An unrepentant Liz Truss has sought to blame a left-wing infiltration of thinktanks, the Bank of England and other “institutions” for the market turmoil during her brief premiership.
Ms Truss was speaking at an Institute for Government event about what she believes are the issues with the UK economy.
Her 49 days as prime minister – the shortest ever – ended after attempts to reform the economy culminated with the Bank of England having to prevent pension markets from collapsing as markets expected interest rates to soar on borrowing to pay for tax cuts.
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Liz Truss’s rise and fall
Ms Truss did admit that she tried to go too far, too fast. She said: “It was certainly true that I didn’t just try to fatten the pig on market day but tried to rear the pig, fatten the pig and slaughter it on market day.”
But she did not apologise – despite being asked several times about her time in Downing Street – and pointed out that interest rates and gilt yields are now higher than when she was in office.
Sky’s economics and data editor Ed Conway explained that the “ham-fisted” way in which Ms Truss tried to change policy led to her losing the confidence of the markets, which set off “mines” and shook confidence in the UK’s economy.
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At the end of her speech, Ms Truss revealed she would be heading to the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, where she would be “saying more”.
This conference is Rishi Sunak’s first as leader.
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In her speech, Ms Truss said: “Certainly as a politician, trying to deliver what I believed people had voted for, there was a lot of institutional bureaucracy in the way.
“And even during the leadership election campaign, and maybe this did not make me popular with the OBR and the Bank of England, I pointed out that there was an orthodoxy in Britain about economic policy and I tried to challenge that orthodoxy.
“And I didn’t find a massive level of support, frankly, from those institutions.”
Image: Ms Truss is the UK’s shortest serving prime minister
She argued that, after the end of the Cold War, “free market economists went off to lucrative jobs in the city allowing academic institutions and think tanks to be captured by the left” – and this made her attempts to reduce tax and increase growth harder.
Ms Truss called on Mr Sunak to make cut taxes – saying her successor needs to cancel the rise in corporation tax, cut the top rate of income tax and reform IR35, as well as advocating for the return of VAT-free shopping for tourists.
The Bank of England was singled out by the former prime minister, arguing that they had kept interest rates too low for too long and extended an era of cheap money without warning of the consequences.
Mark Carney, a former governor of the central bank, accuse Ms Truss of contributing to a weakening of the UK’s economic standing and creating “Argentina-on-the-Channel” rather than “Singapore-on-Thames”.
Ms Truss said: “I’m afraid there’s quite a lot of finger-pointing going on from people like Mark Carney because they don’t want to admit their culpability or the culpability of their central banking associates in this.
“And I again think, of course politicians should be held accountable and responsible for what we do, but when there are people with significant power, you know, I don’t feel that the same questions are necessarily asked about them.”
Asked by Sky political correspondent Ali Fortescue if there was a credibility crisis when Ms Truss was in Number 10, the former leader said: “It’s very difficult if the government of the day has an economic policy that clearly, leading economic institutions in the UK and indeed internationally, don’t necessarily agree with.”
She pointed out comments by the IMF and Joe Biden when she was prime minister.
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Ms Truss added: ” I don’t regret the choice I made and if people say, well, you put the case back for free markets, what I think I have been able to do … this has given me a real insight into why it’s so difficult for governments to deliver, you know, a smaller state or tax cuts.
“It’s not just a problem that there isn’t enough political agreement, we actually have real institutional issues with delivering these things and that is what I’m going to be exploring further.”
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sent warning letters to several exchange-traded fund (ETF) providers, halting applications for leveraged ETFs that offer more than 200% exposure to the underlying asset.
ETF issuers Direxion, ProShares, and Tidal received letters from the SEC citing legal provisions under the Investment Company Act of 1940.
The law caps exposure of investment funds at 200% of their value-at-risk, defined by a “reference portfolio” of unleveraged, underlying assets or benchmark indexes. The SEC said:
“The fund’s designated reference portfolio provides the unleveraged baseline against which to compare the fund’s leveraged portfolio for purposes of identifying the fund’s leverage risk under the rule.”
The SEC directed issuers to reduce the amount of leverage in accordance with the existing regulations before the applications would be considered, putting a damper on 3-5x crypto leveraged ETFs in the US.
SEC regulators posted the warning letters the same day they were sent to the issuer, in an “unusually speedy move” that signals officials are keen on communicating their concerns about leveraged products to the investing public, according to Bloomberg.
The crypto market took a nosedive in October after a flash crash caused $20 billion in leveraged liquidations, the most severe single-day liquidation event in crypto history, sparking discussions among analysts and investors over the dangers of leverage and its effect on the crypto market.
24-hour liquidations in the crypto derivatives market. Source: Coinglass
Liquidations in the crypto futures market during the last cycle averaged about $28 million in long positions and $15 million in shorts per day.
The current cycle is clocking about $68 million in long liquidations and $45 million in short liquidations daily, according to Glassnode.
Demand for leveraged crypto ETFs surged following the 2024 presidential election in the United States, in anticipation of a better regulatory climate for crypto in the US.
Leveraged ETFs are not subject to margin calls and automated liquidations like leveraged crypto derivatives, but can still deal a serious blow to investor capital in a bear market or even a sideways market, as losses compound more quickly than gains.
Taiwan could see its first stablecoin launched as early as the second half of 2026 as lawmakers advance new rules for digital assets, according to one of the country’s financial regulators.
According to a Focus Taiwan report on Wednesday, Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) Chair Peng Jin-lon said that, based on the timeline for passing related legislation, a Taiwan-issued stablecoin could enter the market in the second half of 2026.
Should the Virtual Assets Service Act pass in the country’s next legislative session, and accounting for a six-month buffer period for the law to take effect, it would lay the groundwork for the launch of a Taiwanese stablecoin.
Peng said the draft legislation was derived from Europe’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) and would eventually allow non-financial institutions to issue stablecoins. Initially, however, Taiwan’s central bank and the FSC would restrict issuance to regulated entities.
Last year, Taiwan’s policymakers began enforcing Anti-Money Laundering regulations in response to alleged violations by crypto companies MaiCoin and BitoPro. As of December, however, regulated entities in the country have yet to launch a stablecoin pegged to either the US dollar or the Taiwan dollar.
In addition to the FSC’s advancement of stablecoin regulations, Taiwan’s policymakers are reportedly assessing the total amount of Bitcoin (BTC) confiscated by authorities. The move signaled that the nation could be preparing to launch its own strategic crypto stockpile.
Ju-Chun, a Taiwanese lawmaker, called on the government to add BTC to its national reserves in May as a hedge against economic uncertainty.
The country’s reserves include US Treasury bonds and gold, but no cryptocurrencies. Other countries, such as the US, have adopted policies that promote Bitcoin and crypto reserves.
Former US Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler renewed his warning to investors about the risks of cryptocurrencies, calling most of the market “highly speculative” in a new Bloomberg interview on Tuesday.
He carved out Bitcoin (BTC) as comparatively closer to a commodity while stressing that most tokens don’t offer “a dividend” or “usual returns.”
Gensler framed the current market backdrop as a reckoning consistent with warnings he made while in office that the global public’s fascination with cryptocurrencies doesn’t equate to fundamentals.
“All the thousands of other tokens, not the stablecoins that are backed by US dollars, but all the thousands of other tokens, you have to ask yourself, what are the fundamentals? What’s underlying it… The investing public just needs to be aware of those risks,” he said.
Gensler’s record and industry backlash
Gensler led the SEC from April 17, 2021, to Jan. 20, 2025, overseeing an aggressive enforcement agenda that included lawsuits against major crypto intermediaries and the view that many tokens are unregistered securities.
The industry winced at high‑profile actions against exchanges and staking programs, as well as the posture that most token issuers fell afoul of registration rules.
Gary Gensler labels crypto as “highly speculative.” Source: Bloomberg
Under Gensler’s tenure, Coinbase was sued by the SEC for operating as an unregistered exchange, broker and clearing agency, and for offering an unregistered staking-as-a-service program. Kraken was also forced to shut its US staking program and pay a $30 million penalty.
The politicization of crypto
Pushed on the politicization of crypto, including references to the Trump family’s crypto involvement by the Bloomberg interviewer, the former chair rejected the framing.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said, arguing it’s more about capital markets fairness and “commonsense rules of the road,” than a “Democrat versus Republican thing.”
He added: “When you buy and sell a stock or a bond, you want to get various information,” and “the same treatment as the big investors.” That’s the fairness underpinning US capital markets.
On ETFs, Gensler said finance “ever since antiquity… goes toward centralization,” so it’s unsurprising that an ecosystem born decentralized has become “more integrated and more centralized.”
He noted that investors can already express themselves in gold and silver through exchange‑traded funds, and that during his tenure, the first US Bitcoin futures ETFs were approved, tying parts of crypto’s plumbing more closely to traditional markets.
Gensler’s latest comments draw a familiar line: Bitcoin sits in a different bucket, while most other tokens remain, in his view, speculative and light on fundamentals.
Even out of office, his framing will echo through courts, compliance desks and allocation committees weighing BTC’s status against persistent regulatory caution of altcoins.