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Created
Wed, 09/04/2025 - 03:49

Trump’s March 25 declassification order revives buried documents showing the Steele dossier was debunked by insiders before it ever hit the press — yet it was promoted as fact anyway.

The post Leaked Files Reveal the Steele Dossier Was Discredited in 2017 — But Sold to the Public Anyway appeared first on MintPress News.

Created
Wed, 09/04/2025 - 03:00

“President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff plans hammered global financial markets and U.S. stocks braced for more turmoil on Monday, after he warned foreign governments they would have to pay ‘a lot of money’ to lift the levies he called ‘medicine.’” — Reuters

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I know it hurts. I can hear the screams, the crumpling metal. I’m not deaf. I’m an iceberg. What I need from you right now, RMS Titanic, is less screeching and more patience. After the fine bone china settles a few inches into the pelagic sediment, you’ll appreciate the mid-ocean meet-cute we’re experiencing.

Believe me, I get it.

Created
Tue, 08/04/2025 - 23:35

From childhood, I think I had some eerie sense of just how bad it could get in America. After all, in junior high and high school, I was riveted by this country’s Civil War. Among all my toy soldiers — cowboys and Indians, British marching troops in red jackets, and plastic Army-green World War II soldiers (from my father’s war) — and those Landmark Books on American history that I piled up on my floor to create hills and valleys where I could play out the cowboy and Indian ambushes and battles I had seen at local movie theaters, my favorites were always the blue and grey lead soldiers of the Union and Confederacy, including Commanding General Ulysses S. Grant on... Read more

Source: President Bankrupt appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Created
Tue, 08/04/2025 - 22:00

Dear Star Bank Customer,

We’re writing to let you know that the Star Bank online portal is down today. You won’t be able to log in or access your money. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Please don’t call or stop by the bank in person. It’s a mess right now.

Sincerely,
Star Bank

“Treating your money like a star since 2005.”

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Dear Star Bank Customer,

This is Gordon Star, CEO of Star Bank.

The previous email generated some confusion. I do apologize.

I’ll be direct. There’s been an issue with our banking servers, and your account records were compromised. We’re furiously trying to restore your account as I type this.

I want to be clear: We still have all of your money. We just don’t know how much money you have, if that makes sense.

Isn’t it wild that money is just ones and zeros on a server, and if you erase the ones and zeros, then you don’t know whose money is whose? I’m the CEO of a bank, and even I think that’s bonkers.

We’re working on this. You have my word.

Created
Tue, 08/04/2025 - 21:40
Understanding Xi JIngping

What I always remember about Xi is something the founder of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yee wrote—that he had only met two people in his life who never let anyone else influence their emotions: Nelson Mandela and Xi Jingping.

Xi took over the CCP at a time it was completely ridden with corruption, to the point where regular citizens regularly mocked and complained about it. There were major factions, centering around the two previous leaders and the party had lost much of its ideological orientation. Citizens were happy with economic progress, but there was a sense that there was too much inequality, young people couldn’t afford homes and there was flirting with western ideas of democracy.

Created
Tue, 08/04/2025 - 18:53
The rational expectations hypothesis presupposes — basically for reasons of consistency — that agents have complete knowledge of all of the relevant probability distribution functions. When trying to incorporate learning in these models — trying to take the heat of some of the criticism launched against it up to date — it is always a […]
Created
Tue, 08/04/2025 - 18:18

Τέσσερα ερωτήματα για όσους ανησυχούν για τον αντίκτυπο της κατάρρευσης των χρηματιστηρίων στο διεθνές εμπόριο και τη διεθνή οικονομία, και αναρωτιούνται πώς πρέπει να αντιδράσει η Ευρώπη, πως πρέπει να αντιδράσει η Ελλάδα… 1ο Ερώτημα: Πώς θα επηρεάσει η πτώση των τιμών των μετοχών το διεθνές εμπόριο; Κατ΄αρχάς, οι τιμές των μετοχών έχουν ελάχιστη σχέση […]

The post Ο αντίκτυπος της πτώσης των χρηματιστηρίων στην πραγματική οικονομία. Πως θα αντιδράσει η ΕΕ; Η Ελλάδα; – 8η Απριλίου 2025 appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Tue, 08/04/2025 - 11:30
Expectations play a central role in the transmission of monetary policy, but how people form expectations is widely debated. We revisit optimal monetary policy design in a model with behavioural expectations that nest rational and adaptive learning beliefs as special cases, and approximates several alternative expectations theories, such as myopic or level-k expectations. Optimal policy is a weighted average inflation target plus adjustments for belief persistence and constraints faced by the central bank (information frictions and the zero lower bound). Optimal policy is well-approximated in all cases by flexible average inflation targeting, where we make explicit what average and flexible mean.