Media worth consuming – July 2026

Top five links

As union membership declines in Australia, Labor governments are spending hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer’s money to prop up union projects and activities.

Joe Aston’s critique of Pallas Capital’s related party lending.

An economics professor at an Ivy League university found that more than half of his class cheated on a take-home exam, but the university had little interest in taking action.

A 55 minute interview with Dr Giulia Enders on gut health, fibre and food.

The most fun part of the World Cup was Europeans discovering American food, including BBQ meat, ranch dressing, Buc-ees and free soft drinks refills.

Finance

US investors are piling into leveraged bets on stocks through margin loans, options and leveraged ETFs. A long article that lays out why the AI capex cycle will collapse and which companies will suffer the most. Russia is selling oil to India, then importing back refined products after Ukrainian drone attacks significantly damaged Russia’s refineries.

One arm of Blackrock is in talks with Aston Martin to provide new debt, which would subordinate and devalue the existing debt held by another arm of Blackrock. An overview of loss levels among Australian lenders points to prime residential lending holding up, but higher credit losses for business and non-conforming lending. After extracting billions of dollars in fines from banks that failed to record employee/client contacts, the SEC has now had to pay $150,000 to Coinbase after it deleted messages it was legally required to retain. For 2026, the European Union is projected to issue more in fines to US tech companies than it will collect in taxes from listed European tech companies.

Politics & culture

The British Government is considering expanding its “equal value” gender pay discrimination law to cover race and disability, despite existing cases highlighting the bizarre and retrospective nature of courts having to define equal value. Another government-initiated quirk of the American healthcare system has seen assistant surgeons sometimes earning more than 20 times what the surgeon earns, by exploiting an arbitration process.

A member of the European Parliament was repeatedly hacked with spyware while investigating spyware abuses. Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator has been caught making successful bets on what Trump would say. Canada’s government is set to bailout property developers by buying apartments under an “affordable housing” program.

Europeans have a strong aversion to air conditioning, which explains why they have a disproportionately high number of heat related deaths. The European Commission shut off air conditioning for the ordinary workers at its headquarters but not for management. Hundreds lined up outside discount supermarket chain Lidl in France to buy air conditioners starting from €179 ahead of a heatwave.

Economics & work

New York’s democrat socialist Mayor quotes Hayek in claiming his socialist policies are working, but he has yet to deliver almost anything except tax increases. Conversely, he is acting like a libertarian in cutting licence requirements and fees on small businesses. Government strangling the private sector is a much bigger concern than declining birth rates. Germany needs radical economic reform, but it is only getting tinkering. The ECB has shrunk its balance sheet by 52% in the last four years, which should provide comfort to the Fed to do the same.

A 10% fall in Australian house prices wouldn’t be a big deal after they have risen by more than 400% in the last 25 years, driven by migration, taxation and excessive monetary stimulus. Dividing population growth by 2.5 to estimate the number of new dwellings Australia needs is a significant underestimate; dividing by 2.0 is more accurate. China’s house prices have been falling for four years. As Japan’s population declines, 14% of homes are vacant. A long article that looks at historical examples of cities that used rent controls, demonstrating that the market does a far better job of allocating a scarce resource than politicians.

Miscellaneous

An OpenAI model escaped and hacked the Hugging Face repository, with Hugging Face forced to use a Chinese AI model to fight off the attack. 32 people have been given jail sentences for the 2018 Italian bridge collapse that killed 43 people.

World Cup referees are required to pass several stringent fitness tests, as they typically cover more ground during a match than the players. Ice cream in American supermarkets has shrunk and declined in quality at the same time. The man who became famous for trying to claim a fighter jet in a Pepsi promotion has been given seven million frequent flyer points as part of an airline promotion. A 76 year old Florida woman received a new licence plate with a hilarious combination of letters and numbers.