It me 👇

My colleagues and I wrote a report that finds that traffic calming saves lives and improves quality of life. You can read the summary and the report at the link below. If you're in Utah, please share it with your state legislator + Sen Harper and ask them to vote no on SB 242

Good explainer: Federal Reserve 101: What America’s central bank does and why it matters. paulkrugman.substack.com/p/federal-re...

10 Thursday AM Reads: -Contrafund’s Mgr Beating the Market. -Next Step on the Bond Ladder -End of the dollar’s dominance? -Management Fees as the Anti-Alpha -America’s Trading Partners Shift to China -Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong -Inside Story of Beatles on Sullivan ritholtz.com/2026/01/10-t...

Who could possibly have known it would come to this? If only we had been warned.

It’s not a political party. It’s a criminal enterprise

When the engineers say, "It's not safe. Something bad will happen," it's always best to listen and err on the side of caution.

I wrote about my childhood friend Alexi Pretti. Please read it and share it and remember him as a human being. @theverge.com

Cartoon by Pat Bagley.

Sadists. Thugs. Liars. The entire regime is one big middle finger to everything that’s good and decent

10 Monday AM Reads -UK: Trump has crossed all lines: it is time to cut off his global credit card -2026 will be the year Cybertruck dies -Used Watch Prices Post Broad Gains For 1st Time In Years -Who Owns TikTok in the U.S. Now? -Trump Declared a Space Race W/China ritholtz.com/2026/01/10-m...

Walz: "To Americans who are watching this, I've got a question for you: What side do you want to be on? The side of an all powerful federal govt that can kill, injury, menace, & kidnap its citizens off the streets? Or on the side of a nurse at the VA hospital who died bearing witness to such govt?"

A bit of my own personal history about a government policy of murdering innocent civilians to keep the rest of the population to scared to resist and thus under control.

“It’s worse than it looks and it looks plenty bad”

If you weren't tracking it, it's hard to explain how hyperventilated the NRA's rhetoric about looming government jackboots was while Barack Obama was president. It was their/LaPierre's central sales pitch.

Alex Jeffrey Pretti, an ICU nurse who worked at the VA saving our veterans’ lives was executed by U.S. federal agents while trying to help a woman up after ICE violently shoved her to the ground. That’s the headline.

Alas, it turns out they were just in it for the dead children, fear-mongering to elect GOP, and gun sales.

What's happening in Minnesota is one reason the Reconstruction Amendments banned insurrectionists from holding office. Unfortunately, the originalists on the Supreme Court interpreted the plain language of the amendment to mean its opposite.

I know there are ICE agents who get off on being hated as it’s the only human emotion they’ve been able to conjure amongst anyone unlucky enough to know them. But some did not anticipate the hatred, who never thought it would follow them for the rest of their sad lives like a tribal tattoo. Boo hoo.

~~sigh~~

📢 Surely the N Rifle Ass wants to hear from citizens that a white male licensed gun owner & federal employee in a Repub admimistration, exercising his 2A rights, was murdered in the street in broad daylight before multiple witnesses who have video evidence.

Cartoon by CWhisenhunt

10 Weekend Reads -Netflix’s $82.7 billion rags-to-riches story: How the DVD-by-mail company swallowed Hollywood -Multidisciplinary Approach to Thinking - Adam Tooze, Crisis Whisperer -GLP-1s And Your Brain: On Addiction, Anxiety, ADHD -Education of the Broligarchy ritholtz.com/2026/01/10-w...

Oh, dammit, I forgot to do my weekly plug for my newsletter. It's coming out in about 10 hours now and — I will say — is maybe a bit controversial? Not like "ICE is good" controversial, but might raise one of your eyebrows. Sign up! Get ahead of the controversy! howtoreadthisch.art

The battle for your data: DOGE colluded with election saboteurs early on www.politico.com/news/2026/01...

10 Friday AM Reads: -5 Reasons Gold Is Surging Toward $5,000 an Ounce -Economic Legacy of DOGE -Real AI Talent War: Plumbers & Electricians -Gen X + Millennials Will Inherit Trillions in Real Estate -Fracking Goes Global -The Real Donald Trump Is a Character on TV ritholtz.com/2026/01/10-f...

The Jack Smith hearing made me think about how much the fracturing of the media environment facilitated the spread of absolute horseshit. www.pbump.net/o/the-jack-s...

“Cyclists take up so much room” says man from 4 metre wide Emotional Support Vehicle adelaidemail.com/single-post/...

A mighty wind

The Republicans gave our country a lobotomy.

Don't forget that a bipartisan immigration bill was gathering momentum in early 2024 when Trump put a brick on it because he wanted to exploit the issue to win the presidency. Trump's lack of interest in helping people was highly successful, as it often has been.

10 Thursday AM Reads: -Donald Trump vs. the World -They quit their day jobs to bet on current events. A look inside the prediction market mania -Can America build beautiful places again -Chinese EVs Blow Past Tesla En Route to Global Reign -What Happened to Pam Bondi ritholtz.com/2026/01/10-t...

I wrote about Trump's terrible immigration poll numbers and why he doesn't seem to care. www.pbump.net/o/trump-does...

Lousy with Nazis, this Administration: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

On the one hand, some reports abt DOGE's SSA abuses misrepresent what the court filing says. On the other hand, the court filing ONLY covers stuff in March TRO period, and therefore doesn't address far scarier Chuck Borges allegations. www.emptywheel.net/2026/01/21/j...

The Truth of Dead Exceptionalism www.emptywheel.net/2026/01/21/t...

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Told You So, Social Security Edition www.emptywheel.net/2026/01/21/j...

10 Wednesday AM Reads -96% of US tariffs has been paid by US buyers -Andreessen Horowitz Makes a $3 Billion Bet -The Reemergence of International Investing -Zero-Sum Economics Keeps Failing -Rich people are leaving California -Even More Very Good Music Facts ritholtz.com/2026/01/10-w...

KRUGMAN: “.. How did a great, sophisticated nation, one of the world’s longest-standing republics, end up so fragile that it can be undone by one man’s dementia?” @pkrugman.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

10 Tuesday AM Reads: -Why This CEO Won’t Let Private Funds Near His Company’s 401k -America vs. the World -With Powell, the Guardrails Are Holding -What if the idea of the autism spectrum is completely wrong? -Netflix’s $82.7 billion rags-to-riches story ritholtz.com/2026/01/10-t...

Sunset view from the park across the street 🫠

If you were best friends for 15 years with the world’s most notorious trafficker in young girls, I’d assume you were a creepy perv too

MAGA Rebranding