Media worth consuming – May 2025

Top five articles

Japan’s Prime Minister said his country’s financial position is worse than Greece, with jittery bond markets in Japan and the US showing signs of indigestion.

A Japanese manufacturer uses an internal currency to allocate work, giving employees substantial freedom to choose the tasks they want to do while incentivising them to take on less desirable work.

The examples of Singapore and Switzerland demonstrate the prosperity of capitalism whilst Cuba and North Korea demonstrate the poverty of communism.

A Harvard Professor was fired after being found to have fabricated data in her studies on dishonesty.

Cartoons that make fun of socialism and its long history of failure.

Finance

US unemployment is holding steady. The CDS spread for the US government is as high as Greece and Italy. The uncertainty of tariffs on China means many US retailers have simply stopped ordering, with import volumes down around 33% and the possibility of goods shortages starting within weeks.

Harvard and Yale are reducing their private equity holdings to offset lower government funding, higher capital calls and slow realisations from deployed capital, in what could be a banner year for secondary funds. New retail money is cashing out institutional private equity investors at higher prices.

A commercial property tenant in the UK claimed he was running a snail farm in an office tower in order to reduce the local council charges. San Francisco office towers are selling at a 70% discount to their pre-Covid valuations. Listed American BDCs (leveraged lending vehicles) fell much further than the S&P 500 in the recent sell-off. Foreign exchange broker Argentex has been sold for a 94% discount to its recent share price after requiring a £6.5 million bridging loan to cover margin calls. Taiwanese insurers have a mismatch, owning too many foreign assets, which could create a wave of insolvencies if the suppressed Taiwanese Dollar appreciates.

Junior investment banking employees at a Wisconsin firm were invited to a pizza party, where instead of celebrating their successful deals and long hours they were lectured on working more efficiently. The parents of an 18 year old who helped organise a $243 million crypto hack were kidnapped in Connecticut, leading police to arrest both the kidnappers and the hackers. 16 of the 25 crypto accounts that won a dinner with Trump have dumped their holdings of the Trump meme coin.

Politics & culture

With a court correctly striking down Trump’s tariffs, it’s over to Congress to take action if they want to preserve the negotiating leverage. There’s a long list of reasons why America can’t reshore all its manufacturing. Instead of tariffs, Americans need to save and invest more if they want higher growth and domestic manufacturing. A forgotten part of the decline of the Rust Belt is that much of US manufacturing has shifted to pro-business southern states, away from states with strong unions.

Trump’s tariffs will inevitably increase soft corruption. Was it a coincidence that Trump quietly pardoned a convicted fraudster after his mother attended a $1 million per person fundraiser? Should Elon Musk be prosecuted or given the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work on slashing government spending?

Delta Airlines flew a new Airbus A350 from France to Japan and then to the US, to avoid paying an import tariff. If the Qataris don’t give their 747 to Donald Trump, they might end up scrapping it for parts, having been unable to sell it after five years. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have announced they will repay Syria’s $15 million debt to the World Bank. Spain’s government has ordered Airbnb to remove 65,000 listings. A Republican Senator has introduced the PELOSI Act, which would ban members of congress and their families from trading stocks.

The Trump Administration is establishing a program that will pay illegal immigrants $1,000 if they self deport. A Wisconsin judge has been arrested for helping an illegal immigrant evade arrest. The left of centre UK government has promised to slash migration by mandating proficiency in English and stopping low paid “skilled” migration. The Financial Times described the strong showing in UK council elections by the Reform party as “an unwelcome surge of right wing populism in Britain”. As the right wing AfD party in Germany tops the polls, the country’s security service has classified it as an extremist movement, allowing for greater surveillance of the party.

Discerning how China’s economy is performing has become much harder in recent years, as the Chinese Government has stopped publishing hundreds of key data points. China is using fake NGOs to downplay its human rights abuses at UN meetings. Chinese spies are operating at Stanford, targeting the university for its focus on artificial intelligence. North Korean IT professionals are increasingly applying for remote work with Western companies, either for spying or to raise funds for their government. A Maryland man has been convicted of wire fraud and faces 20 years in prison for helping North Koreans obtain jobs at thirteen different companies.

America’s 60 Minutes has received an Emmy Award nomination for editing for its infamous interview with Kamala Harris, with some commentators remarking that the editing made Harris sound coherent. The Pulitzer Prize committee is being criticised again for its bias in awarding prizes. Ordinary Americans don’t believe claims from journalists that the White House covered up Biden’s faltering acuity.

Washington State has amended an existing lending program to allow for certain racial minorities to receive loan forgiveness of up to $120,000. More evidence has emerged that Harvard has an anti-white, anti-men bias in its faculty and administration hiring. A British soldier who complained about differential gender standards was detained and questioned under the Terrorism Act.

Economics & work

Australia badly needs productivity and tax reform, are Albanese and Chalmers willing to act in the country’s best interest and deliver it? Creative destruction is a necessary part of productivity growth, as poorly managed and capitalised businesses negate some of the improvements made by well-managed and capitalised businesses.

If you want to be a rich country like Switzerland, implement small government and free markets. Economies that adopted neoliberal policies in the 1980s and 1990s grew much faster than those that didn’t. In the face of Trump’s populist economic policies, left-wing economists are now advocating for neoliberalism. Capitalism isn’t broken; it’s been polluted by cronyism. Free healthcare isn’t free, it is paid for with taxes and the rationing of other services.

With the cost of complying with US federal regulation estimated at $2.155 trillion, there’s potential for a solid economic boost if the Trump Administration can deliver on its deregulation agenda. The argument that China’s manufacturing boom hollowed out America’s middle class is more myth than fact. The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model has been adjusted after a spike in gold imports led to it forecasting a significant economic downturn. The spike in global cocoa prices is primarily due to a mismanaged government monopoly.

Australia has built up a housing shortage of around 300,000 dwellings since migration surged in 2022. Despite the size of the average new land lot falling, the cost of purchasing a new block has almost doubled in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane over the last decade. AMP is offering home loans with a 10 year interest only period, providing “long-term cashflow support” to borrowers who may be stretching to purchase an otherwise unaffordable property. Expensive housing flows through to worse outcomes on productivity, health, financial instability and fertility. After fires destroyed over 12,000 buildings in January, the Mayor of Los Angeles is celebrating that a mere eleven permits have been issued for rebuilding.

Liz Truss is wrongly blamed for the spike in UK bond yields, which were largely due to other factors, including margin calls. The debts run up during World War One and the defaults that followed, set the tone for government deficits and debts ever since.

Miscellaneous

The nationwide blackout in Spain and Portugal is thought to have been caused by a lack of investment in grid infrastructure combined with volatile renewable energy production. Germany is walking back its opposition to nuclear power after the Spanish blackout. Chinese scientists have been able to refuel a small-scale thorium-fuelled reactor without shutting it down. Chinese manufactured solar panels, batteries and inverters have been found to contain rogue communication devices which could allow China to cause blackouts. Programs for recycling wind turbines and solar panels haven’t kept up with the pace of their production.

Tesla was kicked out of the Vancouver auto show, as the organisers deemed its presence a security risk they could not manage. VW is halting sales of its electric minivan in the US, as the seats were considered too large by US regulators, who wanted three seatbelts instead of two.

Police temporarily arrested a wheelchair bound Georgia man after an ex-girlfriend falsely alleged he kicked her door in and assaulted her. An illegal immigrant has been arrested for stealing the purse of the head of the Department of Homeland Security in a Washington DC restaurant. The leaders of France, Germany and the UK were shown acting oddly with what was claimed to be a bag of cocaine, but numerous fact checks show it was a tissue.

Several American newspapers published a summer reading list where over half the books listed don’t exist – they are AI hallucinations. Even a Google search will tell you that the quality of Google’s search results has declined as it seeks to show more ads and lock users into its ecosystem. We live like royalty, yet so often forget the infrastructure developed over hundreds of years to get us here. 20 ways to make your life more miserable.

Chinese money laundering networks are undercutting rivals to gain more of the Mexican drug cartel cash flow, profiting from the demand for US dollars by Chinese nationals. Australia’s patriarch of poker machines has restyled himself as a philanthropist. Teens who use cannabis are particularly exposed to an increased risk of psychosis.

A Texas truck driver rolled his vehicle and spilled eight million coins, with some vacuumed up and others picked up by hand. A North Korean warship suffered substantial damage when it fell over during its launch ceremony. A Norwegian man slept through a container ship crashing into the shore just eight metres from his house. A Chinese student had to be rescued from Mount Fuji twice in one week.

The World Championship of Snooker has long been held in an old venue in Sheffield each year, but some are pushing to relocate it, offering a substantial increase in prizemoney and improved facilities. The son of an NFL defence coach prank called a high profile draftee claiming he would be picked soon, before the player was ultimately picked in the fifth round. A 14 year old scored a century off 35 balls in the IPL, the second fastest in the league’s history. A Kentucky mother was lucky to be refunded over $4,000 after her eight year old son used her phone to order 70,000 lollipops.