Trump the pirate: "ConocoPhillips’s claims against Venezuela ... $12 billion, while Exxon Mobil ... said the country owes it an estimated $20 billion."
So Venezuelans to keep same dictators, but oil goes to Trump slush fund. Reckless fantasy.
- giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... via @FT
Right. Trump may think this is about oil: he mentioned "oil" 27 times at his press-conference and "democracy" not once. Big oil will again bankroll him. But big profits in VE is an oil fantasy primarily in Trump's head.
substack.com/inbox/post/1...
You're right about what he cares about, but Big Oil put up half a bn to get him elected (he'd asked for $1bn). He's delivered deregulation & benefits worth ~$190bn. He needs them desperately again for the midterms. It may be that simple.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
DeLauro uses her opening statement to tear Russ Vought a new one
Actually, the data Saez/Zucman use in their book is from the universe of IRS records. For instance, fig 1.2 average tax rates by centile.
And as a reward to loyal but impoverished Lesotho for still trading more with the USA than with China: Trump slapped them with a 50% "reciprocal tariff rate" on liberation day April 2.
Exclusive: National Science Foundation staff were told today that the agency’s 37 divisions—across all eight directorates—are being abolished and the number of programs within those divisions will be drastically reduced.
"Assuming that offsetting exchange rate and general equilibrium effects are small enough to be ignored,..." is doing an awful lot of lifting in that explanation..
The barbarism of Trump’s first term immigration policy brought support for immigration to all time highs, and he seems determined to repeat that
that must have been fun. one tech leap for me was discovering mathpix (mathpix.com) which reliably converts snapshots of handwritten notes or web/textbook screenshots to latex/markdown.
JUST IN via @CNBC.com's @eamonjavers.bsky.social & @danmangan.bsky.social:
"#Trump is set Monday to sign an executive order directing the Department of Justice to pause enforcing a law that prohibits American companies to bribe officials of foreign governments."
www.cnbc.com/2025/02/10/t...
He's contrasting future interpretations. If voters perceived Biden was beholden to 'radical agendas' it doesn't matter whether that was true or not. Pardons don't signal trust in institutions. And this is front page at Financial Times - he's aiming to reach people who might otherwise dismiss.
Here’s a story with some numbers. The proposed cuts are unfathomable: a 60% reduction to NSF would be the end of American science as we know it.
Kristof: "Musk has a net worth greater than the poorest billion people on Earth. ..since the election, Musk’s personal net worth has grown by far more than the entire annual budget of USAID., which in any case accounts for less than 1 percent of the federal budget." www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/o...
Any news outlet reporting Mexico conceded anything to Trump to get him to delay tariffs has not done its homework.
Trump boasts he got Mexico to commit to stationing 10K troops at our border. Apparently he didn't realize Mexico already has 15K troops deployed there
prami.ibero.mx/informes-y-i...
Letter reading, "Dear agency employees, We are taking steps to close all agency DEIA offices and end all DEIA-related contracts in accordance with President Trump’s executive orders titled Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing and Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions. These programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination. We are aware of efforts by some in government to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language. If you are aware of a change in any contract description or personnel position description since November 5, 2024 to obscure the connection between the contract and DEIA or similar ideologies, please report all facts and circumstances to DEIAtruth@opm.gov within 10 days. There will be no adverse consequences for timely reporting this information. However, failure to report this information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences. Thank you for your attention to this important matter. Janet Petro"
Here's an e-mail that just went out to NASA agency wide. 🔭
similar paunch
Hate him or love him, I think we can all agree that uncensored Paul Krugman the sasrcastic substack explainer is much more entertaining that PK the NY Times columnist..
substack.com/home/post/p-...
I had similar influences, and feel similar apprehensions as Marc Bellamere expresses about the field of development economics since the 2000s.
marcfbellemare.com/wordpress/14...
For me, the political economy embrace kept it interesting for a while, but I agree something intrinsic has been lost
hmmm, I'm going to go with the line from the abstract that "lobbying by powerful and productive industries may have been at play" in explaining Andreesen's post.
translation: Ds asked questions framed around national interests; Trump camp simply asked, if we put your guys in charge, how much can you kick back our way?
Damages for being impeded in their certain plan to transform a Honduran island fishing village into the next Singapore is worth at least that much, but they modestly reduced it to only 11bn.
$11BN claim against Honduras (1/3 gdp) on $46.8M investment by investors including Altman, Andreesen + Thiel (+100M online blockchain 'token' investors). If you're curious abt intl inv dispute arbitration, the hearings are online! : icsid.worldbank.org/resources/mu...
I'd forgotten I had turned that on. If you did as well, your projects should be in your dropbox folder under ...\Apps\Overleaf\*
the banana was sold just blocks from our lecture hall.
