(I think I will be adding occassional commentary notes to this aggregation. Also, just to clarify, the idea behind the title is that it’s a daily list of references that are informing my thinking on any given day. Just sharing the rough work. But I agree with feedback that the title is confusing, so I’m going to change it to “Stuff I’ve been reading” from tomorrow.)
Finance and markets:
- Blackrock’s Vice Chairman Philipp Hildebrand (the former SNB cbanker who quit over his wife’s FX trades) says cbanks can’t raise interest rates wtihout tanking the economy.
- Perry Mehrling says money is a blind spot.
- China’s metaverse will be very different to the others.
- I wrote about Web3 and shareholder power.
- Toyota is forced to halt production because of Candian trucker protests.
- Credit Suisse posts a $2.2bn loss due to legal costs and charges.
Crypto:
- Blackrock is planning to offer crypto trading services, says Coindesk. (If true this is a big deal for crypto. Though it is intriguing. A little bird told me that Ruffer’s institutional move into bitcoin at the end of 2020, while it generated a $1bn profit for the UK-based investment manager, was also met with consternation by UK regulators. Which is to say they weren’t exactly amused. Supposedly, the move also took institutions like Blackrock by surprise who couldn’t figure out how Ruffer had managed the compliance. The crypto trading will be offered through Blackrock’s Alladin platform. Bitcoin is up at $44,000-ish.)
WW3 Watch:
- Who are the Wagner group?
- Polish military on “fajk newsy” and how Belarus used mannequins on the border as camouflage.
- Brookings on the Russian nonstate armed actor phenomenon.
- Erik Prince and the Conservative Spy Venture.
- What the future of war might look like (from Jan 26).
- Rockets could be used for cargo and resupply.
- The information war at the heart of Russia/Ukraine crisis and the art of pre-emptively declassifying anticipated action.
From our correspondent in the Fake News zone:
- Jerry can assistance for the Canadian truckers.
- Now the French are having a go at a trucker protest. (Here’s their website.)
- How the BMJ got fact checked.
- Alex Berenson isn’t happy about being potentially classified a terrorist.
- Some French sources are reporting that Luc Montagnier, who won a Nobel for isolating the HIV virus, has died. (His Wikipedia has not been updated, and the English press seem to be behind on this if it is true. I’ve put it in this section, however, because Montagnier caused a “Fake News” storm last year when he vocally criticised governments for engaging in mass vaccine roll-outs during the pandemic phase of the outbreak. He warned this would drive more dangerous variants and potentially trigger antibody-dependent-enhancement, a condition where the vaccines act as a catalyst for worse disease. This year Montagnier gave his backing to groups opposed to forcing vaccines on children, and testified in front of a Luxembourg public inquiry on the matter.)
From our correspondent in the Truth Zone:
- Independent SAGE’s Christina Pagel thinks Vallance and Whitty have been disappeared.
- Elon Musk is a national security risk.
- How the BMJ was fact checked.
- It’s not a labour disruption, there are very few truckers. It’s a cover for fascists.
Covid hindsight:
- How how Omicron played out relative to how it was predicted to play out.
Covid origins:
- Some vero cell and monkey pre-print developments. And some pre-prints that never were.
- Meet the bat lady.
- An early version of Covid-19 that appears to have been grown in a laboratory has been discovered in samples from a Chinese biotechnology firm. (The important bit is that the samples also contain DNA from hamsters and monkeys, suggesting that the early virus may have been grown in animal cell lines.)
Strange science:
- George Church is bringing the woolly mammoth back.
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