"Overall, it locks Democrats in and keeps locking them in further from being able to fund a government that can do all of the things that need to be done.”
As lawmakers float tax proposals aimed at the middle class, ESP's @mtkonczal.bsky.social spoke w/@nytimes.com about what's really at stake.
Also didn't... they learn this ... from the French? (I don't know! I just thought of salted caramel as a super French thing!)
Broke: legitimizing crypto will help solidify the dollar’s status as reserve currency.
Woke: legitimizing crypto will help facilitate money laundering and sanctions evasion.
Bespoke: legitimizing crypto will help displace petrodollars.
I wrote some more about the ongoing economic fallout from the war in Iran, and make a reference to degrowth (h/t to @robinsonmeyer.bsky.social whose 'degrowth donnie' lives in my head): open.substack.com/pub/ninaeich...
This is amazing!!!
"A broker for Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, attempted to make a big investment in major defence companies in the weeks leading up to the US-Israeli attack on Iran, according to three people familiar with the matter."
It is the sovereign legal right of every country on the planet to repudiate their debt, and they can and do suffer essentially no consequences other than loss of access to credit markets for about 3-5 years. This is in fact so disastrous that countries prefer almost anything else to doing it!
only saw one, who cut a very sad figure (shaking his red hat out of his car window, hollering something unintelligible, and making a point of driving by twice for good measure)
Oh this is amazing!
ahhhh
Huge shoutout to my local fancy booze store, where staff told me that, honestly, they preferred other things to the triple digit priced Pappy Van Winkle in the locked case.
I grew up in MD, and I confess that I do slip into 'y'all' sometimes, which once made a room full of elementary students in New England mock me (deservedly)
As mortgage rates increase, making it more expensive to buy a house, the administration’s chief housing regulator is focused on manufacturing frivolous legal charges against the president’s political enemies.
not sure what it says that when I first read this, I thought you were referring to Warner Brothers!
Oh my!
I loved my Waymo rides when I was in SF! A friend who lives in Berkeley says that during power outages, they all come to a stop in the middle of traffic ... but surely there's a way to deal with that?
I was wondering if this was a leaked April Fool's Day thing, but
we're all going to be learning about energy markets & contracts like we learnt about derivatives in 2008 lol
Also, the watch is food and transportation for at least 10s of millions of people.
Despite controlling the world's reserve currency and being the top military power, the US has lost its monopoly on major sanctions, says Nicholas Mulder.
Limits to US power exposed by:
1/ China's rare earths export controls last year, and
2/ Iran with Strait of Hormuz effective closure
I'm reminded of when an old school Marxist on my grad program's faculty recounting how he told another professor to punish would-be radical grad students threatening to tank the program's reputation within the program; sometimes you gotta enforce things!
(Bringing it up because this was where I learned about Coriolanus and Timon of Athens, which is normal content for a 7th grader.)
I was in a Shakespearean drama class in middle school (an alternative to sports and because I "had a hard time making friends") and it was one of the better choices of my childhood!
I've also wanted to read Swing Time for a while, and avoided it out of a feeling of dread. She is really good at slow burn!
I haven't read every book of hers, but I need to go back to this one. Also, I loved NW!
TIL that Egypt is the world's largest exporter of a certain vegetable, which means that between the Suez Canal and the vegetable, Egypt controls two of the world's Artichokepoints.
Wrote about the Iran crisis, electricity costs, and why clean power is the right strategy - but not enough.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Tom Breihan just wrote about Down in the Alternative Number One's list at Stereogum, and doing a mini dive into their hits left me so happy! Such dumb and fun music.
I mean, I love a gin and tonic in the sunshine, but ... there will be sunshine enough for that in a month!
I wrote about "recent events" and their economic fallout (aka what I'm thinking and worrying about) with some callbacks to when I was a freshman in college in 2002: open.substack.com/pub/ninaeich...