u/theionarr

Manchester City’s financial case raises a bigger question than just what punishment the club deserves: what happens to the Premier League itself if one of its biggest global attractions is expelled?

On one hand, going easy on City could undermine the credibility of the league’s financial rules. If the rules apply differently to the biggest clubs, what is the point of having them?

But on the other hand, the Premier League has built a huge part of its global appeal around elite teams, star players and title races. Removing a club as successful as City would have commercial consequences, potentially trigger further legal disputes with rival clubs, and leave the league facing some difficult questions.

So the league faces a dilemma:
Punish City too lightly, and risk damaging the credibility of its rules.
Punish City too severely, and potentially create a financial and legal mess that extends far beyond the club itself.

Does protecting the integrity of the competition justify whatever commercial fallout might follow? Or could relegating City end up hurting the Premier League almost as much as it hurts City?

I explored this question in a new video on my YouTube channel, IONAR, looking at the broadcasting money, potential compensation claims and the wider business implications. - https://youtu.be/Mqd0yDLtF0c?is=pJQROVmTaMo5bXbE

Been going down a rabbit hole on why homeownership feels so out of reach right now, and the numbers are worse than I expected. A household needs roughly $107K to $123K a year to afford the median home. Actual median household income is about $84K. That’s not a small gap.

Few things that surprised me digging into it:

The home price to income ratio is now 5 to 1, nearly double the 2.6 that’s considered healthy. Not one of the top 50 metros clears that bar.

Mortgage rates were actually worse in 1985 (12.4% vs about 6.5% now). Monthly payments as a share of income were comparable back then. What’s changed is the size of the down payment relative to income.

The BlackRock thing is basically a myth. BlackRock doesn’t buy single family homes, that’s Blackstone, a different company with a similar name. All large institutional investors combined (1,000+ homes) own about 1% of US single family housing. It’s mostly small local landlords buying up homes, not Wall Street.

There’s an actual new federal law (21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, July 2026) banning large investors from buying more single family homes starting Jan 2027. First restriction of its kind.

I made a video walking through the full breakdown (rates, supply shortage, construction costs, the investor myth, and which states are still actually affordable).

https://youtu.be/t5ZOWQtNL-A?is=qGLbtaan-begZdS6

Curious what others here think is the biggest driver. I lean toward supply plus the down payment hurdle over rates themselves.

Hi Everyone,

Our team put together a research breakdown on Buy Now, Pay Later and the debt hiding inside it, published it as a YouTube video. The numbers are bigger than most people realise.

The headline finding: Klarna’s average customer owes it $87 right now. That sounds trivial. But multiply it across their 93 million active customers, and it adds up to a consumer loan book worth roughly $9 billion, sitting inside a checkout button marketed as the opposite of debt.

A few things that stood out from our research beyond the headline:

“Interest-free” doesn’t mean free. 99% of Klarna’s transactions in 2024 carried no interest. So where’s the $2.8 billion in revenue coming from? 57% ($1.6B) is merchant fees, and another 9% ($254M) is late fees, from a company whose entire pitch is “no fees.”

Merchants pay a premium because it works on people. BNPL merchant fees run 2 to 8% of the transaction, several times a standard card processor’s 2 to 3.5%. Why pay it? Afterpay reports average order values jump 20 to 40% when it’s offered at checkout. Affirm has reported lifts as high as 85%.

The debt is becoming less discretionary. LendingTree’s 2026 data shows 29% of US BNPL users have now used it to buy groceries, up from just 14% two years ago. 54% say they genuinely need it to make it through the month, not to spread out a treat.

It’s compounding, not staying contained. 47% of US BNPL users paid late at least once in the past year, up from 41% in 2025 and 34% in 2024 (LendingTree). Nearly one in five users say they’ve used a credit card to fund their BNPL repayments, meaning the “zero-percent” plan is itself being financed by a product that does charge interest.

Younger and lower-income borrowers carry most of the risk. Federal Reserve data shows 32% of 18 to 29 year-olds have missed a BNPL payment, compared with 12% of people over 60.

https://youtu.be/N3H0cQwPkOE?is=ZQhnVE0EsnhxvO2f

All sources (Klarna’s SEC filings and annual report, LendingTree, Federal Reserve, Bankrate, Motley Fool, YouGov/FCA) are cited in the video description. Happy to dig into the methodology on anything here.

I made a video digging into UK wage stagnation and the numbers are honestly worse than I expected, so wanted to share the key findings here.
The headline stat, from the Resolution Foundation and LSE: if UK wages had kept growing at the rate they were before the 2008 financial crisis, the average worker would be earning £10,700 more per year than they actually are today. Not £10,700 more than 2008. £10,700 more than what 2008 would have grown into. Median UK wages only returned to 2008 levels (in real terms) in 2025. Seventeen years of basically zero net gain, while most other rich countries saw real wages grow 8–10% over the same period.

A few other things that stood out researching this:
Productivity collapsed and nobody really fixed it. UK productivity growth dropped from ~2%/year pre-2008 to under 1% after, and actually went backwards in 2024. Root cause: chronic underinvestment. UK manufacturing capital intensity (machinery/tech per worker) is 47% below peers like Germany, France, the US. Business investment is second-lowest in the G7.

Fiscal drag is quietly taxing pay rises into nothing. Income tax thresholds have been frozen since 2021 and are now confirmed frozen until 2031. As wages rise even slightly, more people get pulled into higher tax bands without any actual tax rise being voted on. Result: 5.76 million people now pay the 40% rate, up from 3.83 million in 2019 — a 50% jump in five years, and most of them aren't what you'd call "high earners."

Housing is eating whatever's left. English private renters spent 36.3% of income on rent in 2024 (ONS considers 30%+ unaffordable, and we've been above that every year since 2016). In London it's 46%. 16-24 year olds renting privately are at 46% nationally too.

Inequality makes it worse than the average suggests. Low-income UK households are 22% poorer than their equivalents in France. The gap at the bottom is more than double the gap at the top — the people losing out from stagnant wages aren't the ones who'd be cushioned by a "typical household" stat.

Full breakdown with all the sources (ONS, OBR, IPPR, Resolution Foundation/LSE, HMRC) is in the video if anyone wants to go deeper:

https://youtu.be/mWprlul6vDc?is=4AUM-RoGGb9JDBa2

Thank you and have a great weekend