Chris Grant

It being Archives really seems to make this little story 😂

My favorite was their Basel III Endgame swag. I bought the apron and it’s fantastic.

I also think that pro-minoritarian governance structures, world-historical levels of inequality, and indifference/complicity from professional Democrats contribute to disproportionate political power for racists.

And they have my deepest sympathies for that! What an unbearable position to be in. 😉

To me, this helps make sense of the history of US capitalists funding reactionary think tanks and media enterprises for decades in an effort to undo the New Deal. Whether or not they consciously wanted fascism, that’s what they got, but the effort still continues—eg Bezos and WaPo.

My takeaway is that big capitalists are significant sources of support for fascism, but habitually fail to appreciate their own dependence on the liberal system that fascism destroys, so often end up getting eaten by the tiger they try to ride.

I’m not an expert in this but I thought big industrialists supported Hitler well back into the 1920s when Nazis were just street thugs breaking communist strikes. Documented in Daniel Guerin’s Fascism and Big Business.

The Epstein emails should really end the debate over whether society should have billionaires. "Do you want there to be a class of people so powerful they can fuck your kids and no one will even try to do anything" seems like an easy sell if everyone in politics wasn't trying to get on their payroll

every epstein file drop underscores how elite power operates through shared socio-economic networks, regardless of people's ideological differences, populist posturing, or public feuds

Yeah for sure. Tether is like the crypto community took their fantasy of fiat money being “backed by nothing” and central banks being fraudulent and made it real—but this time they like it.

On #1… riskier than perceived by whom? It has always been astounding to me that anyone trusts this outfit with their money. bsky.app/profile/chri...

“Full resilience” indeed. I wonder what the secret sauce could be?

And surely no big deal that the Commerce sec (and once/future Treasury candidate?) has close ties to this super shady and massive buyer of US debt.

What could go wrong?

S&P downgrades Tether’s assets to lowest level Rating agency cites rising exposure to high-risk assets and lack of disclosures

Share button seems not to have worked, but this article is what prompted the thought: on.ft.com/44xHshw S&P downgrades Tether’s assets to lowest level

The “success” of Tether feels like a practical joke on anyone who has worked in banking supervision—or who has thought about the concept of *risk*.

I think it would have to remain in the banking system, as FX dealers hold inventory in the form of deposits at commercial banks. So a NY-based dealer could facilitate the trade by transferring USD deposits to the Swiss investor and accepting CHF deposits at a Swiss bank in exchange.

Acknowledging that this was certainly a 🤯 moment for me when I first learned it, it seems like a bad thing that it’s still so unintuitive to people. It is, imo, the very essence of banking. Kind of like how the basics of quantum mechanics are still unintuitive (certainly to me) 100 years on.

My reactions are more along the lines of thank god they can do this and how have so many people seemingly convinced themselves that completely inelastic stablecoins can substitute for banks??

Fair enough, and I’m not an expert, but I think that as the victor we could’ve taken first step and articulated vision, and we didn’t. Wasn’t it Rumsfeld who nixed real econ aid to Russia? And talking to people who were in State Dept at the time suggests that Russia in NATO was never on the table.

Yeah that stuff was silly, but it made me think that the big opportunity after fall of USSR was for US to articulate a long-term vision of gradual NATO expansion east with the eventual goal of Russia joining. That missed opportunity was the nugget of truth in the “NATO is to blame” nonsense.

Sure, but why is licorice candy disgusting but pastis is delicious? That question seems like it could be the basis for a rich field of study.

His peanut butter oreos were like $10 per package, at least at the SF organic bodega where I would see them, but still worth it.

Hard disagree. Moving from DC to coastal California has been glorious. Only two weather-related things I miss are drinking ice coffee on summer mornings and eating/drinking/hanging out outside on summer nights… and I can deal with that.

Handmade sign at the No Kings protest in Philadelphia. It says "Billionaires Are The Only Minority Ruining This Country"

#NoKings

Aren’t RRP balances functionally equivalent to reserves? To me, it would make no sense for the Fed to set IOR lower than the RRP rate; but if it did, and banks moved reserves to RRP, they’d still just be exchanging one Fed liability for another.

Even with new Ts being issued I think it would just shuffle reserves among banks—unless Treasury actually builds up its TGA balance (i.e. not spend the cash it gets from issuance). Basically the aggregate volume of reserves is fully determined by the Fed—banks can’t change it afaik.

The Lost Boys

Completely agree. This is an excellent opportunity to show some fucking backbone and stand up for immigrants and immigration. Naturally I expect Democrats to fumble it.

I saw a chart in FT article a few months ago showing polls of US opinion on immigration. Trend was towards favorable for decades… right until Trump announced candidacy in 2015 and then swung negative. Crystal clear that this is an elite-led shift, so can be countered with principled pro stance.