There's a global race to secure EV battery gigafactories & reduce reliance on China.
But not all clean-tech projects are created equal. Some generate good jobs & domestic capacities, others produce ecological harm & low value-added enclaves.
New paper & thread 👇
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Ook bijzonder dat de centrale bank met deze aanbeveling komt, is toch niet hun pakkie-an?
Y’all look like you need a break from the news cycle (evergreen!). Check out our new paper with Jon Frost & Hiro Ito about the impact of stablecoins on the international monetary system, w/ focus on EMEs
Lots of graphs w/ stylised facts, currency functions, scenarios
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
This has been a LONG time in works: my paper on how dollar hegemony is a form of international law-making power. It includes a long methodological/theoretical section on why strong versions of the 'law constitutes political economy' aren't convincing papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
De belangrijkste drijfveer achter de explosieve woningprijzen is niet een tekort aan stenen, maar een overvloed aan geld. Hoe dat zit en wat de hypotheekrenteaftrek daarmee te maken heeft, legt cartograaf Carlijn Kingma uit aan de hand van deze kaart 👉 www.ftm.nl/volkshuisves...
We hebben dus het FD nodig om de waarheid boven tafel te krijgen over hoe rechtsradicale partijen deze verkiezingen vanuit het buitenland gesteund worden.
Want Volkskrant, Trouw, NRC, en zeker de NOS berichten hier niet over.
Leeslinkje in de comments
Belangrijkste thema’s volgens I&O:
- wonen
- veiligheid
- verkeer/openbaar vervoer
- natuur
- zorg voor ouderen / wmo
- opvang asielzoekers
Uitslagenavond NOS:
- AZC’s
- AZC’s
- AZC’s
- AZC’s
nos.nl/l/2606880
Dakloosheid, torenhoge huizenprijzen en starters die hun halve salaris kwijt zijn aan huur. Al jaren klinkt de roep om de wooncrisis op te lossen, maar waarom verandert er zo weinig?
Reis mee door onze kaart en ontdek waardoor De machinerie van de volkshuisvesting vastloopt.
Workers take risks. Taxpayers fund breakthroughs. Yet the rewards flow elsewhere.
Spoke today at ILO Innovation Day about what it would take to change that.
“De Italiaanse journalist Saviano noemde Nederland ‘het rottende hart van Europa’, vanwege het optimaliseren van offshore-praktijken & witwasserij. De organisatie van het rangeerterrein moet op de schop, voordat de activiteiten de rechtsstaat & democratie verder aan geloofwaardigheid doen inboeten.”
Doe dit niet NS! Jullie ICT zelf is kritieke infrastructuur! NS hoe kunnen jullie de trein die digitale strategische automomie heet gemist hebben. Als ik eerlijk ben, dat is gewoon volstrekt ongeloofwaardig. Kamervragen liggen inmiddels bij de Minister! @ns.nl #tweedekamer www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2026/...
President Roosevelt signing the Social Security Act into law on August 14, 1935, with Perkins among those witnessing the signing (third from right) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Signing_Of_The_Social_Security_Act.jpg
1/ I recently wrote about Frances Perkins—FDR’s Labor Secretary and first woman cabinet member. She is best known as the architect of the New Deal but she had a lesser-known achievement:
She dismantled her era’s version of ICE.🧵
Volgens Van Weel varen er Russische en Chinese onderzoeksschepen bij Groenland, maar hij kan niet zeggen waar hij dat op baseert. Scandinavische diplomaten met toegang tot de veiligheidsbriefing van de NAVO zeggen tegen de Financial Times dat daar al jaren geen sprake van is.
Issue of money sovereignty for Europe ramping up; big sign-on letter from economists calls for a digital Euro with no US dependencies (as China has done in building its digital currency stack).
www.ft.com/content/b060...
The independence of the Bank of England was supposed to facilitate the application of economic reasoning to public policy. But if independence=taboo on discussing the interactions btw fiscal & monetary policy, then not even technocrats deliberate on one of the biggest economic policy issues!
‘Israël luistert massaal telefoongesprekken tussen Palestijnen af en slaan die op in datacenters in Nederland’
Wy hienen in moaie presintaasje fan it nije #Bûsboekje, edysje 2026, ferline wike op it Bouwurk fan @arcadiafrl.bsky.social. It boekje hat as tema ‘boadskippen’. De reade kleur fan it omkaft is in boadskip op himsels. Read as symboal foar as der oer grinzen hinne gien wurdt, en dat bart hjoed faak….
Consider the turmoil, in late 2019, in the US repo market, wherefinancial firms borrow and lend cash against securities, pledged as col-lateral. A major cause of this turmoil was liquidity demand from hedgeand private equity funds. These funds are typically levered — in ordermaximize their returns, they borrow large sums in the shadow bankingsystem, often pledging the assets they acquire as collateral. In order tostabilize the repo market, the Federal Reserve increased its balance sheetby 10 percent, or USD 400 billion, between September 2019 and Janu-ary 2020. The question “What is the social value of levered hedge fundsand private equity buyouts?” was not asked.The same pattern recurred — on a much larger scale — in the wakeof the COVID outbreak in early 2020. In order to prevent the economicshock caused by the pandemic from leading to another systemic financialcrisis, central banks across the world chose to backstop not only banksbut also the broader shadow banking system. The most audacious meas-ures — in both size and scope — have been implemented by the Fed-eral Reserve. By purchasing so-called “junk bonds” — bonds issued bycorporate debtors with lower credit ratings — the Federal Reserve againbackstopped private equity funds, which routinely transfer debt to theirbuyout targets, forcing the latter to issue junk bonds. By backstopping
both the money market and the (high-risk) capital market, the FederalReserve effectively protects both the liability side and the asset side oflevered investors’ balance sheets.In other words, the Federal Reserve ensures that the arsenal of themost predatory actors in the financial system is fully stocked and readyto be deployed — for further financializing currently distressed sectorsof the economy, such as elderly care. Shareholders understand — thestock price of firms such as Blackstone and Apollo bounced back spec-tacularly after the Federal Reserve announced its measures. Unless gov-ernments take swift and decisive action to curb the ability of hedge andprivate equity funds to gobble up assets, COVID will become a majormilestone in the long history of central bank-facilitated financialization.The upshot is that while central bank planning already exists, it iscurrently geared toward propping up a system in which the planning ofinvestment is in private hands. This system is both unfair and inefficient.Central banks have become the lenders of last resort for a manifestly un-sustainable status quo (Fontan, Claveau, and Dietsch 2016; Jacobs andKing 2016; Streeck 2014).
Time really is a circle. Leveraged hedge funds make billions; bets blow up; dash for cash; the Fed steps in; repeat. Here's what I wrote four years ago about central banks as guarantors of this unjust and inefficient (some might say: stupid) system.
benjaminbraun.org/assets/pubs/...
"I really must stress that, in the olden days, a customer coming to a bank and asking to borrow money and the bank lending it to them was called bank lending"
My new strategy with @matt-levine.bsky.social newsletters is just to read until he makes me burst out laughing and then post the quote
Rake observatie van Thomas Piketty over TINA ('There Is No Alternative')-denken, in gesprek met Michael Sandel. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/o...
Hoe was de reactie op straat? Flyeren voor GL/PvdA geeft soms goede reacties en soms ook slechte. Weinig mensen lopen door, dat dan weer wel
