Odds and Ends — 3 February 2025

Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, and Debt:

Bitcoin's ‘Kimchi Premium’ Jumps to 10%, Worrying Sign for BTC in Short-Term

https://twitter.com/Scaramucci/status/1886252444256207008

Ethereum Crashes By 18% Amid $2.3 Billion Crypto Liquidation Storm

Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:

Does COVID increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease?

Politics:

https://twitter.com/LarryPfeifferDC/status/1885907946296447036

Musk Says DOGE Halting Treasury Payments to US Contractors

https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1886179680090227152

Trump Removes Two USAID Officials After Refusing Musk

The Trump administration has removed two top security officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development after they refused to let representatives of Elon Musk’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ access restricted spaces at the agency.
The placement of the security officials — John Voorhees and his deputy — on administrative leave is the latest effort by the Trump administration and Musk to wrest control of the world’s largest provider of food assistance, which they have denigrated, without offering evidence, as left-wing and corrupt amid objections from Democratic and Republican lawmakers.

https://twitter.com/JamesFLoveIV/status/1886229706694889876
https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1886237994220183715

Musk vows to cancel grants after gaining access to US Treasury payment system

Elon Musk has vowed to unilaterally cancel hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of government grants after apparently gaining access to review the US Treasury’s vast payments system, a move that prompted the sudden resignation of one of the department’s most senior officials.
The threat came after Musk appeared to confirm on Saturday that DOGE had access to the Treasury system, which disperses trillions of dollars each year, including social security payments.

And here’s the absolute bullshit. Note the complete lack of evidence:

He justified the move by claiming his team discovered ‘that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups.’

https://twitter.com/Mollyploofkins/status/1886078068122612222
https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1886001244063334414
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1885889603715911911

Trump Taps Nutjob Journalist for Top Job

President Donald Trump’s administration is filling one of the State Department’s top positions with a controversial conservative journalist who has promoted conspiracy theories related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and was fired as a speechwriter by the first Trump administration when it was revealed that he had spoken at a conference tied to White nationalists.

https://twitter.com/RepSwalwell/status/1886112343333179844
https://twitter.com/Scaramucci/status/1885841561394516244

The Oligarchs Don’t Realize What’s Coming Next

When democracies die, big business and wealthy individuals often play a crucial role in their demise. They provide a would-be strongman with financial support; their control of or influence over news media ensures that he receives favorable coverage, while his opponents are trashed. They do this because they expect to be rewarded with policies that favor their interests and imagine that they will in effect be shareholders in the new autocracy.
What comes next is familiar to anyone who studies history (which the oligarchs don’t.) Eventually it becomes clear that they don’t own the dictator they’ve helped install; he owns them. Maybe they’ll like some of his policies, maybe they won’t, but in any case they’re not in control — and they soon learn that criticizing the big man isn’t just fruitless, it’s dangerous.
In the past this script has typically taken a few years to play out, but this is the internet age, so right now in America the process seems to be taking only a few weeks.

https://twitter.com/RNicholasBurns/status/1886123836606697519
https://twitter.com/tomwatson/status/1885899335847629062

Canada and Mexico Move to Retaliate on Trump Tariff Orders

https://twitter.com/RepJackKimble/status/1885946840727588934
https://twitter.com/krassenstein/status/1886060548938190948
https://twitter.com/lilbabygandhi/status/1886025362087333952

https://twitter.com/GovTimWalz/status/1885870828367007868

Trump’s Tariff Hikes Spook Almost Everyone

President Trump’s aggressive move to place tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars in imports, ranging from crude oil and auto parts from Canada to Mexican avocados and raspberries has rattled investors, economists and some lawmakers, who are all wondering: What exactly is the goal?.
For many of those reasons, tariffs were the part of Trump’s economic plan investors disliked the most. Markets have cheered Trump’s promises of tax cuts and reduced regulation, but he has vaulted his trade plan ahead of virtually everything else.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1886210261423399262
https://twitter.com/AdrianeZane/status/1886126643204243811

Trump’s Urgent Push to Rewrite History

William McKinley was one of our greatest presidents, ushering in an era of wealth and power. Manifest Destiny was a noble calling worthy of emulation. Handing over the Panama Canal was a folly and a sign of weakness.
America’s centuries-long embrace of slavery, while regrettable, was less important than the fact that we ended it. And the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was a heroic act of collective patriotism, not a violent effort to overturn an election.
Those are some of the perspectives President Donald Trump has advanced as he moves in the early days of his second presidency to reframe American history, in parallel with his efforts to reshape the government. In recasting established facts, shading long-accepted truths and endorsing falsehoods, Trump is pushing one big idea: that America is a once-great, uniquely virtuous nation whose past has been betrayed by weak leaders and vicious adversaries.

https://twitter.com/thejackhopkins/status/1885910050494878027
https://twitter.com/JaredHuffman/status/1885727703669911787

Serendipity:

https://twitter.com/PulpLibrarian/status/1872420376829165686

^{Badge thanks to @arcange}

How Tariffs Work comic source

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