Nic Johnson

Chart showing the geographical distribution of Danish pension fund assets.

It pains me to inform you that the $100 million of U.S. Treasuries the Danish teachers and academics pension fund has announced it will sell are about all the U.S. bonds held by the country’s pension fund sector.

Turns out Denmark’s pension funds have been staying away from U.S. bonds all along.

Financial war in response to trade war and territorial threats? More and more people appear to be calling for it. So I updated my post on U.S. Treasuries holdings—now with the latest data.
benjaminbraun.org/posts/treasu...

Veblen talks about “standardization” as a decline in product quality, and he blames the requirements of the machine process, but he blames the consumers for acquiescing to it as much as the capitalists

On Financial Parasites in International Mercantile-Imperialism. A few days ago (recall) I noted that I am re-reading J.A.

On Financial Parasites in International Mercantile-Imperialism. open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

This should be the most basic starting point for thinking about political economy. Everyone needs to read Istvan Hont, John Shovlin, Walter Scheidel, David Stasavage, and Thomas Oatley and catch up

See also www.bostonreview.net/articles/aft...

So you're telling me Jabba was no Maimonides when it came to economic matters?

bsky.app/profile/vaka...

Teaching ends next week for me, at least for this year, so to keep the ball rolling I’m going to start hosting an “American constitutionalism and money” brunch, DM me if you’re in Chicago and interested

To be fair to the man’s comment about globalists and the selloff bsky.app/profile/raja...

Extremely funny that the only John Rawls book in the UChicago bookstore is this one

So this is fascinating: Greek, Italian, Muslims and Jewish Mediterranean merchants all had the same economic culture in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The only place where theological differences seem to matter is in the distribution of risk in the principle-agent relationship.

Do Mont Pelerin types have any love for Cordell Hull? I feel like they should, but haven’t seen any

This is the Dems secret weapon. Funny !!!

fml thompson

Pet Peeve alert.
The Melian dialogue expresses might makes right. Fair. But Thucydides' wider argument is that if you act on this, before long you lack friends in time of need; the Athenians had it coming.

“I am definitely happy this stuff is buried for now,” Bhaskar Sunkara said in an interview. “I hope it doesn’t come back.”

unreasonably excited for a second before realizing professor Robert F. Taft was not Senator Robert A. Taft. Not quite as bad as the "Arthur Burns" situation they had going on in the twentieth century, but still wrong on principle that they let this happen

I’d buy that as a coffee table book. Our World in Data meets Phenomenal World meets Past & Present

Atlanta Fed GDPNow forecast of 2025Q1 GDP growth took a big nose dive yesterday from a forecast of 2.3% GDP growth rate to -1.5% GDP contraction.

What is underneath that?
www.atlantafed.org/cqer/researc...

This neat graph

Feudalism as a Contested Concept in Historical Political Economy “The tyrant feudalism must be declared once and for all deposed and its influence over students of the Middle Ages finally ended” (Elizabeth Brown, 1974)

Very sensible review post on the feudalism debate from @markkoyama.bsky.social with this neat graph

open.substack.com/pub/markkoya...

I think our friends in the US just needs a Divine Beast for their boycotts...

The otherwise sober and even-keeled Schumpeter mega hates Locke

On Althusser's Machiavelli, and on Machiavelli as educator. Machiavelli is domesticated by Althusser in his riveting booklet, translated by Gregory Eliott (1999) as Machiavelli and Us. (This Verso edition received a subsidy of the French Ministery of Foreign A...

digressionsimpressions.substack.com/p/on-althuss...
On Althusser's Machiavelli, and on Machiavelli as educator. With some Foucault

Ah, dissertation fieldwork w/central bankers--a unique social ecosystem that requires reading between the lines & stepping carefully. So great to see how far CB scholars have moved beyond my initial efforts to understand the politics at work in things purportedly apolitical like monetary policy.

[Perry Mehrling voice:] “Consider: You’re amphibiously landing but there’s no water – you’re dead. It’s all about liquidity.”

Is there an Industrial Policy Bluesky yet? How do I become a part?