Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Clem Fon

@clemfon.bsky.social

2K followers 930 following 320 posts

Professor of Political Economy at UcLouvain Central banking & infrastructural finance geek. Also EU & French politics, political economy & social sciences at large. Dr Miette bonus: #recordoftheweek & #tuneoftheweek

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Clem Fon @clemfon.bsky.social · Sep 1

Since the start of von der Leyen's second mandate, EU sustainable finance norms face intense dismantling pressures. My new @JEPP article shows this started years ago when the fossil fuel industry “woke up” to the EU Taxonomy. 🧵 #EUTaxonomy #SustainableFinance👇 1/10

1 16 29

Reposted by Clem Fon

Max von Thun @maxvonthun.bsky.social · 19h

OpenAI following in the venerable tradition of aspiring monopolists complaining about today's monopolies to regulators – just as Google supported antitrust action against Microsoft in the early 2000s.

They aren't wrong though – competition enforcers are asleep at the wheel when it comes to AI.

1 1

Clem Fon @clemfon.bsky.social · 18h

No need to bow to Trump when you already bow to Airbus and Total

Tom Jenkins @tomoljenkins.bsky.social · 18h

@sabineweyand.bsky.social tells COREPER that EU will not drop rules requiring American firms to produce plans to fight climate change and end environmental and human rights violations in their supply chains. Trouble is @ec.europa.eu is already emasculating the CSDDD www.politico.eu/article/eu-t...

EU refuses to bow to Trump demands to tear up business rules

Brussels has signaled it won’t yield to U.S. pressure to ignite a bonfire of green regulations as part of their trade deal, a top official tells diplomats.

www.politico.eu

Clem Fon @clemfon.bsky.social · 19h

Everyone cheering up about how a tax haven overpays "Nobel" prices to go up the Shangai ranking ladder baffles me, really

Clem Fon @clemfon.bsky.social · 1d

Time for the usual reminder that "meat" originally meant 'food"/"life substance" and that 'green meat' (aka vegetable's loaf) was used as much as 'flesh meat'

Clem Fon @clemfon.bsky.social · 1d

Rare sighting of one of the first US antifas circa 1943.
The duck is armed and dangerous.
Shoot on sight, dead or alive.
Reward in official Trump crypto

Reposted by Clem Fon

Jeremy Poxon @jeremypoxon.bsky.social · 2d

Now that the Deloitte report, about the government's unlawful administration of mutual obligations, is making international headlines, it's worth looking at what's actually in it (apart from AI slop) and WHY it was actually commissioned

A thread👇

2 76 120

Reposted by Clem Fon

Albert Pinto @70sbachchan.bsky.social · 2d

"In Gaza, destruction is rewarded with contracts and the “peace plan” is property development.

Historian @adam_tooze & economist @ClaraEMattei
trace how capitalism profits through ruin: war, austerity, and reconstruction form one system of control. "
youtu.be/0iIEgp1LPpA

Rebuilding Gaza — For Profit | Adam Tooze

YouTube video by FREE – Forum for Real Economic Emancipation

youtu.be

2 44 74

Reposted by Clem Fon

Daniel Mertens @danmertens.bsky.social · 9d

Hi bsky people - if you care about how the EU seeks to fund all things "social-ecological transformation", which institutional architecture has emerged out of it, and why it is both contested and an unrealized promise: please have a look at our special issue on the politics of sustainable finance 👇

JEPP Journal @jeppjournal.bsky.social · 23d

🌱🪙 In their introduction to the Special Issue "Puzzling, powering, profiting: The politics of sustainable finance in Europe", editors
@danmertens.bsky.social and @nataschavanderzwan.bsky.social define EU sustainable finance & outline how best to analyse it 💡

🔗 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

12 23

Clem Fon @clemfon.bsky.social · 9d

Sur le point du refus de l'alternance au pv, je te conseille un petit coup de fil à @adecabanes.bsky.social qui a trouvé deux trois trucs hallucinants ds sa these sur leur tentative de vider les coffres avant l'arrivée de Biden en 2021

Reposted by Clem Fon

Benjamin Braun @benbraun.bsky.social · 9d

The call for papers is out for the Political Economy Group Workshop in Brussels in January. I look forward to attending and giving the afternoon keynote talk, which will be about how it became easy for the super-rich to remain super-rich.

Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 9d

📢 Call for Papers — 5th Political Economy Working Group Workshop
🗓️ 30 Jan 2026, Université Saint-Louis Bruxelles

The workshop is divided into two parts:
Morning: PhD research presentations.
Afternoon: open to all, concluding with @benbraun.bsky.social.

Abstracts due 1 Dec 2025

All details below:

The Political Economy working group is pleased to invite you to a workshop on Friday, 30 January, 2026, at the Université Saint-Louis - Bruxelles. Founded during the ABSP Congress in February 2024, this group aims to contribute to the advancement and growth of the field of political economy in Belgium.

The workshop will be divided into two parts:
The morning session is open to all PhD students wishing to present the progress of their research, whether in the form of a thesis project, an article or a chapter. Each PhD student will have 40 to 50 minutes for discussion with attending researchers.
The afternoon session is open to all researchers interested in presenting a publication or work-in progress related to the various key themes driving our Political Economy Working Group: European governance, financial regulation, central banks policies and communication, the political economy of the green transition, the role of States in a globalized and financialized world, among others.
Contributions are welcome in either French or English. Presentations should generally be delivered in English.
Next steps:
To propose a presentation for the morning or afternoon sessions, send a title and abstract of no more than 400 words to aurelien.goutsmedt[at]uclouvain.be and zsuzsanna.szeredi[at]uclouvain.be by December 1, 2025. If you wish to present in the PhD morning session, please indicate this clearly in your submission.
Notification of acceptance will be sent by December 19, 2025.
Manuscripts (working papers, chapters or drafts) will be requested by January 16, 2025, in order to give discussants and other participants sufficient time to prepare. We recommend manuscripts of between 5,000 to 10,000 words.

3 11

Clem Fon @clemfon.bsky.social · 9d

Insurers, these woke green ayatola climate change fanatics who want to destroy our way of life and the competiveness of our firms.

Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 9d

“If we continue, however, with the policies that we have out there, we are clearly on a pathway now of 2.7 degrees or 3 degrees where adaptation is simply not doable anymore. This is just what it is. We cannot protect Amsterdam from sea level rise of 3m. This is just not doable,” Thallinger said.

Why insurers worry the world could soon become uninsurable

Günther Thallinger, a board member at Allianz, one of the world's biggest insurers, says the climate crisis could make adaptation economically unviable.

www.cnbc.com

1 4

Reposted by Clem Fon

DrDinD.bsky.social @drdind.bsky.social · 11d

Yea, about AI and productivity...

"But when the METR team looked at the employees’ actual work output, they found that the developers had completed tasks 20 percent slower when using AI than when working without it."

www.theatlantic.com/economy/arch...

Just How Bad Would an AI Bubble Be?

The entire U.S. economy is being propped up by the promise of productivity gains that seem very far from materializing.

www.theatlantic.com

13 80 160

Clem Fon @clemfon.bsky.social · 12d

Agree and full improvisation

1 1

Clem Fon @clemfon.bsky.social · 12d

When your boss has actually been behaving like Palpatine (consolidating the far right to subsume politics as a binary choice: me or the end of the democracy) and you are part of a governement without any electoral majority for more than a year, maybe, you should look at yourself in the mirror?

French Aid to Ukraine 🇫🇷 🤜🤛 🇺🇦 @aidefranceukr.bsky.social · 12d

What lessons can Star Wars offer us about the significance of safeguarding democracy? Jean-Noël Barrot, the French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, shared his thoughts on the subject with students at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

@jnbarrot.bsky.social
@marie-doha.bsky.social

1 2

Clem Fon @clemfon.bsky.social · 16d

Ou alors, l'argument de l'apaisement de Trump est une bonne fenêtre d'opportunité pour continuer le démantèlement, débuté en mi 2021, des normes environnementales à peine nées.

Laura Mercier @lauramercier.bsky.social · 16d

Bis repetita: la Commission veut à nouveau reporter le règlement déforestation. Les arguments invoqués (problèmes informatiques) ont du mal à convaincre au Parlement européen. L'aile progressiste craint d'y voir une concession aux États-unis.
www.contexte.com/fr/article/e...

La Commission européenne veut à nouveau reporter le règlement déforestation - Contexte

Bis repetita. La Commission a déclaré, le 23 septembre, souhaiter reporter d’un an l’entrée en application de cette législation, censée être effective en janvier 2026. Les raisons techniques invoquées...

www.contexte.com

Reposted by Clem Fon

Michael Colborne @colborne.bsky.social · 16d

“The National Coordinator for Counterterrorism advised the outgoing Minister of Justice to label the riots in The Hague as "right-wing extremist." The Minister ignored this advice. By remaining vague, the counterterrorism official argued, he would encourage the "normalization" of the ideology.”

Guus Valk @guusvalk.bsky.social · 16d

Minister Foort van Oosten heeft tijdens het Vragenuur een dringend advies van de NCTV genegeerd om de rellen in Den Haag ‘rechts-extremistisch’ te noemen.

www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/...

Minister negeerde NCTV-advies om Haagse rellen expliciet ‘rechts-extremistisch’ te noemen

Rechts-extremisme: De Nationaal Coördinator Terrorismebestrijding adviseerde de demissionair minister van Justitie om de rellen in Den Haag te bestempelen als ‘rechts-extremistisch’. De minister sloeg...

www.nrc.nl

1 23 55

Reposted by Clem Fon

Peter Donaghy @peterdonaghy.bsky.social · 17d

Incredible stuff

No, it's not possible to physically "throw" a paper plane from Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland because the border is an actual physical land boundary, not an aerial one you could cross with a paper aircraft. While you can cross the border with ease for people and goods, the concept of throwing a paper plane across this geographical divide is a physical impossibility.
Why It's Not Possible
Physical Border:
The border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is a geographical, not an aerial, boundary. There is no open airspace for paper planes to travel across.
Distance:
The land border is significant, and a paper plane thrown by hand simply lacks the power and range to cover that distance.
Gravity and Aerodynamics:
A paper plane is subject to gravity and air resistance, which would quickly bring it down after being thrown.
In Summary
You can move freely between the two jurisdictions, but this doesn't mean you can throw an object across the physical landmass. The question is about a physical action that cannot be performed over the distance between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

11 24 99

Clem Fon @clemfon.bsky.social · 17d

Pettenkofer, sorry for the typo

Clem Fon @clemfon.bsky.social · 17d

If there was a rap battle, Petenkoofer would win all of them! Drinking cholera infested water to prove his point (and almost dying from it) in his feud with Koch was the XIX century version of rap diss tracks.

1 1

Reposted by Clem Fon

Ivan Boldyrev @ivanboldyrev.bsky.social · 17d

One of the founders of the history of capitalism, seems to be foundational

www.penguin.co.uk/books/295668...

Capitalism

No other phenomenon has shaped human history as decisively as capitalism. It structures how we live and work, how we think about ourselves and others, how we organise our politics. Sven Beckert situat...

www.penguin.co.uk

2 9

Reposted by Clem Fon

Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 18d

Très bonne émission d'Endendez-vous l'Eco et @alietteh.bsky.social aujourd'hui.
@adecabanes.bsky.social revient sur la décision récente de J. Powell de ⬇️ les taux après des mois de pression de Trump et sur le débat persistant autour de l’indépendance de la Fed

www.radiofrance.fr/francecultur...

La Fed est-elle un contrepouvoir ?

Après des mois de pression exercée par Donald Trump, la Réserve Fédérale américaine a consenti à une baisse de ses taux d'intérêts. Alors que sa neutralité technocratique est sérieusement remise en ca...

www.radiofrance.fr

2 5

Reposted by Clem Fon

Jack Stilgoe @jackstilgoe.bsky.social · 19d

This is not just maths. It's a design choice, supported by benchmarks that reward false certainty. Good to see OpenAI do some of the research, but it's also a reminder that OpenAI shouldn't be relied upon to do all the research.

OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws

In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limi...

www.computerworld.com

8 37 120

Clem Fon @clemfon.bsky.social · 23d

In fairness, the "red list" taxo was killed by every member state under pressure of powerful IG that could have been in the red lists. Germany not a notable exception on this one

Reposted by Clem Fon

Aurélien Goutsmedt @aurelien-goutsmedt.com · 24d

The special section on Central Bank Scientization in @finandsoc.bsky.social is now official out in Volume 11, Issue 2.

Read all the papers here ➡️ www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Many thanks to @aminsamman.bsky.social and Nathan Coombs for their support in the editorial process.

Content of the special section on Central Bank Scientization:
Special section: Central bank scientization

Redefining scientization: Central banks between science and politics
Aurélien Goutsmedt, Francesco Sergi

Not a steamroller, a 3D process: Scientization at the Bank of England
Aurélien Goutsmedt, Francesco Sergi, François Claveau, Clément Fontan

From technical to academic central banking: The scientization of the Banque de France
Maxence Dutilleul

Scientization of central bank governance: A global study of governors’ biographies, 2000–2020
Aykiz Dogan, Frédéric Lebaron

Scientization: A self-critical afterthought
Martin Marcussen

1 9 18

Clem Fon @clemfon.bsky.social · 24d

or they want to maximise returns

1 2