Nicholas Dorn
@financedemos.bsky.social
Financial sociologist – https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2014/07/16/the-real-lesson-from-the-financial-crisis-is-that-we-need-to-stop-insulating-financial-regulation-from-democracy/ … oh, was that such a good idea? – now working on deep history of credit .. more
Financial sociologist – https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2014/07/16/the-real-lesson-from-the-financial-crisis-is-that-we-need-to-stop-insulating-financial-regulation-from-democracy/ … oh, was that such a good idea? – now working on deep history of credit
Political science
32%
Economics
27%
Kevin Warsh, great pick for a future-fantasizing President. Ignore the present, brush data aside. Data is 'fake' because it's past-orientated, right? That's Warsh's ticket to office & the break from Powell. Conviction in a Golden Age of AI, crypto, productivity, MAGA www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LtR...
Deloitte agreed contract updates that provide more funding for “law enforcement systems and analysis for enforcement and removal operations .... internet research and data analytics support services” for ICE’s targeting operations division. Deloitte did not respond to a request for comment. FT 29Jan
Quelle surprise. FT notes that 'The chair of Switzerland’s biggest insurer signed the letter as head of the European Financial Services Round Table (EFR), an influential lobbying group of chairs and chief executives at the region’s 24 largest banks and insurers.' www.ft.com/content/69ef...
Post-2008 safeguards being lobbied away - how? 'The difference between the policymaking processes for monetary and financial stability policy is striking'. In the latter 'There are no votes, and so no dissents, and relatively little public scrutiny...This needs to change.'
cepr.org/voxeu/column...
cepr.org/voxeu/column...
Trump resembles a premodern patrimonial leader - maybe an Iron Age chieftain? - while self-consciously channelling the image of a mafia boss. So say Hanson and Kopstein, in Ruch and Weber's (ed) Wenn das Gestern anklopft. Following in Putin's state-deconstructive footsteps. (Image & review, FT.)
Trial of President Maduro likely to test legal basis, including controversial 1989 Department of Justice 'Opinion for the Attorney General: Authority of the Federal Bureau of Investigation To Override International Law In Extraterritorial Law Enforcement Activities' www.justice.gov/file/151131/...
Nicholas Dorn
@financedemos.bsky.social
· Dec 31
Israel’s military underprepared for complex fighting so “no other way to fight such a war except destroying all buildings above ground” (Danny Orbach, Israeli military historian). www.reuters.com/graphics/ISR... Hmm, one rationale. Also demolitions might persuade people to leave Gaza 'voluntarily'.
Nicholas Dorn
@financedemos.bsky.social
· Dec 31
'Encourage migration'. Film. “How many Arabs have you dispatched?” asked Levi Eshkol in 1968. Historian Omri Shafer Raviv describes Israel’s efforts to push Palestinian civilians out of the territories from the late 1960s to today www.akevot.org.il/en/episode/h... Think also about US and Europe?
Nicholas Dorn
@financedemos.bsky.social
· Dec 20
Black Flags in Southern Syria: Who Is Helping ISIS Expand and Regroup? - The Syrian Observer
Military and strategic analyst Mahmoud Abdelsalam notes that ISIS has taken advantage of the security vacuum following the regime’s collapse to reposition itself across several provinces, Ultra Syria ...
syrianobserver.com
Syrian's inability to secure the south, due to Israeli incursion, creates a security vacuum: ISIS re-emerges syrianobserver.com/security/bla... So what to think of US presence around Palmyra? If US seriously supports the government, should they (& Israelis) withdraw & arm Syrian government forces?
Nicholas Dorn
@financedemos.bsky.social
· Dec 18
Ukraine: No way can EU risk assets in Russia being seized following EU appropriation of Russian assets frozen in Euroclear & entities in other member states. And there's a 1989 Belgium/Luxembourg treaty, actionable by Russia. Forget it. VDL's European Commission is virtue-signalling. A charade. Why?
Nicholas Dorn
@financedemos.bsky.social
· Dec 16
How Turkey helped engineer Ahmed al-Sharaa's rise to power
Sharaa's pragmatism and close relationship with Turkey helped open doors, leading to his transformation from jihadist leader to rebel statesman and finally Syrian president
www.middleeasteye.net
Ankara & Damascus: "You have to distinguish between [Turkey's] intelligence services and the state institutions like the army [which] never liked HTS, continued to treat it as a terrorist organisation.. Only the intelligence branch dealt with HTS pragmatically." www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/sy...
Reposted by Nicholas Dorn
100 MPs voted for, 100 against, deputy speaker cast the deciding vote.
2nd reading in January.
How will Labour respond?
2nd reading in January.
How will Labour respond?
From Openness to Subjugation: How Gulf Aid Has Reshaped Syria’s Economy One Year On - The Syrian Observer
Dozens of factories have shuttered in the face of cheaper imports, al-Hal writes.
syrianobserver.com
Syria now, like Britain after second world war? Post-war reconstruction. Need for international investment. Opening up to free trade. Takeovers by firms of other countries. Hollowing out of local economy. Questions: is this subjugation? What alternative? syrianobserver.com/society/from...
Nicholas Dorn
@financedemos.bsky.social
· Nov 30
T.J. Clark · The Job
What would politics be like in an age where one empire continued to hold sway over the ‘international community’, as...
www.lrb.co.uk
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4... In a declining empire, nihilism not only rules, it brays. "We make the best weapons in the world" Trump told the Knesset "And you used them well". Open gloating over financing of genocide; inviting environmental collapse; his tech bros pray for AI to supplant humanity.
Nicholas Dorn
@financedemos.bsky.social
· Nov 28
Arnaud Orain, in Le Monde Confisqué, posits historical oscillations between politics of resources as limited (so, acquisition is a zero-sum struggle - today's Trumpian geoeconomics) versus infinite (free trade in interests of all). Let's complicate that: can these mentalities cohabit, e.g. China?
Nicholas Dorn
@financedemos.bsky.social
· Nov 25
To the contrary of the Tehran-centric view (below), continuing the regional wars through the first half of 2026 keeps oil price high, stokes inflation - on top of tariff effects - further displeasing Trump's MAGA base. Takes time for prices to actually fall. Bessent/Lutnick faction wants peace now.
Nicholas Dorn
@financedemos.bsky.social
· Nov 25
Truce as trap
TEHRAN – Nearly a year after Israel and Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire, and just weeks after a truce with Hamas in Gaza, the situation on the ground shows that neither agreement has brought lasting calm.
www.tehrantimes.com
Iranian analysis: Trump happy for Middle East wars to continue for now, wanting peace only in time for November 2026 midterm elections. Continuing then would damage Republicans & political future of Vice President Vance. www.tehrantimes.com/news/520794/... Ukraine analogy? European intel view?
Nicholas Dorn
@financedemos.bsky.social
· Nov 24
Israel's assassination policy seeks to splinter their opponents, rendering them leaderless. Hardly a path to peace. Yet Hezbollah "has been surprisingly passive in the face of a year of Israeli strikes, losing over 300 fighters after the ceasefire was signed" www.timesofisrael.com/after-weeks-...
Reposted by Nicholas Dorn
Branko Milanovic
@brankomilan.bsky.social
· Nov 22
Capitalism of finitude: pessimism and bellicosity
Review of Arnaud Orain’s "Le Monde Confisqué"
branko2f7.substack.com
Finally, if you interested more broadly in the interaction of capitalism, armed trade and war, there is a new brilliant book by French economic historian Arnaud Orain, Le Monde Confisque.
My review here:
Capitalism of finitude: pessimism and bellicosity
branko2f7.substack.com/p/capitalism...
My review here:
Capitalism of finitude: pessimism and bellicosity
branko2f7.substack.com/p/capitalism...
Yippee. Policy motion advancing Modern Monetary Theory in a lengthy, greenwashed disguise 'referred back' at 2025 Green Party conf of England & Wales. That is to say: needs more work. Or should that be, less? Well done Carla Denyer MP who led the referral back and to all greens for understanding.
Reposted by Nicholas Dorn
Q: Liberals writ large have run deficits for a decade now. This is also one of the largest deficits outside of COVID. Is there a philosophy behind this? Are you into Modern Monetary Theory? Are you a Keynesian?
PM Carney: Oh, come on. Come on, Greg—you know better than to throw these insults.
PM Carney: Oh, come on. Come on, Greg—you know better than to throw these insults.
Nicholas Dorn
@financedemos.bsky.social
· Oct 17
'Microsoft's termination of certain cloud services by the IDF 8200 unit exposes other vulnerabilities in Israel's national security infrastructure. It's already impacted signal intelligence – without decisive action, the battle field and home front may be next. ' en.idi.org.il/articles/61802
I struggle to imagine what's in the minds of IDF operatives as they bulldoze agricultural land & destroy wells. That these constitute 'terrorist infrastructures'? That settlers might move in after such devastation? That it doesn't matter, somehow? Just following orders? I'm asking, genuinely, WHAT?
Nicholas Dorn
@financedemos.bsky.social
· Sep 27
Live by the sword... China stops buying agricultural produce of one of Trump's political constituencies, his rural vote. After imposition of wide range of US trade tariffs, China buys S American soya (image). Good news & wait for the US manufacturing shoe to drop? Hardly, US may simply up the ante.
Nicholas Dorn
@financedemos.bsky.social
· Sep 26
Microsoft finds "evidence that supports elements" of The Guardian’s reporting on Israeli use of the company's cloud storage and AI services and technologies in Gaza and the Occupied Territories. blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issue... Most services remain in place.
Nicholas Dorn
@financedemos.bsky.social
· Sep 26
Trump's selling a new Gaza peace plan to the Islamic world. That has no takers on the ground
Frustrations among Arab leaders are growing. They notice how Trump has been unable to carry the Abraham Accords to their logical conclusion and restrain Israel.
theprint.in
As Trump/Witkoff plan falters theprint.in/opinion/trum... ex-UK PM Tony Blair & other technocrats positioned as 'compromise' in a “Gaza International Transitional Authority" for ”'international trusteeship" of Gaza - echoing failed model of High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Legitimacy?
Nicholas Dorn
@financedemos.bsky.social
· Sep 16
Ukraine's Stolen Children: Inside Russia's Network of Re-Education and Militarization
The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) has concluded that children from Ukraine have been taken to at least 210 facilities inside
medicine.yale.edu
In 2023 International Criminal Court issued arrest warrant for President Putin over transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia. Fearing President Trump's sanctions on ICC, the Humanitarian Research Lab of Yale School of Public Health has stopped sharing data with ICC medicine.yale.edu/lab/khoshnoo...
Nicholas Dorn
@financedemos.bsky.social
· Sep 13
After Mossad declined, Israeli air force hit Doha office of Khalil al-Hayya, killing his son & others, while al-Hayya & other negotiators met elsewhere. Qatari internal security appears better than Iranian, possibly due to international liaison. Not so its anti-missile capability, despite CENTCOM.
Israeli Education Ministry removes from civics exam the principles of liberal democracy & role of constitution in limiting actions by government. Students will still be examined on concepts of a state with a religious-traditional identity & role of religious law www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-sep...