Macronin

You can often see ultra high productivity with very low profits. Ask Illumina in the DNA sequencing world.

Great piece from @dsquareddigest.bsky.social, which touches on one of the big theories for why English-speaking countries do especially badly at housebuilding:

Adversarial and litigious common law systems (Anglo) vs judge-led civil law systems elsewhere.

samf.substack.com/p/build-the-...

Preserve the BBC world service. It is a high multiplier good. If not, the CBC should look to expand.

Europe Needs an Army Only collective defense can protect the continent.

Thus European rhetoric is pointing toward taking back control of defense. But that is not materializing in a revolution in military affairs. Europe is spending more (yay!). But it can't spend its way to military coherence. More here: www.foreignaffairs.com/europe/europ...

Excellent.

Maybe the pills weren’t working. Or were…

Alabama offers three tricks to fix poor urban schools Adjusted for student poverty, southern states are beating the rest

www.economist.com/united-state...

This is why tribalism is damaging. A “red” state’s school program addresses education with some flair. Lessons are to be learned regardless as to the teacher. Adopt policies which work, not those that are presented by a team. The mayor is “blue”. Outcomes only.

The biggest story in stock markets in the past 15 or 20 yrs has been “software eating the world...It strikes me as possible that the biggest market story in the next 15 or 20 yrs will be “software eating itself” - @robarmstrong.bsky.social here on the big market sell off www.ft.com/content/d5fb...

Macroeconomic implications of immigration flows in 2025 and 2026: January 2026 update | Brookings Wendy Edelberg, Stan Veuger, and Tara Watson review immigration flow trends in 2025 and 2026, and analyze their macroeconomic implications.

These guys do great work and are on the lower end of consensus too
@wendyedelberg.bsky.social @stanveuger.bsky.social
www.brookings.edu/articles/mac...

Correct take.

It is also a means of payment…

Now find a way to use fuel cells to make hydrocarbons extremely effective batteries. Nature uses them for a reason.

It is important to be analytical and data-driven in assessing the figures. Lots of people want facts to fit their politics, but it is crucial to stay objective. @jc-econ.bsky.social is well worth following for being both objective and insightful.

With new estimates the unemployment rate has been 4.3% over the past 6m when hiring was averaging 14k per month--the breakeven rate required to keep unemployment stable is probably negative given restrictive immigration policy + an aging pop--no people, no jobs

Why is the BBC winter Olympic coverage on Apple TV so crap? Losing my mind trying to find niche sports. No red button…

It’s like a bloody scene from Blade Runner. I’ve had it.

Capital efficiency…

Russia’s sabotage campaign is becoming bolder Hacks against Polish energy plants suggest the FSB is involved

I wrote on Russia's cyber-attack against Poland's energy system in December, why it suggests a more aggressive Russian approach to disrupting critical infrastructure in Europe, and why the involvement of the FSB, Russia's security service, is bad news. www.economist.com/europe/2026/...

Wen Snoop?

Made by Google. Missed by Google — except for one tool, buried in the garden shed. If Google can make the fake, it should flag the fake in all its products

Fun post about how Google *can* detect fake images generated by Google AI, but only if you know the obscure way to do it.

The mainstream Google tools, meanwhile, claim the image is genuine.

(TLDR: Within Gemini, upload an image & start your prompt with '@synthid' to use the little-known tool)

Correct take. There is a legitimate national security dimension.

Honestly, this is a reply-guy banger. Wondering if the mike is on.

Default is a tax, inflation is a tax, and taxes are obviously a form of tax. The question is for whom you can tax. Being DM typically means having a tax base and political economy. Inflation often means tax hikes are unpalatable. Default tends to tax foreigners.

How much time have you got?

Is your method repeatable by an LLM? Could you train them on the dataset?

Good argument to front load given the tax incentives.

Medical Training (Prioritisation) Bill - Hansard - UK Parliament Hansard record of the item : 'Medical Training (Prioritisation) Bill' on Wednesday 4 February 2026.

I no longer sit on the constitution committee, but some of your concerns (which I share) have been raised with the main parties and were aired at second reading this evening: hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2026-0....

The worst inflation outbreak in 40 years: Conference on distilling lessons from the COVID era During the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation in the United States and many other countries surged to its highest level in more than 40 years, inflicting enormous pain on households and bu...

UPDATE: At 12:30 PM ET, I will discuss with Karen Dynan inflation forecasts from my recent work with Peter Orszag: "The Risk of Higher US Inflation in 2026." Stream it live:

The worst inflation outbreak in 40 years: Conference on distilling lessons from the COVID era
www.piie.com/events/2026/...

In fairness, the rug-pull of “we voted for centrist-sanity” to be replaced with “whattabout weird socialism, tho” is pretty stark and warrants a new general election.

The ability to convene is one of the most important traits.