Chris Brocksom

[Juliette Declercq @JulietteJDI]

The trajectory of modern technology is not accidental - it is a deliberate design to concentrate power, deepen inequality, and render human agency obsolete. What was once promised as a tool for liberation has become a mechanism for control, where progress is measured not by the freedom it grants, but by the dependencies it creates.

We refuse to accept this as inevitable. In Europe, we recognize that true innovation should serve humanity, not enslave it. Our resistance is not a rejection of progress, but a demand for technology that respects our autonomy, our dignity, and our right to live beyond the confines of corporate or algorithmic domination. This is not about fearing the future; it’s about shaping one where technology empowers rather than exploits.

I believe what follows is true but most remain blindsided by GDP numbers that only flatter the 0.1%...

[𝐏𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐜𝐫𝐨 @pineconemacro]

Great stuff from General McChrystal

[Fed @lord_fed]

SPX closed +9.52% today, the 3rd biggest green day in history. Only beaten by two days in 2008.

If you think that’s bullish… go check what happened next.

[Joe Walsh @WalshFreedom]

No single person should have the power to do what Trump is doing right now unilaterally dictating world trade & fucking with the world economy. No person should have that power. Certainly not in this country. Shame on u Congressional Republicans for giving it to him. Shame on u.

[James Surowiecki @JamesSurowiecki]

Just to remind everyone: It is absolutely nuts that a single person is wreaking total havoc on the global economy, and doing it by exercising powers that the Constitution explicitly (and for good reason) reserves for Congress. This is not OK, and we shouldn't pretend it is.

[Saul Staniforth @SaulStaniforth]

Maguire "We sold our basic industries, power production, water.. we've allowed them to be sold abroad"

Take the National Grid, flogged off by the Tories in the 90s &now owned by the likes of BlackRock & Abu Dhabi rather than publicly owned by (& run for the benefit of) us #GMB

[Spencer Hakimian @SpencerHakimian]

I really cannot think of another time in American history where a single person put the entire country into a recession because of his own stupidity.

Is there any other parallel?

[Cullen Roche @cullenroche]

No one said that. I said the solution to inequality isn't tariffs.

And regardless of the inequality within the USA the inequality between the USA and the rest of the world is vastly larger, but instead of focusing on rich Americans you've managed to blame the rest of the world for this.

[Cullen Roche @cullenroche]

He doesn't think he is. He actually believes:

1) The US economy was shitty for the last 40 years (it absolutely was not).

2) We should transform our developed services and tech economy back into the manufacturing economy it was in the 1800s.

This whole policy idea is based on a false interpretation of history and a broad misunderstanding of how tariffs work.

[Aaron Bastani @AaronBastani]

Super interesting.

Norway has 17 billionaires. The UK has a population 12X larger and yet it has...55 billionaires.

Yet Norway has a higher rate of tax and has a wealth tax. Its higher rate of capital gains tax is also much higher (its equalised with dividends). 1/2

[Ben Phillips @benphillips76]

Absolutely brilliant letter.

[Sam Stein @samstein]

I think there might be some ethical issues with handing over huge swaths of the government to the worlds richest man (and a major government contractor to boot), then doing an informercial for his cars on the White House front lawn, then having that man put $100m into your PAC

[Robert Reich @RBReich]

When Trump was sworn in, Elon Musk's corporations were under more than 32 investigations conducted by at least 11 federal agencies.

Most of the cases are now closed or likely to be closed soon, and the federal agencies are being defanged by DOGE.

Funny how that works, huh?

[John P. Hussman, Ph.D. @hussmanjp]

Trump's crypto isn't just grift. It's emolument.

People ask why my criticism of this regime goes so far beyond any other administration. Honest view - it's because this regime poses a malignant threat to democratic institutions, U.S. allies, the economy, and the most vulnerable.

[dave lawrence 🐟🐟🐠 @dave43law]

Thoughts from the US

"In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, "And we shall overcome." I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over. I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh's madness in Oklahoma City. I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing 'Amazing Grace' in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
"These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job. They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless.
"And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators. Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.
"The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides. We never have had such a cheap counterfeit of a president* as currently occupies the office. We never have had a president* so completely deserving of scorn and yet so small in the office that it almost seems a waste of time and energy to summon up the requisite contempt.
"Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don't have to be heroes to be good presidents. They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too.
Watch him behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn't he a funny man? Isn't what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now."
- Charles Pierce

[Brad Setser @Brad_Setser]

A few quick thoughts on the 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada -- a move that is likely to be considered one of the most self destructive economic policy steps in recent history.

1/

[Ben Hunt @EpsilonTheory]

LOOOOL at this point Sacks and Musk and Thiel are just putting shit in front of him to sign off on. Cardano, Ripple and Solana as strategic reserves for the United States of America. Can we please just start buying TSLA stock directly with our “DOGE savings” and get it over with?

[Anthony Scaramucci @Scaramucci]

Here is a recap of the Ukraine situation, for those choosing to reject propaganda and continue seeking truth:

December 1994, Ukraine agrees to give up its nuclear arsenal in return for security guarantees from the US, UK, France, China and Russia.

February 2014, Russia invades and subsequently annexes Crimea, President Obama does next to nothing. War through weakness.

July 2019, Trump admin withholds $250 million in military aid to Ukraine to apply pressure to investigate alleged corruption by Hunter and Joe Biden.

February 2022, Russia invades a weakened Ukraine, world expects Zelenskyy to flee and Kyiv to fall within days. Ukrainians fight bravely for 3+ years, inflict hundreds of thousands of casualties on Russian army, weaken Putin politically.

U.S. has sent ~$70 billion in outdated military equipment to Ukraine since start of war, providing opportunity for U.S. military to modernize its weaponry. We’ve sent an additional $30+ billion in budget support, $75 billion in ancillary appropriations related to war.

~50,000 Ukrainians have died defending their homeland, protecting U.S. and Western interests in the process. Meanwhile, the U.S. President and V.P. are calling democratically-elected Zelenskyy a dictator and berating him in Oval Office in pursuit of a financial payoff.

The U.S. should be thanking Ukrainians, who have fought for our common interests with only modest financial support from a country with a ~$30 trillion GDP.

America can and will reclaim its backbone again soon, with better policy and messaging from common sense moderates.

Slava Ukraina.

[David Frum @davidfrum]

I cannot think of a previous example in US history of a president

a) inheriting a successful fast-growing economy;

and

b) promptly capsizing it by his own freely chosen policies motivated by his prejudices and ignorance.

Yet that's Trump 2025.

[Gary Stevenson @garyseconomics]

*good* economists know living standards are collapsing