We are hiring a tenure track (!) senior researcher in political economy! This is obviously a great job (permanent without teaching obligation) and I hope you all apply. However, I would like to take a moment to share just how significant this is in the German academic context ⬇️

12 month postdoc post working on my ERC funded Data Stories project. The role is to undertake a comprehensive data audit of the data terrain of housing, property and planning in Northern Ireland & compare to Republic of Ireland. Closing date 31 March 2026. Job details: my.corehr.com/pls/nuimrecr...

ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowships are available in Human Geography at Aberystwyth, Cardiff, and Swansea Universities. wgsss.ac.uk/fellowships/. Interested candidates should email me as soon as possible. [email protected] Initial deadline is May 1, 2026. Please distribute widely!

My new book Currency of Nihilism is officially out today! In it, I develop a history and theory of financial nihilism that speaks directly to the ongoing merger of digital technology with finance. Use the code SAMMAN20 for 20% off: www.sup.org/books/politi... mngbookshop.co.uk/978150364586...

ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowships are available in Human Geography at Aberystwyth, Cardiff, and Swansea Universities. wgsss.ac.uk/fellowships/. Interested candidates should email me as soon as possible. [email protected] Initial deadline is May 1, 2026. Please distribute widely!

I’ve got a book coming out! Check out the introduction online now!

Lines up with something @bentarnoff.com and I have been saying while touring our book through Europe and London this last week. When confronted with the question whether Musk is just nuts, we respond: maybe but this style of fabulism is load-bearing infrastructure for the global financial system.

Eddington was a documentary

As an IR professor, it's depressing that this is outperforming all others as the best theory of US foreign policy

Due to Trump & Vance ‘Unusually Steep’ Decline in U.S. University Autonomy, Index Shows Drop in institutional autonomy of 50 percent since 2015 means country is now only rated as “moderate” by experts.

meanwhile this is not worrying at all giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

The @federalreserve.gov just granted a crypto company—Kraken—access to its public payment services for the first time. More evidence that crypto’s success is not as an *alternative* to the existing financial system but to capture the existing payment infrastructure. www.wsj.com/finance/regu...

Rather than adapt to the river, we have tried to bend it to our will. Scott traces the history of this struggle to the dawn of sedentary agriculture. https://bit.ly/3MYGrcY

“Credit derivatives tied to single companies didn’t exist on many high-grade Big Tech issuers a year ago, and are now some of the most actively traded US contracts in the market outside of the financial sector”

This is very good. It's easier to blame universities for a poor economy than it is to blame, well, everything else. But you certainly won't *fix* the economy by just forcing people into trades apprenticeships.

Massive capital switching exercise in process, enabled as always by exotic financial instruments. The debt fuelled $3 trillion AI data center build out is enabled by quickly expanding market for credit default swaps and other credit derivatives. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Alphabet's 100 year AI build debt instruments have a higher credit rating than UK government debt. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

COMING WINTER 2026: Cancelling Billionaires Before They Cancel Us: The Urgent Case for a Wealth Tax by Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks “A must read.” — Thomas Piketty, bestselling author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century Pre-order now: buff.ly/tj2zi24 #wealthtax #capitalism #billionaires

MAGA “In blue-collar industries—such as manufacturing, construction, logging and mining, transportation and warehousing, and utilities—a cumulative total of nearly 166,000 jobs were lost from February 2025 to January 2026.” www.americanprogress.org/article/work...

And finally he demands Judge Kaplan recuse himself, arguing he showed "extreme prejudice". Both that argument and his "no actual loss" theory are already being litigated in his pending appeal before the Second Circuit, which I wrote about here: www.citationneeded.news/issue-96/#sbf

What a vision of the future. All else aside, does anyone who doesn't directly profit from it, actually want this?

Absolute anti-financialization screed by Oren Cass in NYTs (paywall). I wish populists would start to take these arguments (which many of us in the academy have been making for years if not decades) more seriously. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/o...

Private Equity Ripped the Heart Out of Skateboarding prospect.org/economy/2025...

I expect to spend today staring at this: ‘we’ve gone from government suggesting that the state would subsidise undergraduate student loans by about 45p in the pound, to making a profit on them for that cohort’. A *profit* on student loans: everyone should read this. 🤯 wonkhe.com/blogs/gradua...

Over 11 MM ppl use cryptocurrencies in #Argentina, (over 20% of the population!) I explain the success of the crypto in Argentina, paying close attention to its intertwining with crisis. 🧵 Curls, caves, and shadows: how cryptocurrencies thrive in (poly)crisis www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Coming Soon! FinTech Capital, by @paullangley.bsky.social and me, accounts for the rise and ubiquity of fintech and its global transformation of everyday financial transactions. The book is out in July in the US, and in September in the UK. Available for pre-order here: tinyurl.com/bdz2pjn5

New @oii.ox.ac.uk and University of Kentucky study shows how ChatGPT amplifies global inequalities, with LLMs reflecting historic biases in training data. With thanks to @telegraph.co.uk for sharing the study. @geoplace.bsky.social www.telegraph.co.uk/business/202...

Of especial interest for UK researchers, research institutes/organisations and/or partnerships with higher education expertise and the ability to measure social & cultural infrastructure. Deadline 17:00 GMT 4 February; duration 10 months; value c. £60k. 1/2

TOMORROW: Report Launch and Discussion 1:00-2:30PM GMT Guest Speakers: Matilda Fitzmaurice (@matildaf.bsky.social) Jay Todd (@jaytoddgla.bsky.social) Lekan Adekola Gillian Rose (@profgillian.bsky.social) Register: www.rgs.org/events/upcom...

Special issue on Authoritarianism in the Digital Age, vol 1(3) in @dialoguesdigsoc.bsky.social, edited by @kylzjarrett.bsky.social, Jing Hiah, @robkitchin.bsky.social & @steelecat717.bsky.social y.social. All 49 pieces open access. journals.sagepub.com/toc/ddsa/1/3

Samuel A. Moore, Publishing Beyond the Market: Open Access, Care, and the Commons – University of Michigan Press @uofmpress.bsky.social, September 2025 press.umich.edu/Books/P/Publ... @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social discussion with Stephen Pinfield newbooksnetwork.com/publishing-b...

I wrote a paper about Cryptofinance, and the ways the U.S. state has negotiated the consolidation of cryptocurrency trading in large platform firms. It traces the rise of FTX (Sam Bankman-Fried's firm) as it moves from Berkeley to Hong Kong to the Bahamas. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

"Closures and mergers [of universities] are Labour policy, not a problem Labour policy wants to solve." ISRF Director @cnewf.bsky.social explains the logic behind the current UK University funding crisis and why it will be counterproductive mailinglist.isrf.org/p/isrf-newsl...

It's Thatcher's fault. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

While we’re at it. Canvas & Blackboard are now both owned by Private Equity giants in the “data integration space,” meaning they harvest & monetize our identity & intellectual property…& our students’ We should be asking, what do these LMSs do that a $20/yr password-protected WordPress site can’t?

1/3 The intensity of conflicts of interest, nepotism, and cronyism related to World Liberty Financial is shocking even for this administration.

@ntinatzouvala.bsky.social brilliantly employs Veblen's concept of capitalist sabotage to explain the political economy of U.S. tariffs lpeproject.org/blog/on-tari...

*CHINA ORDERS HALT TO BOEING JET DELIVERIES AS TRADE WAR EXPANDS www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Horse imports could take a beating.

Capital controls next? It would be another boon for crypto- finance, which is clearly the Trump family's current obsession. I suspect Trump's desire to weaken the USD is not disconnected from his promotion of the crypto sector. www.ft.com/content/b1bf...

Nice description of the technical details and frictions in the physical gold trade between NY-LON & Switzerland. Good photos too! FT paywall... www.ft.com/content/2289...

Stablecoins are eurodollars. www.ft.com/content/d033...

The Rise of Bullshit Jobs in UK Universities academic.oup.com/brain/articl...

Musk's cuts will be good for Thiel's Palantir. www.ft.com/content/b9f0...

You know you're in trouble as a critical scholar when you're waiting for capital to discipline the authoritarian.