This reminds me of Michael Cembalest's great piece on the entertainment landscape from last November (below). This is worth the read. Especially during a period where the industry is undergoing a large acquisition (#$WBD) assets.jpmprivatebank.com/content/dam/...

The presidents talking in ways the market is not hearing.

so the one Spanish speaker left working for the FCC is the sole remaining Biden-appointed commissioner

Pierre, you’ve lost another seat?

“The heat directly damages #coffee plants, causes erratic rainfall + increases the spread of pests, which can further damage #crops. The analysis suggests the problem is much more widespread than just 1 or 2 bad years temporarily hitting #coffeeproduction in certain areas” www.cbc.ca/news/science...

2026 basically

Lot of talk about soaring beef prices, but what about a basket of non-nutritive items most of which have 🚀 too? One plan: reduce consumption of most items. Maybe you'll look and feel better and you'll have money to maintain your coffee habit. Also, 🍺 and 🍷 remain relative bargains. 😉

'Across the US, conservative communities are leading a grassroots rebellion against the rapid rollout of AI. Political strategists fear this could wreck Republicans’ chance of maintaining a majority in Congress and become a defining issue in the 2028 presidential race.‘ www.ft.com/content/0c9e...

Another crack in the mad-king's base. And this money quote from a MAGA empiricist is the pure stuff: “I have grandchildren . . . It does concern me that they’re being drawn into a world that isn’t real,” she said.

"Chevron in 2019 ran 21 rigs and five frack crews in the Permian. This year it anticipates it will need only six rigs and two frack crews to produce about 67% more oil-and-gas in the region than seven years ago." 🤯 www.wsj.com/business/ene...

Druck expressing through ETFs just like you. :)

DRUCKENMILLER BETS BIG ON BRAZIL ETF BEFORE RALLY Billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller’s Duquesne Family Office bought ~3.5M shares and call options in the $9.1B iShares MSCI Brazil ETF (EWZ) ahead of its 17% January surge, the best month since 2020. • Rally fueled by a softer

Looking like long tenor JGBs and lifer P&Ls will get support from a capital accounting change.

More bad news for a nation with the attention span of goldfish.

✅Some business investment green shoots! 📊Using PPI to deflate the new capital goods ex-aircraft shipments, volumes appears to be growing at 2% y/y pace. ⚠️This comes after 3 years of contraction and too early to conclude on the robustness of the trend, but it's encouraging

Here’s the piece the White House is threatening NY Fed economists over in case you wanna read it: libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/02/who-...

"Japan exports growth surges to over 3-year high, up nearly 17% in January, as shipments to China soar" www.cnbc.com/2026/02/18/j... "a near 26% jump in shipments to Asia and over 25% to Western Europe...more than offset the 3.3% decline in North America"

Very cool graph

On Sept 20, 2008, when Morgan Stanley was on the brink of collapse, Warsh received an ethics waiver to negotiate directly with his former employer as a governor for the Fed. The next day, the Fed approved Morgan Stanley to convert to a bank holding company, which gained it access to Fed loans

TIL: Cuba is top five producer of cobalt and has massive reserves.

“I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.” - 7 year old imprisoned by ICE for 70 days in a concentration camp in Texas. Today, after @propublica.org published this story, the camp was raided to confiscate letters from the children. www.propublica.org/article/ice-...

This comparison is striking-- so much is different from 1 year ago

"Tariffs by Unpublished Memo: Lawsuit Exposes How Opaque Enforcement Compounds the US Tariff Complexity Problem"

I guess it’s not a surprise that pronatalist stablecoin bros could end up destroying the singleness of money.

That a lot of the story of 2024 is the American *consumer* class going Kalecki is really important and something we need to deal with; instead of pretending something more convenient happened.

Companies continue to ramp up their AI adoption efforts

Ideological labels do not explain everything, but we should be clear about the intellectual tradition from which Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae emerged. open.substack.com/pub/observin...

World Curling take action after Sweden accuse Canada of cheating reut.rs/3MFy06a

Norwegian government scientist—working in strict secrecy—constructed a device capable of emitting powerful pulses of microwave energy. He developed neurological symptoms resembling those reported in Havana syndrome cases.

Under Trump, the USDA *wildly* underestimated the amount of corn that was harvested by US farmers in 2025. This has been attributed by experts to be a direct result of massive staffing cuts. Now, nobody in agriculture trusts USDA estimates and this could have disastrous effects.

USG wrote about what they think they are doing here. Reinforces fact that US goods and services and naptha prioritized but global partners can participate as long as contracts set under US law. Relative lattitude for IOCs already present… links-2.govdelivery.com/CL0/https:%2...

Watch Bloomberg TV at 3pm Eastern to hear KPMG US chief economist Diane Swonk parse the new inflation data with hosts Romaine Bostick and Katie Greifeld.

JAPAN TO ISSUE VIETNAM $10B IN YEN LOANS: NIKKEI

The Farm Bureau's own chart shows that the number of farm bankruptcies in 2025 was much lower than in 2016-2020. The chart also shows that many more farms went bankrupt during the first Trump Admin compared to the Biden Admin.

OFAC is currently a Venezuela general license issuing machine, churning out many general licenses in the last week or so, to address loopholes that stopped purchases + investment. Latest allow for contracts for some work needed to explore O&G exploration/prod inv ofac.treasury.gov/media/935011...

PENTAGON: ADDS BYD TO LIST OF CHINESE FIRMS AIDING MILITARY

White House Trade Adviser Navarro: There's no basis in fact that the administration is planning to reduce steel and aluminum tariffs - CNBC.

Fun with charts for Friday the 13th: 1/5: Underlying inflation pressures are still fading, giving the Fed room to respond if labour markets worsen in the months ahead:

Latest piece: a bit of background on the effects of the shift away from manufacturing. open.substack.com/pub/bondecon...

probably the most important chart of the last 3 months

CBP didn’t give her or anyone any water; she asked 3 times accg to other reports. CBP killed a 7yr old. “8 hours after the girl & her father were taken into custody, she began having seizures & her body temperature was measured at 105.7 degrees by emergency medical technicians. shorturl.at/d2OTJ

BOJ'S TAMURA: Core inflation is gradually rising and is approaching a level that could be considered embedded.

“Claude Code was made available to the general public in May 2025. Today, Claude Code’s run-rate revenue has grown to over $2.5 billion; this figure has more than doubled since the beginning of 2026.”

New Gemini 3 Deep Think rollout announced by #$GOOGL this morning - blog is focused on its impact with mathematics, physics, and engineering blog.google/innovation-a...

Fintwit archive, 2013.

New episode of our podcast: 1) Green shoots in the US jobs market? 2) How will Warsh change the Fed (clue: a lot of mindless virtue signaling) 3) The Anything-But-US-Tech trade Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t... Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/568E...

Wonderful graph here from @karl-schamotta.bsky.social.

“When the numbers are bad for business, you stop tracking them.” - McKinsey consultant once probably.

Go diplomacy. ⚫️

More than 400 people, including hundreds of citizens, were “sorted” at gun point into racial and ethnic groups by 200 ICE agents who fired flash-bang grenades into cars with people inside, pointed guns at children & demanded their zip tied parents not comfort them. apple.news/Ausdx6kWtT0e...