Hilary J. Allen | Lightnews

Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 20h

Because when even the non-financial press is asking whether we're on the brink of a financial crisis (triggered by AI or crypto, pick your poison), it is DEFINITELY the right time to let banks do more leverage

graham steele @grahamsteele.bsky.social · 20h

The Fed, FDIC, and OCC have finalized a rule weakening a key post-financial crisis leverage capital rule applicable to the 8 largest US banks.

Barr's dissent (correctly) notes the rule won't achieve its stated purpose of helping Treasury markets. Instead, it will make big banks less resilient.

Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 20h

Severance has been the gift that keeps on giving for me

graham steele @grahamsteele.bsky.social · 20h

The Fed, FDIC, and OCC have finalized a rule weakening a key post-financial crisis leverage capital rule applicable to the 8 largest US banks.

Barr's dissent (correctly) notes the rule won't achieve its stated purpose of helping Treasury markets. Instead, it will make big banks less resilient.

Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 1d

Sacks is running the same playbook he ran in 2023 to get bailouts for Silicon Valley Bank. Except that this time, the call is coming from inside the (white) house...

Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 5d

It’s all so stupid and sad

Grace Blakeley @graceblakeley.substack.com · 5d

I’m not worried that the AI bubble will herald the end of capitalism as we know it - or even the end of the AI boom.

I'm worried that it will result in a massive upwards transfer of wealth - and further endanger our democracies in the process.
graceblakeley.substack.com/p/the-ai-cir...

The AI Circular Economy

Big tech companies and wealthy investors are driving an AI bubble - but they won't be the ones feeling the pain when it bursts.

graceblakeley.substack.com

Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 5d

It's also indicative of the fact that this tech - like so much Silicon Valley output - isn't good enough to survive without special legal treatment.

fintechdystopia.com/chapters/cha...

Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 5d

Sadly, knocking only 25% off might be optimistic...

Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 5d

Or, hear me out, what if AI is just Juicero?

fintechdystopia.com/chapters/cha...

The venture capital-funded Juicero machine was perfectly capable of squeezing juice pouches after all, but proved to be worthless because humans could also squeeze the pouches with their bare hands. If humans can do things with their bare minds at least as well as, and more cheaply than, GenAI tools, then what’s the point? After all, so much of the hype around GenAI trumpets increases in “efficiency.”

Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 5d

fintechdystopia.com/chapters/cha...

Another goal is for folks in this big tent to vote for people willing to stand up to the Silicon Valley elite. I strongly suspect that the Venn diagram of Congressional Democrats who support the crypto industry and Congressional Democrats who support the abundance agenda looks a lot like a circle. The Crypto Council for Innovation’s Sheila Warren told a group chat of Democratic Party insiders that “nobody is going to get primaried because they voted for [the stablecoin law] GENIUS,” but she may have misread the electorate. We saw last chapter how the crypto industry’s standwithcrypto.com ratings have helped pervert our political process, but we can make lemonade out of lemons and support primary challenges against candidates who have strong pro-crypto rankings – which will probably stop the spread of the abundance agenda too. Silicon Valley’s money and power may seem insurmountable right now, but if we were to go back about fifty years, we would see how the tobacco industry also weaponized publicly subsidized profits to capture Congress and push their preferred narrative. Yet as Sarah Milov relates in The Cigarette: A Political History, in the end, the tobacco industry lost control of the narrative as public interest litigation and grass roots activism made smoking socially unacceptable – and anti-smoking laws followed this narrative shift.

Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 5d

"It must become unacceptable for Democrats to accept crypto money." Yes, and say it even louder for the folks up the back. And it must also become unacceptable for Democrats to accept AI money because - to paraphrase Pam from the office - it's the same money.

Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 6d

As soon as I heard Peter Thiel was doing lectures about the Antichrist, I figured it was time to talk with @gilduran.com again — and he did not disappoint.

This is a great conversation not just about the Antichrist talk, but the broader project of Thiel and his fellow tech billionaires.

Tech Won’t Save Us @techwontsave.us · 6d

Peter Thiel is obsessed with the Antichrist — but what does he actually mean when he talks about it?

This week @gilduran.com joins @parismarx.com to discuss how Thiel casts his enemies as the Antichrist to distract from Silicon Valley’s anti-human project.

Full ep: techwontsave.us/episode/303_...

Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 5d

If you'd like to see me taking a blowtorch to overhyped AI narratives, as well as exploring the implications of a burst bubble for our financial system, the video of the AFR panel is now up on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qFf...

Hannah Story Brown @hannahstoryb.bsky.social · 11d

@profhilaryallen.bsky.social on this @ourfinancialsecurity.org panel is offering one of the most comprehensive and decisive takedowns of the gen AI hype I've heard. (The recording will end up on the AFREF YouTube channel.)

www.youtube.com/@Americansfo...

Americans for Financial Reform @ourfinancialsecurity.org · 11d

🚨 Starting in just a few minutes at 3pm ET! Join us for a conversation with Hilary J. Allen, Professor at the American University Washington College of Law, on the threats the AI bubble - and the finances behind it - pose to financial stability. RSVP: buff.ly/nuXH2KL

Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 6d

As soon as I heard Peter Thiel was doing lectures about the Antichrist, I figured it was time to talk with @gilduran.com again — and he did not disappoint.

This is a great conversation not just about the Antichrist talk, but the broader project of Thiel and his fellow tech billionaires.

Tech Won’t Save Us @techwontsave.us · 6d

Peter Thiel is obsessed with the Antichrist — but what does he actually mean when he talks about it?

This week @gilduran.com joins @parismarx.com to discuss how Thiel casts his enemies as the Antichrist to distract from Silicon Valley’s anti-human project.

Full ep: techwontsave.us/episode/303_...

Iñaki Aldasoro @aldasoro.bsky.social · 6d

“The purchase of GPUs by the companies we are investing in under the arrangement that they buy said GPUs points in the direction of strong demand for our product”, the executive added

FinTwitter @fintwitter.bsky.social · 6d

*NVIDIA CFO REITERATES HALF TRILLION REVENUE PROMISE

FinTwitter @fintwitter.bsky.social · 6d

*NVIDIA CFO REITERATES HALF TRILLION REVENUE PROMISE

Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 6d

AOC is wise to the fact that the AI industry is openly angling for government bailouts. The AI industry is already a product of corporate welfare policies (incl dispensations from copyright enforcement and data center permitting) but it's about to get worse.

fintechdystopia.com/chapters/cha...

Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 7d

I'd make a "time to find a bunker" joke if bunkers hadn't also been co-opted by the folks who brought you Theranos and Juicero...

David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 7d

From the people who brought you the financial crisis, Theranos, and Juicero: say hello to data center financial engineering!
I'm pretty nervous about this ending badly, but everyone's dug in because AI is the only pulse in the economy.
prospect.org/2025/11/19/a...

The AI Bubble Is Bigger Than You Think - The American Prospect

It’s not just OpenAI that looks overhyped. There’s a whole mountain of sketchy financial engineering underneath.

prospect.org

David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 7d

From the people who brought you the financial crisis, Theranos, and Juicero: say hello to data center financial engineering!
I'm pretty nervous about this ending badly, but everyone's dug in because AI is the only pulse in the economy.
prospect.org/2025/11/19/a...

The AI Bubble Is Bigger Than You Think - The American Prospect

It’s not just OpenAI that looks overhyped. There’s a whole mountain of sketchy financial engineering underneath.

prospect.org

Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 7d

This is, after all, the same crowd who thinks that Bitcoin is valuable because a lot of energy was burned in mining it

Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 7d

I think @mmasnick.bsky.social offers a very plausible explanation for @klonick.bsky.social's description of Google cannibalizing its own business: fealty to Christensen's theory of disruptive innovation. But that really begs a reckoning with that theory...

fintechdystopia.com/chapters/cha...

historian Jill Lepore has critiqued Christensen’s cherry-picking of case studies, his disregard for the impact of other historical forces on companies’ fortunes, and his arbitrary choices of time-frames for assessing success or failure. I might add that Christensen’s theory doesn’t reckon with the venture capital funding that disruptors can rely upon to subsidize an inferior product until they’ve put incumbents out of business. But the cultural significance of the concept of “disruptive innovation” can’t be denied, so let’s unpack it a little more.

In The Innovator’s Dilemma, Christensen theorized that good companies who invest in innovations that respond to the needs of their best customers may be inadvertently sowing the seeds of their own demise. This is the eponymous dilemma that incumbent businesses face: following this kind of common-sense management style leaves them vulnerable to being outcompeted by a business that starts out exploiting a niche market for innovations that don’t work as well and aren’t as profitable, but can eventually scale up by taking advantage of technological progress to outcompete the incumbents. The first kind of innovation, innovation that improves on the core business model to make existing customers happier, Christensen calls “sustaining;” the latter is “disruptive” and relies on technologies that are “typically cheaper, simpler, smaller and, frequently, more convenient to use.”

You don’t hear many people in Silicon Valley talking about sustaining innovation – it’s all disruption, disruption, disruption. Lepore describes the term “disruptive innovation” as having taken on messianic proportions, “holding out the hope of salvation against the very damnation it describes: disrupt, and you will be saved.” But as it has grown in popular usage, many of the contours and nuances of Christensen’s definition of disruptive innovation have been lost. Uber, for example, is widely held up as disruptive innovation, even though Christensen was reported as saying it didn’t fit within his theory (he viewed Uber as a sustaining innovation, because it was just replicating and improving taxi services, something that already existed). Lepore also recounts a Business Week interview in 2007 where Christensen said that the iPhone wasn’t a disruptive innovation because it was too high-end (he also said his theory predicted that the iPhone would not be a success for Apple). But a quick Google search “was the iPhone disruptive” yields the AI overview response “Yes, the iPhone is considered a notable example of disruptive innovation” (Google’s AI results are not always reliable, but if you’re trying to get a sense of what the internet thinks, it can be a pretty good approximation).

It seems safe to say that the common usage of “disruptive innovation” has morphed into a more all-purpose description for “Silicon Valley technology being deployed in new domains to take market share from incumbents.” But despite this evolution, the messianic connotations that Jill Lepore identified remain: this kind of disruptive innovation is still seen as a panacea that can fix just about anything. Unfortunately, Silicon Valley disruptors often don’t know much about the domains they propose to disrupt, and so they may not understand (or even care) why a particular industry evolved a particular way, or why its pain points are what they are. Silicon Valley’s outside perspective can be helpful to a degree: outsiders are well positioned to break out of the groupthink box, to come up with new and creative ideas about how to tackle problems that incumbents have simply come to accept as their lot. But outside-the-box thinking only gets you so far when you don’t understand the basics. As one incisive journalist put it, when we’re talking about disruptors, “have we just constructed a sexy new language to talk about novices?”

Acquiring unfamiliar knowledge and researching the nuances of the problem at hand is often hard and expensive work, and the first impulse for any profit-driven enterprise is to find an opportunity to exploit quickly and cheaply. After all, that’s the type of opportunity Christensen identified as ripe for exploitation by disruptors. Unfortunately, disruptive innovators haven’t always confined their ambitions to opportunities that are well-suited to a quick and dirty reboot. When we’ve reached the point that someone like Elizabeth Holmes, who had no biomedical expertise and didn’t care to listen to anyone who did, can be feted for her vision for Theranos’ disruptive blood testing innovations – well, it’s clear that innovation worship has jumped the shark. The first requirement for disruptive innovation is an enabling technology that, you know, works, b…

Tech Oversight Project @techoversight.bsky.social · 7d

@alexbores.nyc double-down in coverage from CNBC:

"I am someone with a master's in computer science, two patents, and nearly a decade working in tech. If they are scared of people who understand their business regulating their business, then they are telling on themselves."

Angelle Haney Gullett @cityofangelle.bsky.social · 7d

HAHAAHHAHAAHHAAA

Anthropic has posted two jobs, both paying $200K+.

FOR WRITERS. (Looks like a policy/comms hybrid.)

ANTHROPIC.

IS WILLING TO PAY HALF A MILLION A YEAR.

FOR WRITERS.

Whatsamatter boys, can't your plagiarism machine make a compelling case for you?

LOL. LMAO, even. #AI

Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 8d

I guess if you stop enforcing securities law against crypto firms, it’s only fair that you stop enforcing against everyone else too 🤷‍♀️

Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 8d

This is the playbook a16z honed for crypto. Just watch as the AI industry funds a boatload of political ads that don't actually mention AI because they know it's unpopular.

fintechdystopia.com/chapters/cha...

Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase, and the rest of the crypto industry wagered that if the crypto industry could get a friend in the White House, then things would change. It would also really help them out if the industry could pick up some grateful members of Congress along the way, and unseat Senators like Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown who had consistently gotten in the way of the crypto industry’s legislative ambitions. And so in August 2023, Coinbase launched its “Stand With Crypto” rankings for politicians (I don’t know precisely what black magic goes into crunching these rankings – much like the NRA’s grades on gun policy, they seem to be a real-time measurement of crypto friendliness based on things like public statements and voting records). Then in 2024 came the crypto industry Super PACs, making campaign donations that were breathlessly reported as “unprecedented.” Even my jaw dropped when I heard that crypto industry Super PACs were responsible for 44% of all corporate expenditures on the 2024 election cycle. But I probably shouldn’t have been surprised. Years of zero interest rate policy helped the industry and its VC backers amass one hell of a war chest, and if tens of billions of dollars had already been ploughed into trying to make the crypto industry a thing, why not spend a few hundred million more to buy Congress’ support?

That SuperPAC money wasn’t used for ads about crypto, so it appears the candidates knew that crypto wasn’t really an issue that voters cared about. Instead, it was used to support pro-crypto candidates and attack perceived anti-crypto candidates on the issues that people did care about

Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 8d

Did you see this @annmlipton.bsky.social ?

Jen Taub @jentaub.bsky.social · 8d

Did you see this @nellminow.bsky.social

www.sec.gov/newsroom/spe...

SEC.gov | Statement Regarding the Division of Corporation Finance's Role in the Exchange Act Rule 14a-8 Process for the Current Proxy Season

Statement Regarding the Division of Corporate Finance's Role in the Exchange Act Rule 14a-8 Process for the Current Proxy Season Division of Corporation Finance November 17, 2025

www.sec.gov

Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 8d

www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/a...

Will the AI Bubble Trigger a Financial Crisis?

Hilary J. Allen explains how dashed hopes for the technology could trigger a dangerous chain reaction.

www.project-syndicate.org

Jen Taub @jentaub.bsky.social · 8d

Did you see this @nellminow.bsky.social

www.sec.gov/newsroom/spe...

SEC.gov | Statement Regarding the Division of Corporation Finance's Role in the Exchange Act Rule 14a-8 Process for the Current Proxy Season

Statement Regarding the Division of Corporate Finance's Role in the Exchange Act Rule 14a-8 Process for the Current Proxy Season Division of Corporation Finance November 17, 2025

www.sec.gov

ICIJ @icij.org · 9d

ICIJ's latest investigation The #CoinLaundry is a collaboration of 113 journalists from 38 media partners in 35 countries that exposes how cryptocurrency companies have empowered a shadow economy that lavishly profits from crime.

Here are our findings:

Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 9d

Beware tech bros name Sam ___man bearing gifts…

Hilary J. Allen @profhilaryallen.bsky.social · 9d

I agree with that, but it's hard to conceive of this as a tool gifted by a benevolent angel because of how many choices go into how an LLM operates, and how often it's tinkered with...the tool wouldn't exist long in the form the angel gifted it!

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