Media worth consuming – January 2025

Top Six Articles

Left wing economists are starting to admit that Milei’s chainsaw economic policies have worked.

Bond vigilantes are making a comeback.

Since their inception in 1969, hedge funds have kept almost half of their profits in fees.

Two podcasts that explain how politicisation has killed off cheap electricity in Australia and how that can be turned around.

A series of memes about AI.

Finance

A grab bag of indicators shows that US investors are bullish, leveraging into equities at record levels. MicroStrategy’s CEO promotes the high volatility of the company’s stock, which helps it sell more convertible bonds and buy more bitcoin, thus further increasing the stock’s volatility. Despite being functionally useless, cryptocurrency “Fartcoin” surpassed a billion dollar market capitalisation.

A Berkshire Hathaway owned lender is being sued by the US Government for predatory lending. Corporate credit spreads ended 2024 at historically low levels, with borrowers issuing record volumes over the year. The man known as the “Cassandra of passive investing” for his regular speeches on passive investing being a bubble.

Politics & culture

The US government supressed evidence and experts who pointed to a Chinese lab leak as the likely source of Covid, providing a strong lesson on how science should not be done. Trump may end up repeating the crony capitalism of Biden. Despite clear legal barriers, Joe Biden insisted that the 28^th amendment has passed. The excessive punishment for many non-violent participants in the January 6th riots supports their presidential pardons. Democrats and left wing media see Nazis everywhere, even when the Anti-Defamation League doesn’t.

A Chicago casino development is being sued for racial discrimination after offering to sell shares only to women and minorities, a condition required by the city council as part of the project’s approval. Bank of America denied discriminating against conservatives, but high profile individuals are speaking out about their bank accounts being closed without notice. A Chinese economist has been “disciplined” by the order of President Xi for daring to question the accuracy of China’s GDP data.

Sweden has seized a bulk carrier suspected of deliberately damaging an underseas cable in the Baltic Sea. A Chinese owned vessel was accused of deliberately damaging an undersea telecom cable off Taiwan. Trump wants the rich oil and mineral resources Greenland has. Memes mocking the European love of regulation and bureaucracy.

Economics & work

Germany has very generous sick leave provisions and its citizens are “world champions” in using them. For low and no skill work, Japan has a much better work ethic than the US and Australia. While Japan has a handful of quality of life advantages over the US, it is far poorer. Iran’s economic position is rapidly deteriorating. China’s trade surplus is a sign of economic weakness. The often misunderstood relationship between trade deficits and foreign investment.

Under Justin Trudeau, Canada’s real GDP per capita has gone nowhere while the same metric has seen solid growth in the US. Small differences in economic growth compounded over decades, driven by free markets and small government, become huge differences in living standards for future generations. If you want to help the world’s poorest residents, start by giving them economic freedom. The argument that macroeconomics should be discarded as it is too imprecise and tends to result in governments overtaxing and overspending.

Miscellaneous

America’s tech companies are increasingly turning to nuclear power for their baseload requirements. The widely cited study on black plastic kitchen utensils massively overstated the risk of using them.

Luxembourg, Switzerland and Australia top the list of OECD countries with the highest percentage of foreign born residents. This year’s Excel World Championship ramped up the hype to an Esports level. Elon Musk’s fights with gamers are part of a wider pattern of being loose with the truth.