Me riffing on @quinnslobodian.com & @bentarnoff.com while making the case for a Gramscian methodology for the study of financial firms at the New Methods in Financial Geography Workshop at Queen's University in Toronto.
Chris Muellerleile
@muellerleile.bsky.social
Economic geographer in Swansea, Wales
I cannot believe a few guys making bets on a prediction market are driving some news coverage at CNN and CNBC. It’s clearly info slop, not news. This piece by @atrupar.com & @juddlegum.bsky.social reveals how truly bad it is & how viewers are being misled. Yikes. open.substack.com/pub/aaronrup...
How Kalshi infects the news
CNN and CNBC are pushing Kalshi on viewers but not telling them the whole story.
open.substack.com
Is AI an economic equalizer across Europe, or is it widening the regional divide? 🌍 Our new open-access paper in Regional Studies maps the spatial geography of AI across EU NUTS-2 regions using a multi-dimensional framework. Here is what we discovered: 👇 doi.org/10.1080/0034...
The geography of artificial intelligence in European regions: innovation, exposure and use
This paper maps the geography of artificial intelligence (AI) innovation, exposure and use across European Union (EU) NUTS-2 regions using six complementary indicators. Findings reveal a spatial pa...
doi.org
Trump's crypto $billions are in the news again. I wrote about exactly this as part of an excellent special issue on Authoritarianism in the Digital Age edited by @kylzjarrett.bsky.social @robkitchin.bsky.social @steelecat717.bsky.social @jwhiah.bsky.social journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
Then they turned on the geographers. Because geopolitics and understanding of climate collapse was so very yesterday. 5/9
The UK universities cutting geography have lost their bearings
From climate change to geopolitics, the knowledge, skills and insights of geographers have never been more relevant, say five professors
timeshighereducation.com
I am glad to see this new article out in GEP, with Heather Millar, Ty Tarnowski and Holly Burke. Banning Bitcoin: The Material and Normative Dimensions of Energy Security in the Regulation of Cryptocurrency Mining in the United States and Canada ⬇️ direct.mit.edu/glep/article...
Banning Bitcoin: The Material and Normative Dimensions of Energy Security in the Regulation of Cryptocurrency Mining in the United States and Canada
Abstract. New digital industries like artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and cryptocurrency mining are voracious energy consumers, with complex implications for states’ climate action, economic...
direct.mit.edu
New review paper from Matt Zook and I on Cryptocurrencies in Geography. We use the idea of Monetary Interregnum to situate new spaces of crypto in the present conjuncture. Open access for now at this link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Piece in CCPA with @marxist.af on surveillance pricing. We gathered industry webinars and earnings calls to study how firms are using AI to set individualized prices. We found that surveillance pricing is built on existing market power and infrastructure. www.policyalternatives.ca/news-researc...
“Surveillance pricing” is already here—Canada needs laws to stop it | CCPA
Driven by big tech and corporate concentration, companies are using surveillance to warp prices and extract from consumers
policyalternatives.ca
My colleague Ryan Lee and I been working for the past 6 months on a microeconomic theory that could serve as the foundation for a new, multidimensional economics. Our first working paper, "Choice under value pluralism," is below. Please read, share, and comment! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Choice under Value Pluralism
Classical rational choice theory assumes preferences are complete, presupposing that an agent's evaluative considerations have a common scale. We drop completen
papers.ssrn.com
Trump broke the Commandents, so Vance had to commit the Deadly Sins. Trump compared himself to Jesus, so Vance had to claim that he was better at theology than the pope. This is one sad weird heretical Oedipal thing.
Dr Liz Allen@drdemography.com · 4mo agoUniversity council stacked with consultants: ‘I believe that there's an intended infiltration of our governing boards by consultancy firms. It's all the mates looking after each other and seeing these consultancy costs balloon right across the…sector’ www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03...
We are hiring a tenure track (!) senior researcher in political economy! This is obviously a great job (permanent without teaching obligation) and I hope you all apply. However, I would like to take a moment to share just how significant this is in the German academic context ⬇️
Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung (MPIfG)@mpifg.bsky.social · 4mo ago📢 Call: Tenure Track Position The MPIfG Political Economy Research Area led by Lucio Baccaro is seeking a Senior Researcher. Open to candidates with at least two years’ postdoc experience. Please share widely! 🗓️ Apply by April 20, 2026 s.gwdg.de/WPMPp1
12 month postdoc post working on my ERC funded Data Stories project. The role is to undertake a comprehensive data audit of the data terrain of housing, property and planning in Northern Ireland & compare to Republic of Ireland. Closing date 31 March 2026. Job details: my.corehr.com/pls/nuimrecr...
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my.corehr.com
ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowships are available in Human Geography at Aberystwyth, Cardiff, and Swansea Universities. wgsss.ac.uk/fellowships/. Interested candidates should email me as soon as possible. c.m.muellerleile@swansea.ac.uk Initial deadline is May 1, 2026. Please distribute widely!
Postdoctoral Fellowships – Welsh Graduate School for the Social Sciences
wgsss.ac.uk
My new book Currency of Nihilism is officially out today! In it, I develop a history and theory of financial nihilism that speaks directly to the ongoing merger of digital technology with finance. Use the code SAMMAN20 for 20% off: www.sup.org/books/politi... mngbookshop.co.uk/978150364586...
ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowships are available in Human Geography at Aberystwyth, Cardiff, and Swansea Universities. wgsss.ac.uk/fellowships/. Interested candidates should email me as soon as possible. c.m.muellerleile@swansea.ac.uk Initial deadline is May 1, 2026. Please distribute widely!
Postdoctoral Fellowships – Welsh Graduate School for the Social Sciences
wgsss.ac.uk
I’ve got a book coming out! Check out the introduction online now!
Duke University Press@dukepress.bsky.social · 5mo agoIn "Predatory Welfare," @erintorkelson.bsky.social draws on seven years of ethnographic fieldwork to explore how South Africa’s direct cash transfer program has become a means of continued upward wealth redistribution despite promises otherwise. Read the intro for free now: buff.ly/W0c94cY
Lines up with something @bentarnoff.com and I have been saying while touring our book through Europe and London this last week. When confronted with the question whether Musk is just nuts, we respond: maybe but this style of fabulism is load-bearing infrastructure for the global financial system.
As an IR professor, it's depressing that this is outperforming all others as the best theory of US foreign policy
Due to Trump & Vance ‘Unusually Steep’ Decline in U.S. University Autonomy, Index Shows Drop in institutional autonomy of 50 percent since 2015 means country is now only rated as “moderate” by experts.
Decline in U.S. University Autonomy, Index Shows
Drop in institutional autonomy of 50 percent since 2015 means country is now only rated as “moderate” by experts.
insidehighered.com
The @federalreserve.gov just granted a crypto company—Kraken—access to its public payment services for the first time. More evidence that crypto’s success is not as an *alternative* to the existing financial system but to capture the existing payment infrastructure. www.wsj.com/finance/regu...
Kraken Becomes First Crypto Firm to Win Access to Fed’s Core Payments System
The decision means the industry is a step closer to becoming integrated into the mainstream financial system.
wsj.com
Rather than adapt to the river, we have tried to bend it to our will. Scott traces the history of this struggle to the dawn of sedentary agriculture. https://bit.ly/3MYGrcY
Do Humans Really Understand the World’s Disorderly Rivers?
In James C. Scott’s last book, In Praise of Floods, he questions the limits of human hegemony and our misplaced sense that we have any control over the Earth’s depleted watershed.
bit.ly
“Credit derivatives tied to single companies didn’t exist on many high-grade Big Tech issuers a year ago, and are now some of the most actively traded US contracts in the market outside of the financial sector”
Chris Muellerleile@muellerleile.bsky.social · 6mo agoMassive capital switching exercise in process, enabled as always by exotic financial instruments. The debt fuelled $3 trillion AI data center build out is enabled by quickly expanding market for credit default swaps and other credit derivatives. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
This is very good. It's easier to blame universities for a poor economy than it is to blame, well, everything else. But you certainly won't *fix* the economy by just forcing people into trades apprenticeships.
Sarah O'Connor@sarahoconnorft.ft.com · 6mo agoSuch a good piece today from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com which shows that the declining graduate premium is very much a UK problem rather than a general (or inevevitable) consequence of more people going to uni www.ft.com/content/649d...
Massive capital switching exercise in process, enabled as always by exotic financial instruments. The debt fuelled $3 trillion AI data center build out is enabled by quickly expanding market for credit default swaps and other credit derivatives. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
AI Bubble Fears Are Creating New Derivatives
Debt investors are worried that the biggest tech companies will keep borrowing until it hurts in the battle to develop the most powerful artificial intelligence.
bloomberg.com
Alphabet's 100 year AI build debt instruments have a higher credit rating than UK government debt. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Alphabet 100-Year Bond Gets Most Demand in Sterling Sale
Alphabet Inc. has received close to ten times orders for a £1 billion ($1.4 billion) sale of an ultra rare 100-year bond, a landmark transaction in the debt-fueled race for artificial intelligence sup...
bloomberg.com
COMING WINTER 2026: Cancelling Billionaires Before They Cancel Us: The Urgent Case for a Wealth Tax by Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks “A must read.” — Thomas Piketty, bestselling author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century Pre-order now: buff.ly/tj2zi24 #wealthtax #capitalism #billionaires
