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David Dayen

@ddayen.bsky.social

66K followers 580 following 5.8K posts

Executive editor, The American Prospect. Author, Chain of Title and Monopolized. Tips at ddayen-at-prospect-dot-org or Signal at ddayen.90

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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 15d

Hey so we're doing our fall fundraising campaign and I want to share with you why it's so important. 🧵
secure.actblue.com/donate/tap-f...

I just donated to The American Prospect

My donation supports independent, fact-checked, professional journalism, which is now more valuable than ever before.

secure.actblue.com

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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 3h

They've been arguing in court repeatedly that there are no plans for a shutdown and that they will honor all statutory obligations.
Not sure what a legal system does with a government that simply isn't credible.

Reuters @reuters.com · 8h

White House budget director Vought plans to shut down CFPB within months, says it's no longer protecting consumers reut.rs/4qjMIyT

White House budget director Vought plans to shut down CFPB within months, says it's no longer protecting consumers

White House budget director Russell Vought said he wants to close the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and expects to do so within the next two to three months.

reut.rs

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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 6h

We've reinvented the puff piece and we think you're going to love it

Ryan Mac 🙃 @rmac.bsky.social · 6h

this is the dumbest shit i have ever read

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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 12h

The Nvidia-OpenAI deal is only the biggest (and most-hyped) version of what Nvidia has been doing with smaller startups for a while, from Lambda to CoreWeave. It's clearly vendor financing, and whether you want to call it an "investment" in your customers or something else the effect is the same.

David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 12h

Women are the fastest-growing group of veterans. Over 600,000 women receive veterans health care, and they have particular mental and physical health needs. Suzanne Gordon reports on how VA health cuts affect them:
prospect.org/health/2025-...

How VA Cuts Damage Women Veterans

prospect.org

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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 12h

Nvidia is paying OpenAI to buy Nvidia chips. The money is going out of one pocket and into another.
This "vendor financing" is what has analysts concerned about AI reaching bubble territory. Bryan McMahon explains what's going on.
prospect.org/power/2025-1...

The AI Ouroboros

Nvidia and other companies are paying startups to buy their products.

prospect.org

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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 23h

No! It's entirely edible, just scoop out the seeds

David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 1d

First time making red kuri squash. Comes out very creamy. It's good!

Red kuri squash, sourdough bread from Hasi, salad

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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 1d

I think it's a terrific opportunity for Platner.

Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 1d

If Platner can't beat Janet Mills he probably can't beat Sue Collins.

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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 1d

The DSCC is raising money in conjunction with Mills. Who cares if they don't "officially endorse"?

Burgess Everett @burgessev.bsky.social · 1d

New: DSCC Chair Gillibrand with warm words for Mills

“I think we have a formidable candidate in Janet Mills, she’s the sitting governor. I'm very excited about her candidacy. I look forward to supporting her race”

DSCC has no plans to officially endorse in the primary

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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 1d

Seems like exactly the right tone to say that Mills was good but it's time to move on.
next.frame.io/share/8d602e...

101225_Platner_TV.mov - Finals - Frame.io

next.frame.io

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Reposted by David Dayen

Zack Kaylor @zackkaylor.bsky.social · 1d

Seems bad.

An excerpt of an article from The American Prospect stating: The bet I'm talking about, of course, is on artificial intelligence, and the astronomical buildout of infrastructure, mainly data centers. Close to half of the gain in gross domestic product this year will come from data center construction, and around 80 percent of stock market gains are attributable to a handful of AI-heavy tech companies.
OpenAI announced a trillion dollars in computing deals this year like it was nothing, and we're on track for $500 billion in annual AI capex spending by next year.

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Reposted by David Dayen

The Downballot @the-downballot.com · 1d

#MESen candidate Dan Kleban to @semafor.com last month: "I’m 100 percent in this race. I don’t really care who gets in."

Dan Kleban today:

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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 1d

It's unusual for the DSCC to raise money for a candidate during a primary.
It likely doesn't help Mills but that's beside the point.

David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 1d

Janet Mills already has what appears to be a joint fundraising operation with the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee. There are 8 other Democratic candidates in the Maine Senate race.

FEC statement of organization of a joint fund between Janet Mills' campaign and the DSCC.

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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 1d

We got fiber out of the dot-com bubble. We got railroads out of the 1860s railroad bubble that led to the Panic of 1873! You can get useful infrastructure and still have a financial crisis, and financial crises are bad! And should be avoided!

David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 1d

You can listen wherever you get podcasts. And sign up at organizedmoney.fm for each episode in your inbox.

Organized Money | Matt Stoller | Substack

Dave Dayen and Matt Stoller take you on a tour of how business really works. Click to read Organized Money, by Matt Stoller, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.

organizedmoney.fm

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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 1d

The same hedge fund involved in inflating the housing bubble is involved in the AI bubble! Here's a transcript excerpt on Magnetar.
www.organizedmoney.fm/p/the-ai-bub...

David: Here's, here's what's funny to me because, you know, Matt and I kind of come out of the financial crisis and there's this amazing housing bubble association here, because the first and largest institutional investor of CoreWeave is a company called Magnetar, and Magnetar was, if you know anything about the financial crisis, they were dead in the middle of that, too.
Matt: Magnetar, for those of you who don't know what it is. There's a hedge fund that should have been the star of the movie The Big Short, except they were actually engineering the crisis and they were not the naive people who just came across it.
They were working with Goldman Sachs primarily to kind of inflate the bubble. They were also shorting through these very obscured derivatives. This is this massive scandal. They took the bubble, which was probably a two $3 trillion bubble and turned it into a five or $6 trillion bubble. So it's a very important institution.
It is not an institution that most people know, but these are the most savvy, cynical people, some of the most savvy, cynical people on Wall Street.
David: It's just amazing that instead of, you know, slinking away. Uh, engaging in, uh, you know, derivatives, trading and, and, and what they did in the financial crisis. No, they came back and found another company, uh, to invest in. They're really smart. Yeah. You know, you don't in fact have to hand it to 'em.

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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 1d

Great episode of the Organized Money podcast out today.
We talk to Herb Greenberg, a financial journalist and stock analyst, about the AI bubble, and why the financing is looking more like pre-financial crisis of 2008 rather than late-90s dot-com. Essential stuff.

The AI Bubble: More Subprime Than Dot Com

Veteran Wall Street reporter Herb Greenberg joins to discuss the AI bubble and the history of hyper-inflated markets.

www.organizedmoney.fm

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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 1d

As I say in there, over the last few decades we have been committed to nothing so much as not producing anything.

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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 1d

It's not like China was subtle about rare earths. We had a 15 year warning and did little. Now we've made a big directional bet on AI and the infrastructure buildout requires rare earths for semiconductors. We're cooked. prospect.org/world/2025-1...

Rare earths aren’t that rare; it’s the processing where China really excels. And we’ve had a decade-and-a-half of knowing that China was capable of wielding rare earths as a geopolitical weapon. The country briefly cut off Japan in 2010 after a skirmish involving disputed islands in the South China Sea. Nine years later, Xi Jinping pointedly toured a rare earth factory in the middle of Trump’s first trade jostling with China.

U.S. efforts to diversify the rare earth supply chain have been honestly pathetic. There have been a lot of developments of blueprints of plans, and more recently small funds for production. Trump’s Defense Department took a stake in MP Materials, which runs the biggest rare earth mine in America. But none of this represents the kind of serious resources and market commitments that are necessary.

Alex Jacquez, who handled rare earth policy in the Biden administration, also came on Organized Money, and explained that rare earths are a fairly low-margin product, and investors see no upside in getting behind domestic projects. “It’s hard to justify to shareholders why you would make a big capex investment in a big magnet facility that’s not going to pay off for a couple years,” he said. Besides, we don’t make electronics here either, so it’s easy for China to take the rare earths they create, pass them to manufacturing plants also inside their country, and maintain the near-monopoly. Once you abandon a technology, it’s hard to get it back.

Trump has one primary go-to move, so he threatened tariffs, and China threatened right back. At the same time, Trump worked to wind down the renewable energy and electric vehicle production in America that gave rare earths a self-reinforcing domestic market. “If we are going to do industrial policy, we have to do it. There is no halfway in, halfway out,” Jacquez said.

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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 1d

From me: China's threat to restrict rare earth minerals exports shows who really holds the cards in the trade war. We invented rare earth magnets and gave the production away; decades of bad ideas handed another country the ability to determine our economic future.
prospect.org/world/2025-1...

Why China Can Collapse the U.S. With One Decree

China holds a virtual monopoly over a product needed to produce the only thing holding up our economy right now. And it’s preparing to use that leverage.

prospect.org

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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 1d

[email protected] writes about how the other endless war out there, in Ukraine, is not a situation amenable to Trump’s approach of clumsy, heavy-handed pressure.
prospect.org/world/2025-1...

Why Can’t a Trump Deal End the War in Ukraine?

Compared to Gaza, Ukraine is much tougher. And that's saying a lot.

prospect.org

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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 1d

U.S. citizens Adnaan & Tor Musto endured beatings & harsh treatment for 6 days in a notorious Israeli prison after being captured from the Global Sumud Flotilla. James Baratta talks to them & their family about how the State Department did nothing during their capture.

Democratic Senators Probe ‘Apparent Neglect’ of Detained Flotilla Activists

It took the State Department four days to assess the well-being of American citizens apprehended by Israel for participating in the Global Sumud Flotilla.

prospect.org

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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 1d

When nobody reads the story, which contains the lines:
"There is no doubt that Porter has a bad reputation as a manager, something that has been long whispered about. We should be honest that people berating their staff really stinks."

David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 2d

Oh! I usually think of them as NR

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