Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Jim Kane @kanejim.bsky.social · 10h

man, this story is depressing…

“In the beginning, I lost some money,” said Cao, who started trading penny stocks on his phone as a teenager and dabbled in options. “It’s a learning experience.”

More Working-Class Americans Than Ever Are Investing in the Stock Market

For the first time, a majority of low earners have an investment account, and more than half of those new investors entered the markets in the past five years.

www.wsj.com

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Daniel Denvir @danieldenvir.bsky.social · 1d

New @thedigradio.bsky.social: SECOND of two w @melindacooper.bsky.social on Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance. How asset boom and bust drove MAGA’s rise and also revealed powerful monetary tools that could make socialism—that and more www.thedigradio.com/podcast/from...

From Fiscal Austerity to Monetary Abundance w/ Melinda Cooper

Featuring Melinda Cooper on Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance. Balanced budget conservatism and supply side populism engineered a politics of austerity and budget deficit...

www.thedigradio.com

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Sheryl Gay Stolberg @sherylnyt.bsky.social · 1d

FULL STORY HERE: Emails began flooding CDC inboxes late Friday night announcing dozens of layoffs. HR people brought back from furlough to oversee the RIFs. Disease detectives, entire Washington office, global health, injury prevention, MMWR staff among those hit.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/u...

Trump Administration Lays Off Dozens of C.D.C. Officials

www.nytimes.com

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Jim Kane @kanejim.bsky.social · 19h

The unofficial paper of DSA members on the future of DSA/socialism in the US.

Will Zohran Mamdani’s rise mark a new dawn for American socialism?

Tens of thousands of volunteers mobilised by the Democratic Socialists of America are working to elect a torchbearer for a beleaguered US left

on.ft.com

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Private Equity Stakeholder Project @pestakeholder.bsky.social · 1d

“Do we care about people, or do we care about profit?”

Students in Duluth took to the streets to protest the sale of Minnesota Power to BlackRock, demanding a future that puts people and the planet first.

Read the Duluth News Tribune coverage: www.duluthnewstribune.com/news/local/s...

Students protest Minnesota Power sale in downtown Duluth

Students from Harbor City International School gathered to protest the sale of a Duluth-based electrical company, voicing concerns about environmental and economic impacts.

www.duluthnewstribune.com

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The New York Review of Books @nybooks.com · 1d

“Venture-funded defense-tech firms like Palantir and Anduril have,” Susannah Glickman writes, “positioned themselves as the solution” to the ills of American industry “without any clear evidence that they can deliver on that promise.”

The War Over Defense Tech | Susannah Glickman

Last October, on a Martin Luther–inspired website called www.18theses.com, a software executive named Shyam Sankar published a four-thousand-word polemic

buff.ly

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Jim Kane @kanejim.bsky.social · 1d

buy up the remaining copies of Amy's book so that we'll have an extra dollar to pay off our mortgage!

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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 2d

it's fine it's fine nothing to see here

www.ft.com/content/fa7b...

UK watchdog monitors Tricolor and First Brands collapse for private credit risks

Failures of two US companies reliant on asset-based lending prove ‘useful case studies’, FCA says

www.ft.com

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Jim Kane @kanejim.bsky.social · 2d

They sounds like Asness from AQR

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cornelban.bsky.social @cornelban.bsky.social · 5d

Friends, I have a substack with my thoughts and others on current events and megatrends from an international political economy perspective. geoeconomic.substack.com

Geoeconomic | Substack

Cornel Ban, associate prof at Copenhagen Business School and fellow at Boston University's China Initiative at the Global Development Program. Click to read Geoeconomic, a Substack publication with hu...

geoeconomic.substack.com

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John Hogan Morris @johnhoganmorris.bsky.social · 2d

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Do Commercial Ties Influence ESG Ratings? Evidence from Moody's and S&P

We provide the first evidence that conflicts of interest arising from commercial ties lead to bias in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings. Using the acquisitions of Vigeo Eiris and Ro...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Jim Kane @kanejim.bsky.social · 2d

nice short post from @tompowdrill.bsky.social on something that’s become pervasive in the us pension world as well: the idea that we can “take the politics out of it.” (with reference to @itsmccarthy.bsky.social’s latest book)

"taking the politics out"

One of phrases that ought to set alarm bells ringing whenever you read it is “we need to take the politics out of” a particular issue.

tompowdrill.substack.com

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Jim Kane @kanejim.bsky.social · 2d

Like the UK, Canada is trying to coax the public cash that it put in a box that transformed it into private capital into investing domestically

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is “very bullish” on investing domestically, as the government steps up its efforts to attract private capital to projects in the country, a top official at the fund said.

“We’re starting to see strong momentum in galvanization of political will to consider major projects and nation building in a way that we hadn’t seen before,” Manroop Jhooty, the pension plan’s head of total fund management, said in an interview Tuesday at the Bloomberg Canadian Finance Conference in New York. “We’re genuinely excited about the opportunities that presents.”

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Nick Taylor @ntaylor.bsky.social · 2d

Interesting that AI firms are looking to set up captive insurance arms. Also used by big oil & gas firms, they are typically located in offshore jurisdictions & allow companies to boost profits, reduce tax liabilities & mask how financial liabilities are managed.

on.ft.com/46Voxh5

Insurers balk at multibillion-dollar claims faced by OpenAI and Anthropic

Companies struggle to assess scale of financial risks emerging from artificial intelligence

on.ft.com

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Benjamin Braun @benbraun.bsky.social · 3d

If profits shape the energy transition we need to understand the biggest profit event this century: the 2022 oil and gas price spike.

Very happy our paper is now out in Energy Research & Social Science. Thread by lead-author @gregorsemieniuk.bsky.social 👇

Gregor Semieniuk @gregorsemieniuk.bsky.social · 3d

🚨NEW PAPER🚨
We all know the 2022 energy price shock fueled the cost of living crisis. It also caused a profit bonanza for the very rich. We show the US reaped the largest profits ($377bn) of any country. 50% went to the richest 1%, only 1% to the bottom 50%. A🧵 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

River or sankey diagram showing the allocation of profits from global oil and gas companies to quantiles of the US wealth size distribution via financial system intermediaries, such as asset managers, and categories of ultimate beneficiaries, such as business owners, pension funds and shareholders in listed companies. The scale is hundreds of billions of US dollars, and ultimately 50.4% of profits reaching the US personal wealth distribution go to the richest 1% of households.

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Gregor Semieniuk @gregorsemieniuk.bsky.social · 3d

🚨NEW PAPER🚨
We all know the 2022 energy price shock fueled the cost of living crisis. It also caused a profit bonanza for the very rich. We show the US reaped the largest profits ($377bn) of any country. 50% went to the richest 1%, only 1% to the bottom 50%. A🧵 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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Jim Kane @kanejim.bsky.social · 3d

"Big Ten Considering Investment From California Pension Fund" 🫣

frontofficesports.com/big-ten-cons...

Three private-equity firms are in contention, the source said: Apollo Global Management (which just launched a sports-focused fund), Sixth Street Partners, and Ares Management (Sports Illustrated first reported the news of the latter three funds’ interest).

Then, there’s CalPERS, a statewide pension fund for California public employees that manages more than $580 billion in assets for more than two million members. The fund, the largest public pension in the U.S., has about 18% of its assets allocated to private equity.

The proposal may include CalPERS investing in the Big Ten as a co-investment alongside any or all of the aforementioned PE firms. (In such a deal, CalPERS would invest in the Big Ten entity alongside a PE firm for a minority stake and less control and lower fees.)

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Jim Kane @kanejim.bsky.social · 3d

the only site on the internet that might be more unhinged than twitter.

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Jacobin @jacobinmag.bsky.social · 3d

I joined a flotilla to deliver aid to Gaza. After Israeli forces seized our ship, I spent five days inside al-Naqab prison, witnessing the cruelty of Israel’s detention regime.

I Spent Five Days in Israel’s Desert Prison

I joined a flotilla to deliver aid to Gaza. After Israeli forces seized our ship, I spent five days inside al-Naqab prison, witnessing the cruelty of Israel’s detention regime.

jacobin.com

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Jim Kane @kanejim.bsky.social · 3d

I guess it was just a matter of time before xAI was added to this web.

www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Visualization of the circular transactions between Nvidia, Open AI, Oracle, Intel, AMD, xAI, and others

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Mike Glass @m-r-glass.bsky.social · 4d

Today is the official publication day for CRACKED FOUNDATIONS!! 🏠🥳🎉
For the next month, Penn is offering a discount of 40% off using the code UHA25. Which brings the price down to $20.97. A screaming deal!
www.pennpress.org/978151282822...

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Jim Kane @kanejim.bsky.social · 4d

for some reason, I have premium access with a regular subscription. not sure if I was grandfathered in or what.

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Jim Kane @kanejim.bsky.social · 4d

on.ft.com/46SNxWf

Green hydrogen is growing — but not enough to meet the hype

Low-emission production still meets only a small fraction of hydrogen demand

on.ft.com

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Jim Kane @kanejim.bsky.social · 4d

Updated IBIT fee numbers: "Their calculations suggest that the fund, which charges a modest 0.25% fee, brings in an annual revenue haul that tops $240 million"

Of course, as the article below notes, 25 bps is actually not so modest for an ETF.

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