Paul Langley

Allowing 401ks to invest in private markets is a bad move at a bad time The move might help asset managers but hurt savers and the economy more broadly

Allowing 401ks to invest in private markets is a bad move at a bad time - www.ft.com/content/3dda... via @FT

Prediction markets are playing a dangerous game The fast rise of Kalshi, Polymarket, and other prediction markets is running headlong into gambling regulations, and now the industry is using the news media as its shield.

Why platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket want so badly to be seen as sources of news, instead of anything-goes casinos.

Revolut applies for US banking licence in push to crack American market London-based fintech says move influenced by Trump administration’s willingness to permit new players

Revolut applies for US banking licence in push to crack American market - www.ft.com/content/86e5... via @FT

Economy and Society Volume 55, Issue 1 of Economy and Society

Issue 1 of 2026 has hit the streets, packed with 9 papers on heat and comfort zones, subscription as an economic form, influencer marketing, value theory of inflation, emissions trading, carbon borders, risk and health, Insuring urban violence, Becker and suicide
www.tandfonline.com/toc/reso20/c...

How Blue Owl’s battles sparked a chill for private credit Strains at the company’s first retail-focused fund have sent a chill through the broader sector

How Blue Owl’s battles sparked a chill for private credit - www.ft.com/content/f2de... via @FT

World’s biggest PE houses struggle to exit China deals Groups unable to cash out while other forms of dealmaking have returned

World’s biggest PE houses struggle to exit China deals - www.ft.com/content/cdc2... via @FT

Hedge fund Saba offers to buy stakes in Blue Owl funds at steep discount Boaz Weinstein’s investment vehicle launches offer as private credit group is seeking to shore up investor confidence

Blue Owl in the coal mine
www.ft.com/content/b43a... via @FT

Klarna stock sinks 25% after bad loan costs soar Swedish fintech’s share price has plummeted by two-thirds since September IPO

The 'Buy now, lose later' IPO
www.ft.com/content/dbe5... via @FT

Will software eat the creditors? Equity, without the upside

It's Increasingly difficult not to conclude that when the tide finally turns, private credit and private equity will be very, very deep underwater
www.ft.com/content/3f88... via @FT

Student loans show that hard policy choices will only get harder The debate over university funding is a good example of the intractable challenges facing the UK government

This take on recent history of UK universities omits the 35% cut in academic salaries, the booming bureacracies, the managerial incompetence, the dodgy governance, the obsession with new buildings, and the debts and disciplinary convenants. Otherwise, it's spot on.
www.ft.com/content/131f... via @FT

Epstein Family Values • EQUATOR The billionaire patriarchs of the American far-right want to rule an economy of masters and servants

Melinda Cooper on the household servitude economy in general, and in extreme form (Epstein).
www.equator.org/articles/eps...

University lecturers begin strike action amid bitter row over 'raid' on pensions UCU members at Northumbria University are planning 10 days of strike action after bosses told staff to switch to a different pension scheme in an effort to save £11 million per year

Great journalism from @danhollandnews.bsky.social here; but fantasy fiction from management @northumbriauni.bsky.social @andylong6.bsky.social. An FOI revealed there is no ‘business case’ for spending the money bosses plan to steal from staff, but... www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-e...

Northumbria University staff strike over pension row Staff are taking part in 10 days of strikes after being told to switch pension schemes.

READ ALL ABOUT IT @georgeclarke.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk The 'latest offer' from management @northumbriauni.bsky.social @andylong6.bsky.social offers no protections for hard-working staff: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

It would appear that Bill and Ted have got back together for a commentary gig at the snowboarding in the Winter Olympics

How private equity’s big bet on software was derailed by AI Dealmakers and lenders are facing a ‘Darwinian moment’ as digital services risk being made obsolete by new technologies

Double bubble trouble

"Takeovers of software companies by private equity funds accounted for about 40% of trillions of dollars in deal activity over the past decade ... Such deals also represent nearly a third of lending in the ... private credit industry."
www.ft.com/content/954e... via @FT

America must follow China in treating data as an asset US accounting principles fail to recognise its enormous economic value

Data as 'intangible asset' or 'factor of production' - US versus Chinese capitalism in brief
www.ft.com/content/897f... via @FT

And, it's especially good at teasing out the magical thinking that's blowing the bubble

But surely this is rentier capitalism, not commodity and consumer capitalism?

Yes, this is not speculation on something small or rare, like a tulip bulb, but something where bigger is better, and even bigger is even better, etc. Parallels with railway bubble are probably useful, but railways were built once to last for decades because it wasn't assumed trains would get faster

⬇️ exactly this & where much of the investment is increasingly coming from, not public markets but private credit, pension and 🥁 insurance funds…

Yikes! Something’s got to give…

Applications are open for the Finance Summer School 2026. Last two have been at Brown. This one is at LSE thanks to LSE European Institute and Huth Initiative, plus the Berkeley Program on Finance and Democracy. Stellar Line up. Apps open: forms.gle/WsEVk4Yy52Dn...

How Elon Musk used SpaceX to rescue xAI and build a $1.25tn colossus Billionaire folds rocket maker into a lossmaking AI start-up, betting scale and control can beat rivals to blockbuster IPO

$1.25 trillion: "the most valuable private company in history"

we aren't going to go back to an era where the 'public' markets are the main thing and these 'private' companies & financial deals are the sideshow

adjust your priors everyone

www.ft.com/content/9d2b...

Donald MacKenzie · AI’s Scale AI’s scale doesn’t matter just to specialists. The rest of us are being taken on a ride along the logarithmic curve...

This is a must-read, but I can't help thinking that more emphasis needs to be placed on the resonance between the pursuit of scientific scale for AI and the underlying and explicit pursuit of business scale at all costs for platforms and investors
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Thanks, Dave. That's an excellent idea. Please let me know how we can arrange

Big tech’s $680bn buy-now-book-later problem Don’t believe the hyperscalers; it takes depreciation of billions to hold them back

Becoming THE platform infrastructures on which so much rests has been crucial to the rise of US Big Techs. But perhaps this is also their Achilles heel, not least because its becoming increasingly expensive to build and depreciation is accelerating rapidly - www.ft.com/content/0dbf... via @FT

New Zone Books Near Futures alert 🚨 💸

Fintech Capital A thorough examination of the worldwide digital transformation of people’s everyday monetary and financial relations driven by the emergence of FinTech

@paullangley.bsky.social and @andrewleyshon.bsky.social, Fintech Capital: The Digital Transformation of Everyday Money and Finance - Zone, July 2026
press.princeton.edu/books/ebook/...

Especially galling news for all authors who had their intellectual and written work pillaged by this particular band of robber barons

A burning question for me, too!
A sanitised space for business as usual, perhaps