Avant Lagarde, The IRA Blows Up, Xi Gets A Brazilian

This week, the lads have been heartened and dismayed by public statements from the two most eminent female economists of our time. Christine Lagarde and Janet Yellen. But while Yellen fell back onto tired old State Department talking points, Lagarde gave a pitch-perfect introduction to the multipolar age. Does the global elite finally get it? And if so, how will they trim their sheets from here on out?

While he was dealing with the Irish Republican Army on his foreign trip last week, Joseph Biden was hanging ever more of his domestic credibility on another IRA -the Inflation Reduction Act. Philip Pilkington sees two big takeaways from this $500 billion barrel of pork. First: the return of real dirigiste industrial policy to America. Secondly: the advent of Big Green as a powerful lobbying force on Capitol Hill.

Meanwhile, Andrew Collingwood has been watching Lula enter through the Beijing door that Macron just exited - bearing a similar amount of fresh deals and good cheer from President Xi. As they watch China build out Brazil's 5G network, will there, he wonders, be a sniff of buyers' regret from the 'Manhattan charity auction set' for having backed a Chomskyite old-Marxist over the more unpalatable, yet much more US-friendly, Jair Bolsonaro?