So google maps updated some satellite footage, here’s one single Ukrainian village. One out of thousands

This is an excellent & worrying interview w/ @petercontibrown.bsky.social. Fed independence is gone the day that Lisa Cook's 'firing' is un-stayed by a court; and once it is gone, it will not be coming back anytime soon, likely not before some inflation disaster hits. Everyone loses. Great job, USA.

Fed independence is a question of power. As with many institutions today, President Trump is trying to reduce the Fed’s power and increase his own. That dramatic backdrop makes today’s Senate hearing on Stephen Miran for Fed Governor anything but normal. stayathomemacro.substack.com/p/who-will-b...

Brown‑Forman's "net sales in developed international markets dropped eight per cent" due to "geopolitical uncertainty". Sales fell 62% in Canada, 16% in the UK, & 10% in Germany. 🍷 #EconSky www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Canada is cursed in having mostly the same vehicle standards as the US, and while some styles (like large SUVs) aren’t as common here yet, I worry that it’s only a matter of time. Europe should fight this hard — and any other similar concessions.

The Fed is not good at talking to citizens. Its communications culture is aimed at markets, which means it knows how to give coded, cautious hints that leave room for negotiation. That means there's little will and no experience with strong, affirmative signals in response to wanton norm-burning.

Tariff inflation effects are just getting started. (via Apollo)

i find this image so fascinating. it is both a literal example of authoritarianism but also a second-hand reproduction of the aesthetics of other authoritarian states. it's like a simulacra of authoritarianism whose purpose is to attempt to make the simulacra real.

This is going to do wonders for the Village, in that it will actually make it a village #Montreal’s pedestrian streets project is a resounding success, chiefly because it’s as good for residents as it is for businesses Canadian cities: take note—this is how you rejuvenate post-pandemic #cdnpoli

The pressure on the independence of the US Federal Reserve is as bad as some of us had feared. I would love to understand what motivates this optimistic perspective from Raghuram Rajan

A reminder: Dr. Cook's mortgages are not the real issue. The threat to US macro stability is the clear intention of the Trump Admin to influence the composition of the FOMC in defiance of the structures designed to insulate the institution from such influence. Thank you for coming to my TED talk

A typical financial market has *fundamental* traders who watch the world and *technical* traders who watch other traders. A striking feature of the Bitcoin market is the almost total absence of the former. This has increasingly serious implications for all of us www.asomo.co/p/the-whale-...

“This is a new attempt of the administration to gain more control over the Fed,” said Claudia Sahm, “They’re pulling as many different levers as they can find to get that control.” www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Crypto is not a socially useful industry. The most innocent side of it is a form of gambling. UK could make money by hosting and facilitating it, but it does so at the expense of global society and should no more do this than it should help illicit arms sales.

Fascinating story from Duncan Miriri, for which I had the pleasure of reporting. Africa is building its own payments system, moving from the insanely expensive and slow process of settling transactions in USD. Trouble is, to Trump it's just de-dollarisation. BAD! www.reuters.com/world/africa...

The corruption in the US is just boundless www.ft.com/content/13a6...

There’s a real possibility that basically every major company launches a stablecoin and it becomes so annoying that people just keep using cash

"the number of employees at peak for companies that have, at some point since the 1950s, been the largest in the U.S." - DB

US stocks vs. rest of the world, so far this year. 😞 (via @yardeniresearch.bsky.social)

WASHINGTON (AP) - US Mint has made its final order of penny blanks and will stop producing the coin when those run out.

Okay. I’ll play this game. How? How exactly is this any better news for people in poverty than, say, giving them more access to lottery tickets? I want Tim Scott to tell me, someone who’s covered crypto for eight years, precisely what crypto does for poor people.

The U.S. Mint still hasn't stopped producing pennies. It minted 130 million of them in April.

The risk that Trump suddenly cuts off Europe's access to the Visa and MasterCard networks as a "pressure tactic" is something that Finland's central bank is preparing for: www.reuters.com/business/fin...

A confidently told caper of a globe-trotting bank robber’s rise and fall, with just the right number of allusions to “Heat” peppered in? Click. @dvnjr.bsky.social & @jacobfeldman.bsky.social's favorite by Malcolm Johnston for @torontolifemag.bsky.social torontolife.com/deep-dives/t...

The 90-day pause on China tariffs is the largest reduction in tariffs since Trump took office, by far, but it still leaves tariffs significantly higher than they were on April 2nd and eight times as high as before he took office

I would just like to say that this has been exhausting

Powerful

My take on today’s UK-US trade deal. The UK is a small weak country. It does what small weak countries do, which is to escape the bully, to pay the Dane-geld. Standing up for the multilateral rules-based trading system will have to be left for others.

What a humiliating admission. The prime minster seems to have been bounced into the premature announcement of an incomplete one-sided deal to satisfy Trump’s propaganda demands

Our $TRUMP analysis: * 67,000 people bought memecoin with debit cards on Trump website * Almost all of them have lost money * Typical buyer spent $100 and has lost $62; one who spent $10,000 has lost more than $8,000 * Trump team has made $312 million in sales, $43 million in fees wapo.st/3ZacyZY

“.. Asked if the U.S. could make a deal with Canada, Lutnick called the country a ‘socialist regime’ that has been ‘basically feeding off America.’” @apnews.com apnews.com/article/cana...

Nobody has talked much about Trump’s tariffs leading to cross border smuggling yet, but if things continue for very long, watch this space.

The Constitution forbids bribery *3 separate times*. So important to the Founders they included two emoluments clauses, and made it the only named impeachable offense besides treason. The Constitution is clear on banning bribery. It's just that Congress and the courts decided to pretend otherwise.

Really important, clear post from @stephaniecarvin.bsky.social onthe state of play and likely scenaries facing Canada thanks to the Trump Admin being so very Trumpy.

Kleptocracy happened *fast* in America.

Meanwhile over in Japan they just casually mentioned they might weaponize UST holdings? The fact he’s even admitting it’s an option is a VERY bad sign about how hard Japan is going to negotiate.

Holy cow. Trump has hit the old man hobbies hard (model trains, table top wargames). A key point in the video: detailed model trains have never been made in the US - never had the toolmakers set up to do it.

key point from @pkrugman.bsky.social: it's literally impossible for foreign governments to negotiate with Trump because he and his people can't/won't even articulate a consistent set of demands paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trump-is-t...

Funny enough, penny production hasn't actually stopped. The U.S. Mint pumped out 328 million new pennies in March, even though Trump has told his treasury secretary to stop minting them. www.coinnews.net/2025/04/18/u...

Yes, Politico — nothing like some light-hearted threats of annexation from a president who doesn’t understand consent to brighten up our Election Day.

Trump-proofing Canada means we need to end our reliance on the SWIFT financial messaging network for domestic payments purposes. Let's build a replacement now before Trump exerts U.S. economic power to de-SWIFT us. My latest 👉 www.moneyness.ca/2025/04/trum...

"Vance & his government are a visceral reminder of what happens when you give power to politicians who make it their mission to stop DEI, who post obsessively about wokeness, who revel in the sneering humiliation of their enemies. "Canadians do not like what they see." thelocal.to/federal-elec...

It’s very funny to think about how crypto bros, who claim to care deeply about personal freedoms and liberty and fear the government, overwhelmingly voted for the guy who’s now able to enter your house and deport your ass without a warrant. Congratulations.

Trump turns people into goldfish. Three months of taunts and threats, followed by a few weeks of holding his tongue, and I saw a surprising number of people jump to “phew, glad that’s over!”.

Trump reiterates he is deadly serious about incorporating Canada and not at all trolling. Wouldn't mind being remembered as the President who expanded US territory.

"The US was a colonial project from its inception; it remains one in 2025. The shock some of us might feel in Canada is, I think, the naive belief that American imperial sights wouldn’t turn here." thewalrus.ca/is-canada-tr...

"In effect the entire technology has been handed a get-out-of-money-laundering-jail-free card. " - @jpkoning.bsky.social I've thought we've needed to evolve beyond the severely flawed BSA/AML paradigm for a long time, even via a strong Treasury, but not like this www.moneyness.ca/2025/04/if-i...

@weisenthal.bsky.social for the win.

FBI: Americans aged 60 and older reported losing almost $3 billion to crypto fraud last year. In total, Americans reported being scammed out of around $9.3 billion via crypto, out of a total $16.6 billion in total reported thefts that year. www.ic3.gov/AnnualReport...