhaps that would cause people to think about whether we need them.

I'm with Boris on this; in 2022 when England's women won the European Championships, there was a (public? media?) clamour for a one-off bank holiday but he said No on account of the "big economic cost of an extra bank holiday". Good for him. Although he did say he'd consider it if the men's team won something, which is (a) typically Boris sexism and (b) an easy promise because there is no chance of it ever happening.

The French government wanted to scrap Easter Monday and VE Day and that didn't end well. So perhaps beware.

I should probably, in the cause of complete transparency, declare an interest. As a pensioner, every day is a holiday.

Footy updates 2025/15

How did my forecasts fare this weekend? (And ChatGPT's)

Manchester City Women 1 Arsenal Women 1 CGPT: 2-1 Result: 3-2
Attack good; defence awful. Title gone?

Wycombe 1 Barnsley 2 CGPT: 2-1 Result: 2-2

Leeds 2 Tottenham 2 CGPT: 1-2 Result: 1-2

Arsenal 3 West Ham 0 CGPT: 3-1 Result: 2-0

Nice to see one of our favourites topping a table. Those pesky other North Londoners threatening, the North London Derby is on 23rd November.

Preston 1 Charlton 1 CGPT: 2-0 Result: 2-0
Preston 4th in the table so no worries

Ipswich 2 Norwich 2 CGPT: 2-2 Result: 3-1
Ipswich haven't won this derby for 16 years so this is a welcome shock. It took an hour for Ipswich to realise that playing out from the back is a recipe for disaster at this level. Thereafter, and with four excellent attacking substitutions, it was all Town.

Hythe Town 0 Whitstable Town 1 CGPT 1-1  Result: 1-2
Still a promising position in the table if they can make the most of their games in hand 

Correct results: 2 out of 7 (ChatGPT: 4)

Correct scores: 0 out of 7 (ChatGPT: 2)

Match score: usedtobecroquetman 0 Chat GPT 1

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Upcoming midweek games:

It's an international break so only one game:

Arsenal Women v Lyon (Champions League)

Footy updates 2025/14

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This week's midweek matches:

Bristol City 1 Ipswich 1

Not a bad result given City are 4th in the league but it's not promotion-winning form. McKenna is perhaps struggling to integrate 11 new players into the squad, some of them with little or no pre-season, and watching this match didn't give me confidence he is near to finding the optimal solution. However, we are only three points behind 3rd place with a game [the infamous game] in hand, in a very congested table. He needs to sort out his best eleven quickly.y

Bodo/Glimt 2 Tottenham 2 (UEFA Champions League [UCL])

Trips to the icy north of Norway are never easy so a draw isn't the end of the world

Derby 1 Charlton 1

After last year's promotion from League One, Charlton are flying. 8th in the table but only one point off the playoff positions.

Arsenal 2 Olympiakos 0 (UCL)

Credit to Olympiakos for coming to play and making it a thrilling match.

My forecasts for this weekend: (I've added ChatGPT's "guesses" (its word))

Manchester City Women 1 Arsenal Women 1 CGPT: 2-1

Wycombe 1 Barnsley 2 CGPT: 2-1

Leeds 2 Tottenham 2 CGPT: 1-2

Arsenal 3 West Ham 0 CGPT: 3-1

Preston 1 Charlton 1 CGPT: 2-0

Ipswich 2 Norwich 2 CGPT: 2-2

Hythe Town 0 Whitstable Town 1 CGPT 1-1

White Stripes

Jeremy Corbyn at Glastonbury 2017. "Oh, Jeremy Corbyn".

This anthem derived from a 2003 single "Seven Nation Army" by the American rock duo White Stripes, comprising Jack and Meg White. It's centred around a seven note guitar riff which never stops, forming bass and melody at different times. I rather like it.

The motif became a stable of football fans celebrating their teams, most notably by the Italian fans at the 2006 World Cup, where their team became Campione del mondo, a phrase which perfectly fit the musical phrase (in normal Italian speech piò is pronounced as a single syllable [a diphthong] but the fans bastardised it to fit the riff).

In poetic scansion the first three syllables - taking piò as one - unstressed–stressed–unstressed - make an amphibrach; del is a stressed monosyllable and mondo is stressed–unstressed: a trochee. As for Jeremy Corbyn, Jeremy is stressed-unstressed-unstressed, a dactyl. Corbyn is a trochee again. I hope you're still with me.

In order to explore whether any of today's politicians can adopt the chant, we need names of seven (in the original riff) or six (in the generally adopted version) six syllables.

Sir Kier Starmer. 4. No good (no offence).

Nigel Farage. 5 but plausible that you could stretch age into the final two notes together. "Oh, Nigel Fara-age". Promising.

Kemi Badenoch. Also 5 but they're all in the wrong places. Which is probably what Robert Jenrick things as he looks at her.

Of course Jezza is still around, although unlikely to be invited to Glastonbury any time soon. But I have the perfect fit for you....

OH, ANGELA RAYNER.

I can hear it ringing around the House of Commons.

For non-fans of rock music and football, the seven note riff is eerily similar to that of the first movement of Anton Bruckner's Fifth Symphony:

Acknowledgements to YouTube, The White Stripes and Jos Thys.