Fantastic discussion today with @bhgreeley.bsky.social about his forthcoming _The Almighty Dollar_. What do bourbon whiskey, jazz music, and the FDIC have in common? Watch and find out! www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/634502... www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Qfa...

The President is putting his face on a coin and his signature on the currency. I think it's legal. I also think it's a sign of weakness, not strength. www.ft.com/content/9f58...

The Trump coin and lessons from the Ostrogoths - classic @bhgreeley.bsky.social column here as.ft.com/r/32c97773-6...

Some black-belt nerdery here from @bhgreeley.bsky.social

Today I learned that you have to clear document metadata before submitting a paper to a journal.

We therefore learn from this learned commentary made by a Babylonian scribe over 2000 years ago, that in the Akkadian language, the word shitti means "shit"

It was normal in the 19th century for bank presidents to sign their own dollar notes. Also it's weird anyway that *anyone* in the Treasury signs the notes, which sit on the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve. But also let us consider that jfc I just can't anymore home.treasury.gov/news/press-r...

If there’s one thing political historians always talk about it’s the wisdom of overestimating democratic resilience

IF ANYONE ELSE WANTS TO F*CK WITH THE UNITED STATES DOLLAR PLEASE I AM VERY TIRED RIGHT NOW

It was normal in the 19th century for bank presidents to sign their own dollar notes. Also it's weird anyway that *anyone* in the Treasury signs the notes, which sit on the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve. But also let us consider that jfc I just can't anymore home.treasury.gov/news/press-r...

Here I am all in the middle of writing a column to tell people not to worry about the Trump gold coin and home.treasury.gov/news/press-r...

@stephruhle.bsky.social @evanmcs.bsky.social @bhgreeley.bsky.social @mmckinnon.bsky.social @jeffsonnenfeld.bsky.social

When my children are on their own will they remember what I keep trying to teach them about cast iron? Or is their utter reluctance to deal with the skillet just a sign that I failed them?

I'm not the first to point this out, but I made a bunch of book release date announcements on social media networks yesterday, and I got way more engagement here than on X. Way more engagement everywhere but X, to be honest.

Not sure I would've named my stablecoin events company StableCon.

This Friday! 12 PM Eastern/9 AM Pacific, @bhgreeley.bsky.social on _The Almighty Dollar_. Contact joseph.tinguely//AT//usd.edu for the pre-read and the Zoom link

A reminder that The Almighty Dollar, a product of seven years of research and writing, a book that dragged me into academia and in the direction of madness, is available on May 19th of this year. People who have read it seem to like it! www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/634502...

When you die all of your dumb little ideas do too, so you might as well do them now

According to a regulatory filing seen by Bloomberg, Jared Kushner’s investment firm saw its assets jump nearly 30% last year, to $6.2 billion. “About 99% of Affinity Partners’ assets belong to non-US investors,” including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar.

Maryland will install $50 million worth of solar panels over its Department of Transportation parking lots and brownfields this year. marylandmatters.org/2026/03/01/s...

We are all greedflationists in a foxhole

I have an archivist joke, but a historian who found it in the collection I processed and using the finding aid I wrote will say it was lost and he discovered it.

Huh. The 1866 statute preventing the portrait of a living individual on currency was meant for engraving and printing at the Treasury. I was wrong. The $1 Trump coin may be legal. This might be one more of those norms we thought was a law. I hate everything. www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/...

A consistently originalist court would tear this to shreds. There’s just no way the $1 coin they’ve planned with Trump’s face on it isn’t “currency.“

found something rather baffling when researching my column this week… I wanted to see if there was any evidence that AI tools were helping economists to make their research more readable. So I analysed the text of NBER working paper abstracts…

Oh man it is never awesome when your work as a historian becomes relevant. Never. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

“But you can wordsmith that,” said the CEO of the company I worked for in 1998 as I thought “Yes I can turn that into thoughts that follow in a natural progression and resolve into a complete argument.”

This is so important and so obvious to anyone who’s ever been paid to write anything ever

Current historian modes: 1. Modernists. This is allllll unprecedented. Despair. 2. Early modernists. So we’re back to the regular. Despair.

I hate it here

Ok, this is a good line, though www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

Please join us in congratulating Beth Lew-Williams, whose book John Doe Chinaman has won the 2026 Bancroft Prize—one of the most prestigious awards in the field of American history.

If you tell me something is punk, I automatically stop paying attention to you. Nothing that is actually punk needs an explanation.

we are seeing this everywhere, over and over again. Also, human scale downloading is specifically different than bot-scale Get the things you want while you still can

I am in the John Locke records at the Bodleian and ya know, for a guy who was skeptical of credit as a basis for money John Locke sure did use a lot of credit to pay for things.

AI bots are overloading the digitized collections of the Bodleian, meanwhile I AM LITERALLY IN THE BODLEIAN TRYING TO DIGITIZE, all hunched over at a desk intermittently waving my arms to turn the motion-activated lights back on in the room that holds the John Locke reproductions. WHERE'S MY MONEY

Tale of two petrostates. Data from @robbieandrew.bsky.social: robbieandrew.github.io/carsales/

Do these massively capitalized AI companies even know that there is stuff in the archives that is not yet digital? It's extra gross that libraries are writing grants to digitize archives so they can be sucked into the maw of for-profit LLMs.

Oh no

Outside the Bank of England. I’m tempted to try it one night? Who responds?

i estimate the chance of the national average reaching $4/gal in the next month is now 80%

Thoughtful! Articulate! Funny!

Hold all my calls

Oh man we are HAVING A NEWS DAY I see *BLACKROCK’S $26 BILLION PRIVATE CREDIT FUND LIMITS WITHDRAWALS

The mehconomy

Every day I ask myself, buddy. Every day.

POD O'CLOCK God knows there's enough to worry about, but please find space in your head to also worry about stablecoins. @robarmstrong.bsky.social and I chatted to brainbox @bhgreeley.bsky.social to explain why www.ft.com/content/f9c8...

It always makes me so happy to share someone’s dream job