Okay we're there.

like so many products to come out of silicon valley in the last decade or so, AI is a legal innovation masquerading as a tech innovation. the legal theory seems to be that AI is entitled to everything but liable for nothing.

This is a clear reflection of the stablecoin price wars @matt-levine.bsky.social was recently talking about

If anyone has any fun slice-of-life stories they would like The Economist to cover in the Midwest, now would be a good time to tell me. I really need to get out of my office and talk to a bunch of new people

'whereas my Mother Catherine Butler Widow my Brother James Butler and my Sister Elizabeth Sarah Butler ... are and for some time past have been continually wishing for my death, Now I do hereby give and bequeath to them ... the Sum of one Shilling each and no more' Will of Christopher Butler, 1785

“Debate Me” culture is not organic, endemic, or apolitical. This mode of high jacking discourse is and has been central to a 30-year conservative training program that has produced untold numbers of people to do this for every reason but “civil discourse”

This is a great thread. I turned down an invitation to debate a crypto guy this month for exactly the reasons Joe describes here. Debates make us feel good, but they don’t produce knowledge or understanding.

Not sure they've thought this through

I just sent the final draft of a six-year project to the publisher. Like I just now clicked send. What... do I do now?

Look at that file name. That is a good-looking file name right there.

This clerk is a good and kind neighbor, and the people running these machines - and these scams - are true villains

It is insane to me that my dog from his mat next to my desk can immediately tell the difference in body language between me getting up to refill coffee and me getting up to dump cold coffee and take him for a walk.

This is really good. Writing is the act of trying to understand something that pisses you off.

I have been teaching undergrads how to write bills of exchange by dividing them into merchants and bankers, physically separating them into Florence and London sides of the room, giving them Uno cards with different themes as florin and pennies sterling, then letting them work it out on their own.

This is amazing. Every popular account of the dollar uses the phrase "not worth a Continental" as a shorthand to show a popular disdain for bills of credit after the Revolution. Turns out it was just made up.

NOT. BEFORE. I PUBLISH. THE DOLLAR BOOK.

What, exactly, does this string of words mean? Why does everyone who stands to profit from selling "AI" love to repeat it? And what's the value of slogans that masquerade as history? sonjadrimmer.com/blog-1/2025/...

Red brick buildings so old, in fact, the one in the middle there was financed with Maryland's first issue of bills of credit in 1733, secured by a sinking fund invested in the stock of the Bank of England. I am fun at parties.

When I finally copy-paste all these chapters into a single final document on Friday, I'm going to do a ctrl-F for the word "ubiquitous" and I already know I will be embarrassed by the results.

Is it now Sounds like Middle age back pain.

So incendiary that as sixteen year olds we would pull the car over, open the doors and bang our heads by the side of the road when it came on the radio

NEW: St. John's College, which recently laid off 5% of its staff amidst declining enrollment + the departure of its president, is sticking with its Great Books curriculum despite a rise in AI. Read my profile of the college as it reaches a reckoning point: www.thebanner.com/education/hi...

Editing: the art of reading back through your book and removing four out of every five uses of the word "actually"

Can anyone explain why there is what appears to be either a sourdough starter or a jar of homemade glue in my department mailbox?

Asset currency, liability currency, and invoice currency is a loop that needs to be closed to avoid stock/flow & asset/liability mismatches. The RMB has seemed to me to be a more credible “trade currency” than “capital markets” RU gas panda bonds seem like an interesting step.

Life hack: if you never finish writing your books, AI can’t steal them.

This is truly exciting, particularly since it has not yet been recorded.

Numbers are out and all the tables load. That was weird.

Presumably they can still hand out hard copies in the lockup?

Technical difficulties do happen, but this is a bad look at 8:23 am on the first Friday of the month

My question for retail bullion sellers is always: if gold is so valuable, why would you take my crappy little fiat dollars for it?

An exclusive excerpt from my new book, “The World’s Worst Bet,” featuring an interview with Bill Clinton www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

The most eyebrow-raising part of this is that Tether's push into commodity financing has apparently grown quite large very quickly. This is not a market for amateurs. (And the gold stuff appears to be mine royalty finance) www.ft.com/content/135f...

In which I admit that I wanted to fix the Fed but oh God not that way

After discussion with @soundingline.bsky.social and @keithpille.bsky.social I have come up with something important for dudes

Federal Reserve Act, Section 10(6): The members of the Board shall devote their entire time to the business of the Board and shall not engage in any other business, vocation, or employment.

sam altman is trying to find the guy who did this

Once again @bryce.lol raises the bar for finance story ledes. on.ft.com/4naOi3t

Political party discovers that higher tax rates lead to higher tax revenues.

It's so nice, getting reliable data from the website of the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors whenever I want. I will be sad when the Trumpy Fed starts taking it all down.

Guys I've been reading Minsky and I have bad news

Experiencing that looming terror handing over a final draft to the copy desk. Whatever's wrong with this this book, in a few days I won't be able to fix it anymore.

Appreciative of this back-to-school piece in the Brown Daily Herald about my @uchicagopress.bsky.social book, Plantation Goods. Thanks to the friends, colleagues, and students who said nice things. Now... to go start teaching in 1 hour and 1 minute...

Look, it's a summer thriller called Private Credit Data Horror!

This morning I decided the internet was freaking me out so I read the newspaper and there was an article on private credit and then I started reading into the numbers around private credit and now I'm freaked out

endorse. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p... Betsy Duke, Alan Blinder, and @bhgreeley.bsky.social

We built a calculator that doesn't work, but don't worry, it's also a plagiarism machine that will tell you to kill yourself. It runs on the world's oceans and costs 10 trillion dollars.