Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Librarian Capital @librariancapital.bsky.social · 13h

Philip Morris $PM shares troughed on the day of the tweet above (3-Oct)

Up 5%+ in the 5 trading days since

Librarian Capital @librariancapital.bsky.social · 13h

Bank transfer frauds in the UK

"Fraud is a problem in the A2A world where A2A transactions are very simple one way transactions that are permanent"

"Visa A2A Protect ... working with 8 banks that represent about 50% of the RTP networks there with over 50% fraud detection rate"

Librarian Capital @librariancapital.bsky.social · 13h

Stablecoins as "programmable money"

"A financial institution can design and create very specific use cases ... you can create a loan that automatically disperses itself if certain criteria is met"

(Visa $V CFO, Bernstein SDC, May-25)

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Librarian Capital @librariancapital.bsky.social · 13h

2022 article: Lt. Col. Peter Yule: "Building them a new operations facility, a new hangar and maintenance facility, obviously the housing, and then just to expand the footprint"

Doesn't mean it's not bad
But some or all of this was under way pre-Trump

There are enough other bad news to highlight

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Librarian Capital @librariancapital.bsky.social · 14h

cc: @mmasnick.bsky.social @atrupar.com

Not a military expert, but this seems the pattern for other foreign arms sales

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Librarian Capital @librariancapital.bsky.social · 14h

"It wouldn’t be the first time the Mountain Home base trained foreign military aviators. Since 2009, Singapore military members have lived and trained there as part of an agreement with the United States."

In general you want things to stay in your jurisdiction
www.spokesman.com/stories/2022...

$12 billion deal may bring hundreds of Qatar, US Air Force members to Idaho base

BOISE – The U.S. Air Force may soon bring 170 members of Qatar’s air force to live on the Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. They would be coming to learn to fly the newest model of the F-15 fight...

www.spokesman.com

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Librarian Capital @librariancapital.bsky.social · 14h

Also:

$12 billion deal may bring hundreds of Qatar, US Air Force members to Idaho base

BOISE – The U.S. Air Force may soon bring 170 members of Qatar’s air force to live on the Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. They would be coming to learn to fly the newest model of the F-15 fight...

www.spokesman.com

Librarian Capital @librariancapital.bsky.social · 14h

Big fan of your work, but this appears to be a training facility for training Qatar airforce personnel on the US jets they bought, and the plans predate the Trump administration
www.mountainhome.af.mil/Portals/102/...

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Librarian Capital @librariancapital.bsky.social · 15h

What does it say about the culture of an investment firm when, among the next generation of 3 deputy fund managers, two studied English Literature at Oxford and the third went to Eton (and studied at Bristol)?

Librarian Capital @librariancapital.bsky.social · 22h

"China launches customs crackdown on Nvidia $NVDA AI chips" (FT)

"Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) ... told tech companies led by ByteDance and Alibaba in mid-September to terminate their orders and testing for all Nvidia products"

China launches customs crackdown on Nvidia AI chips

Stringent border checks come after Beijing orders tech companies to stop ordering US processors

www.ft.com

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Librarian Capital @librariancapital.bsky.social · 22h

2025 YTD is the kind of market where even Ruffer makes money (Total Return +9.6%, £)

Gold miners, other equities, China main contributors

"Derivative protections were the main drag", "bolstered them over the month"

Only 0.3ppt better than UK bank rate LTM
Only +1.6% p.a. L3Y

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Librarian Capital @librariancapital.bsky.social · 22h

Forterra $FORT share price up 26% after 23 months, including up 40%+ at one point, since Ennismore mentioned it as a long

(for long-term reference)

Reposted by Librarian Capital

C.A. Pinkham @eyepatchguy.bsky.social · 1d

I’m not kidding when I say these weird ass costumes and antics are actually an extremely effective tactic from a media standpoint bc when enough people do them, the media can’t fully scrub them out

The Daily Show @thedailyshow.com · 1d

The following is REAL footage from Portland, 2025. Viewer discretion is advised.

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Reposted by Librarian Capital

Tim Onion @bencollins.bsky.social · 1d

Jeffrey Epstein: Bad Pedophile debuts tonight on The Onion's YouTube channel at 7 p.m. ET.

Finally somebody will release some dang Epstein Files if you know what I'm sayin'!!!

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Librarian Capital @librariancapital.bsky.social · 1d

"Argentina is the only country in the world that was 'developed’ in 1900 and ‘developing’ in 2000"

"Argentina’s 1913 level of per capita income (USD 3,797 in 1992 US Dollars) compared favorably to that of France (USD 3,452) and Germany (USD 3,134.)"

A century of stagnation? Insights from the economic history of Argentina

Argentina is the only country in the world that was 'developed’ in 1900 and ‘developing’ in 2000. Various explanations highlight the roles of trade openness, political institutions, financial integration, financial development, and macroeconomic instability. No study has so far attempted a quantitative assessment of the relative importance of each of these competing factors. This column presents new evidence suggesting that financial development and institutional change are two main factors behind the unusual growth trajectory of Argentina over the last century.

cepr.org

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Librarian Capital @librariancapital.bsky.social · 1d

"Former GOP election official buys Dominion Voting Systems"

"After Trump lost the election ... (it) found itself at the center of baseless conspiracy theories about voter fraud, peddled by Trump’s allies"

These were false. Fox News paid $787m+ to settle

Former GOP election official buys Dominion Voting Systems, says he’ll push for paper ballots | CNN Politics

Dominion Voting Systems, the election vendor that was falsely accused of rigging the 2020 election, is being sold and rebranded as Liberty Vote effective immediately.

edition.cnn.com

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Reposted by Librarian Capital

Coach Finstock @coachfinstock.bsky.social · 1d

If this stuff would end up on the news it would absolutely motivate voters. Plenty of people who don't give a shit about politics would absolutely give af about this.

The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 1d

CHICAGO — Outside an elementary school during dismissal… horrifying. What have we become?

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Librarian Capital @librariancapital.bsky.social · 1d

Visa $V on Nordic market:

"Even with cash at under 10% of addressable consumer spend and addressable consumer spend annual growth of 7%, annualized net revenue growth is approx. 15%"

Also, "card is less than 1% of B2B spend"

(Feb-25 investor day)

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Librarian Capital @librariancapital.bsky.social · 1d

Visa $V admits "Pix scaled", "now a core part of the Brazilian payments infrastructure"

But Brazil also V's 2nd largest Tap to Phone market
V "providing VAS on Pix transactions & utilizing Pix infrastructure to deliver VAS"
Also targets affluent segment (85% of X-border volume)

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Librarian Capital @librariancapital.bsky.social · 1d

Visa $V admits "Pix scaled", "now a core part of the Brazilian payments infrastructure"

But Brazil also V's 2nd largest Tap to Phone market
V "providing VAS on Pix transactions & utilizing Pix infrastructure to deliver VAS"
Also targets affluent segment (85% of X-boder volume)

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Librarian Capital @librariancapital.bsky.social · 1d

Visa $V and AB InBev $ABI digitalizing payments for colmados in Dominican Republic

"AB InBev developed BEES, a B2B digital commerce platform enabling colmados to order products and manage inventory seamlessly"

Visa then provided credit card credentials and POS devices for them

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Librarian Capital @librariancapital.bsky.social · 1d

Visa $V US customer base seems meaningfully different from Mastercard's $MA

"US consumers using Visa credit cards spent 16% more on average and had a 3% increased in balance lift as compared to the next closest competitor"

(Based on 2020-22 data; Visa Feb-25 investor day)

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Librarian Capital @librariancapital.bsky.social · 1d

"Impact of Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act on US Equities"
corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/ec...

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Librarian Capital @librariancapital.bsky.social · 1d

Visa $V Pismo replacing banks' infrastructure

"BTG Pactual ... used Pismo to launch its digital retail bank, BTG Pactual Banking in just 8 months. The bank leverages Pismo for core banking, card issuing and payment processing"

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Librarian Capital @librariancapital.bsky.social · 1d

Visa $V replacing banks on card decisions

"Smarter Stand-In Processing ... ensures cardholders can use their Visa card in the event of an issuer outage/maintenance ... VAS uses AI to replicate the issuers' logic to provide a decision on their behalf"

"Match rate exceeding 95%"

(Feb-25 CMD)

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