Dan Cohen

Great event on March 3: How powerful corporations — including Amazon, Instacart, and major landlords — are using pricing algorithms to inflate prices and undermine competition. With Doha Mekki, Katie Wells, Ted Tatos, and moderator Geoffrey Fowler. Register here: ilsr.org/article/inde...

Private credit stocks slide after Blue Owl halts redemptions at fund Investment group’s decision sends shivers through industry

the democratisation of private markets is going just great www.ft.com/content/cdca...

A jar of change on a desk with a computer keyboard and financial documents. Text on a teal background reads: Ontario students need more grants, not more loans, to make university more affordable. Ontario universities need stable, long-term government funding. These are the keys to a thriving postsecondary sector.

At a minimum, cuts to OSAP grants will have paid for 43% of announced university funding increases—and possibly more. These changes exacerbate the affordability crisis and risk putting a university education out of reach for many students. tinyurl.com/yjccsa9r

The Quintessential Epstein Files Email - The American Prospect Jeffrey Epstein and his friends standing up for Mary Jo White against Elizabeth Warren tells you everything about the class war at the heart of the files.

Guys I found the best Epstein Files email. The one that illuminates an elite class that's cocooned themselves into an unaccountable shell of wealth and privilege, fighting to protect their secrets and offenses.
I could write a novel about this email.
prospect.org/2026/02/17/e...

The pace at which US wealth concentration is rising is simply staggering

The concentration of AI wealth into the hands of a few tech barons + plutocratic capture ==> unchartered territory

Opinion | How the Elite Behave When No One Is Watching: Inside the Epstein Emails

“That people move from representing the presidency to representing banks is so normal that we forget the costs: the private job done with the savvy to outfox one’s former public-sector colleagues, the public job done gently to keep open doors” @anandwrites.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/o...

Between the announced provincial cuts to student aid and the apparent reduction in federal aid back to pre-covid levels (which the feds claim they are still undecided on but come on), low-income Ontarians are looking at an aid cut (or net tuition increase if you prefer) of about $2500 next year.

Thread worth checking out on how the Government of Ontario has paired their long-needed increase in funding for higher ed with a corresponding decrease in student aid grants.

We forestall the burgeoning crisis and decline in higher ed quality on the backs of equitable, accessible education.

I'm particularly impressed that when Ford reduced/froze tuition fees, he decided that the policy corollary was "let's cut student aid"

Now that tuition fees are going up again, the policy corollary is "let's cut student aid!"

Nothing if not consistent.

Wonderful interview with Harvey. Starts off with a great reflection on the importance of geography on Marxist political economy and (close to my heart) touches on the importance of studying finance to understand capitalism and the role of the Fed / central banks in addressing its contradictions.

With this and the Oren Cass financialization piece in the NYT, I'm beginning to think the chattering capitalist class is trying to undercut political economists by stealing all our takes to troll us: "What if we admit they are right and just change absolutely nothing?"

You know things are bad when the WSJ puts it this plainly:

"The rewards are going toward capital instead of labor. Profits have soared since the pandemic, and the market value attached to those profits even more. The result: Capital is triumphant, while the average worker ekes out marginal gains."

The more I think about this problem, the more it seems like one of those fundamental Marxist contradictions — and it’s going to generalise. Coding is just the canary in the coalmine.

Opinion | How the Capitalists Broke Capitalism

Absolute anti-financialization screed by Oren Cass in NYTs (paywall). I wish populists would start to take these arguments (which many of us in the academy have been making for years if not decades) more seriously. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/o...

Market be like

Public Options to Stop Price Gouging - Avi Lewis for NDP Leader Corporate profits are skyrocketing in Canada, while more and more of us are unable to afford the basics of a dignified life, like housing, food and access to co

Notable ideas like postal banking and taking on Canada's price grocery oligopoly from the Lewis campaign.

Given the effects of concentrated market power (seller's inflation, low wages, personalized pricing), they are important challenges to market-based discourse.

lewisforleader.ca/ideas/public...

AI allows the results of human sociability and collective pursuit of knowledge to be appropriated as private property. That’s the killer app.

Flawed economic models mean climate crisis could crash global economy, experts warn States and financial bodies using modelling that ignores shocks from extreme weather and climate tipping points

William Nordhaus received the Nobel Memorial Prize for these flawed economic models, and Bjorn Lomborg built a highly lucrative career on them.
They told rich and powerful people what they wanted to hear.
While helping to consign us all to catastrophe.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

A whiff of familiarity in Mandelson’s 2009 collusion with the banks For Labour veterans of the financial crisis the Epstein files revealed a betrayal – but 16 years on, is the City calling the shots?

Bit of analysis from me - “The clash between progressive policies and the powerful financial sector laid bare in the Epstein emails is still evident – and as in the case of Jamie Dimon, even some of the characters are the same”: www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

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...

We're recruiting 2 PhD candidates in human geography here in Uppsala, one position focused on urban/housing issues and one in political ecology.

Please spread the word/repost etc. Being a PhD student in Sweden is a good gig.

My politics

I really wish we could take some of the negative valence off of “performative” because performance is tremendously important right now especially

Congrats Andy!

Sounds like my provost’s office.

Thank you for putting all these resources together. I've been sharing with my students. So generous of you and much appreciated!

meanwhile, I'm teaching my PhD econ course on the Political Economy of Corporations this semester, so re-sharing the publicly-available "Political Economy of Corporations Curriculum"

lenorepalladino.notion.site/Political-Ec...

My planning, urban studies and geography instructors/teachers/profs, especially those of y’all who teach analytics or GIS. How are you all discussing the abuses of these skills by agencies like ICE or firms like Palantir? I’ve taken a more oblique, jokey approach saying I don’t teach fascists.

Experiencing both of these temperatures in under a month is a bit of a trip.