"Donald Trump earned more than $1.16bn in crypto sales and memecoin royalties last year upon returning to the US presidency"

thanks @benbraun.eurosky.social @realbrianjudge.bsky.social @mkblyth.bsky.social for letting me talk about macrofinancial life of sovereign bonds for 1.5h. judging by this week's OECD conference, next summer school should be for Ministers of Finance (and Gillian Tett)

Kicking off the Political Economy of Finance summer school v.3. At @lse-ei.bsky.social for the first time. Topic: “Finance and democracy”. Day 1: My co-hosts @mkblyth.bsky.social and @realbrianjudge.bsky.social in the morning, then @anninak.bsky.social, now @marionf.bsky.social.

@grok is this true?

this Politico article/lede fills me with wonder: the first time I can recall seeing a major outlet tut-tut the Trump administration on basis of violating the sanctity of "laissez-faire" (!) good to see the beltway press hasn't lost their fastball

Because Électricité de France is publicly owned and its existing nuclear plants are tremendously underutilized, France is perhaps the only place in the world where building AI data centers makes financial sense for the host jurisdiction and isn't an environmental catastrophe.

@calpers.bsky.social @calstrs.bsky.social

astonishing chart from Apollo today. who needs public syndication when you have your own captive life insurers?

Brian Judge urges EU leaders to champion the initiative as vital to the bloc’s strategic autonomy.

Centrism is a political ideology that is rarely described as such. Starmer is no less an ideologue than Truss. Those ideological commitments doomed both governments.

A crunch, not a run (for now): banks pulling back from the entire private credit space will cascade to sponsors, funds, and corporates. This creates a refinancing cliff for the 21-22 vintages minted at zero rates. IMF estimates 30-40% have negative FCF. Can they absorb the resulting rate shock?

The global Central Banker's dilemma: shocks raise prices, raising rates can't fix supply, and debt loads make hikes fiscally destabilizing. Inflation targeting assumes demand shocks, policy convergence, and fiscal room. Policy-induced FX vol (e.g. MXN, JPY, GBP) is back with a vengeance. What now?

"finance" and "tech" are not separate phenomena

“Lenders…have spent more than six months distributing $38bn of construction debt tied to a data centre project leased to Oracle in Texas and Wisconsin, people familiar with the matter said.” “inflection point” = when something stops accelerating

America is not a carbon democracy, it's a carbon republic.

“The bubble isn’t the growth of private credit, it’s the lack of lending standards.”

Is a private-credit crisis imminent? In a new PS Big Picture, Brian Judge, Howard Davies, Dambisa Moyo, and others assess the risks raised by the surge in opaque, minimally regulated non-bank lending. bit.ly/48eTeQ6

"There have been gambling manias before corn manias, railway manias, mining manias, banking manias, cotton-spinning manias—in short, manias of every possible description...one leading mania gave to each epoch its distinct tone and character."

"The National Association of Insurance Commissioners, an organisation for US state insurance regulators, has launched a study into the risks of complex 'securitised' products, which private equity-backed insurers have been piling policyholders’ premiums into."

Great to talk private credit this morning with Garth Bray!

Drexel Burnham Lambert: Where Are They Now? www.c-span.org/program/hous...

Brian Judge warns that the financial system is increasingly exposed to complex deals that few can assess.

tired: "since 2022" wired: "since 2008" inspired: "since 1979"

private credit: it’s going great, thanks for asking 👇

you may not like it, but this is what peak capital expenditure looks like

If you're in line for a private credit fund redemption, STAY IN LINE!!!

On March 10 at 4pm-5:30pm, I’ll be moderating a panel discussion at UC Berkeley on a question that’s been on many of our minds (and with increasing urgency) over the past year: “What do the rich owe the rest of us?” Details and registration: besi.berkeley.edu/event/what-d...

appalling

When you're doing just fine, actually: “We don’t have red flags. In point of fact, we don’t have yellow flags, we actually have largely green flags.”

Fabian Muniesa - 'Finance, technology, and fascism today' @ UC Berkeley 26/02/2026 besi.berkeley.edu/event/financ...

Applications are now open for the Finance & Democracy Summer School at the LSE, June 4–5! Two fully funded days of intensive training with leading scholars. Open to advanced PhD students, postdocs & early career researchers. Apply by March 1st. See flyer for more details!

an absolute must-read from @jamesmeek.bsky.social in @lrb.co.uk. it illuminates the cultural, political, and economic cross-currents that define the present more clearly than anything else I've read this year. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4....

Miran: inflation is at 2% if you take out everything above 2% www.ft.com/content/7d37...

the AI bubble popping will also be a reckoning for passive investing, index funds and ETFs. there are a lot of people out there with no idea that market cap-weighting means 8% of their 401k is in NVDA.

Now unpaywalled: Fred Block on remaking finance. Can the millions held in bank deposits, corporate equities, and bonds be used instead to provide for society’s most pressing needs? www.dissentmagazine.org/article/can-...

The California Legislature passed a state budget today that relies more on borrowing than spending cuts to close a projected $12 billion deficit, aiming to push off difficult decisions about priorities even as that gap is only expected to grow in future years. cal.news/4la8P7A 📸 Fred Greaves

If the problem is capitalism, then the solution is to assert democratic control over the economy. If the problem is liberalism, then the problem is the possibility of democratic control itself. Very humbled to be reviewed by Fred Block alongside @itsmccarthy.bsky.social in @dissentmag.bsky.social!