Really interesting take on why Montreal is so unique in terms of human-scale urbanism. Consider this when voting in a month?

So google maps updated some satellite footage, here’s one single Ukrainian village. One out of thousands

This is an excellent & worrying interview w/ @petercontibrown.bsky.social. Fed independence is gone the day that Lisa Cook's 'firing' is un-stayed by a court; and once it is gone, it will not be coming back anytime soon, likely not before some inflation disaster hits. Everyone loses. Great job, USA.

Fed independence is a question of power. As with many institutions today, President Trump is trying to reduce the Fed’s power and increase his own. That dramatic backdrop makes today’s Senate hearing on Stephen Miran for Fed Governor anything but normal. stayathomemacro.substack.com/p/who-will-b...

Brown‑Forman's "net sales in developed international markets dropped eight per cent" due to "geopolitical uncertainty".

Sales fell 62% in Canada, 16% in the UK, & 10% in Germany. 🍷

#EconSky

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Canada is cursed in having mostly the same vehicle standards as the US, and while some styles (like large SUVs) aren’t as common here yet, I worry that it’s only a matter of time.

Europe should fight this hard — and any other similar concessions.

The Fed is not good at talking to citizens. Its communications culture is aimed at markets, which means it knows how to give coded, cautious hints that leave room for negotiation. That means there's little will and no experience with strong, affirmative signals in response to wanton norm-burning.

Tariff inflation effects are just getting started.

(via Apollo)

i find this image so fascinating. it is both a literal example of authoritarianism but also a second-hand reproduction of the aesthetics of other authoritarian states. it's like a simulacra of authoritarianism whose purpose is to attempt to make the simulacra real.

This is going to do wonders for the Village, in that it will actually make it a village

#Montreal’s pedestrian streets project is a resounding success, chiefly because it’s as good for residents as it is for businesses

Canadian cities: take note—this is how you rejuvenate post-pandemic

#cdnpoli

The pressure on the independence of the US Federal Reserve is as bad as some of us had feared. I would love to understand what motivates this optimistic perspective from Raghuram Rajan

A reminder: Dr. Cook's mortgages are not the real issue. The threat to US macro stability is the clear intention of the Trump Admin to influence the composition of the FOMC in defiance of the structures designed to insulate the institution from such influence. Thank you for coming to my TED talk

A typical financial market has *fundamental* traders who watch the world and *technical* traders who watch other traders. A striking feature of the Bitcoin market is the almost total absence of the former. This has increasingly serious implications for all of us www.asomo.co/p/the-whale-...

“This is a new attempt of the administration to gain more control over the Fed,” said Claudia Sahm, “They’re pulling as many different levers as they can find to get that control.” www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Crypto is not a socially useful industry. The most innocent side of it is a form of gambling. UK could make money by hosting and facilitating it, but it does so at the expense of global society and should no more do this than it should help illicit arms sales.

And when you have visitors coming to town just lend them your key for a day or two.

Fascinating story from Duncan Miriri, for which I had the pleasure of reporting.

Africa is building its own payments system, moving from the insanely expensive and slow process of settling transactions in USD.

Trouble is, to Trump it's just de-dollarisation. BAD!
www.reuters.com/world/africa...

The corruption in the US is just boundless www.ft.com/content/13a6...

There’s a real possibility that basically every major company launches a stablecoin and it becomes so annoying that people just keep using cash

"the number of employees at peak for companies that have, at some point since the 1950s, been the largest in the U.S." - DB

US stocks vs. rest of the world, so far this year. 😞

(via @yardeniresearch.bsky.social)

WASHINGTON (AP) - US Mint has made its final order of penny blanks and will stop producing the coin when those run out.

Okay. I’ll play this game.

How? How exactly is this any better news for people in poverty than, say, giving them more access to lottery tickets?

I want Tim Scott to tell me, someone who’s covered crypto for eight years, precisely what crypto does for poor people.

The Russians built a local card network, Mir, in 2014 to protect themselves from a Visa/MasterCard cut off.