Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• U.S. Economy Shows Signs of Strain From Trump’s Tariffs and Spending Cuts: Consumer and business sentiment is wobbling as fiscal support fades and fears rise that tariffs will lead to higher prices. (New York Times)
• How the British Broke Their Own Economy: With the best intentions, the United Kingdom engineered a housing and energy shortage. (The Atlantic) see also How to lose the 21st century, in three easy steps: Trump is throwing away what could have been the next great American century. (Washington Post)
• Scams, Damn Scams, and Investors: There are also those scams that are less well-known. These are what I’m going to be discussing today. Because it’s very easy to deceive in the world of financial services and I’ve seen just about every trick in the book. (Of Dollars and Data)
• His Hedge Fund Imploded in Spectacular Fashion. His New One Has $12 Billion. Nicholas Maounis, of the failed Amaranth, has regained investor trust at Verition. (Wall Street Journal)
• Cliff Asness: The New ‘Crypto Fort Knox’ Is as Dumb as It Sounds: To create a sovereign wealth fund dedicated to something five times or more as volatile as straight-up stocks is an awful idea. (The Free Press) see also President on brink of bailout for bitcoin: Trump tries to breathe life back into the crypto markets’ “Trump pump” while federal regulatory agencies wash their hands of any crypto industry oversight. (Citation Needed) see also A sovereign crypto fund is a new way to pay out regime cronies: Once again, we find that crypto’s true innovation is enabling gray-market payments.
• Is Anything Really on Sale When Everything Is on Sale? It feels like many of us are essentially in a toxic situationship with discount culture. (Slate)
• Sex Traffickers in Colombia Are Using Facebook, Tinder and Airbnb to Exploit Minors: Better internet service, the proliferation of US apps and an influx of tourists have converged to facilitate the exploitation of minors in Colombia. (Bloomberg)
• One Word Describes Trump: Patrimonialism: A century ago, a German sociologist explained precisely how the president thinks about the world. (The Atlantic) see also The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide: They will come to power with a campaign based on fear, scaremongering and distorting the truth. Nevertheless, their victory will be achieved through a democratic electoral process. But beware, as this will be their argument every time you question the legitimacy of their actions. They will claim a mandate from the People to change the system. (Verfassungsblog)
• The fact that humans can only survive on Earth doesn’t bother Trump – and I know why: He is surrounded by people who have grandiose plans and dreams beyond our planet. Vengeful nihilism is a big part of the Maga project. (The Guardian) see also Neither Elon Musk Nor Anybody Else Will Ever Colonize Mars: Mars does not have a magnetosphere. Any discussion of humans ever settling the red planet can stop right there, but of course it never does. Do you have a low-cost plan for, uh, creating a gigantic active dynamo at Mars’s dead core? No? Well. It’s fine. I’m sure you have some other workable, sustainable plan for shielding live Mars inhabitants from deadly solar and cosmic radiation, forever. No? Huh. Well then let’s discuss something else equally realistic, like your plan to build a condo complex in Middle Earth. (Defector)
• Longevity over Quality: A New Look at the History of ‘S.N.L.’: Photos, scripts, hate mail and other artifacts donated by Lorne Michaels trace the show’s path from idea to institution. (New York Times)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Philipp Carlsson, Global Chief Economist for Boston Consulting Group (BCG ). He is the co-author of “Shocks, Crises, and False Alarms: How to Assess True Macroeconomic Risk,” which was named one of the Financial Times Best Books of 2024.
Here’s How Government Spending Has Grown—and Where the Money Is Going
Source: Wall Street Journal
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