My views are a personal "special arrangement sanctioned by history" Postwar Germany antitrust saga balancecraft.substack.com/ab… Work @econliberties

USA
Servile men will insinuate "with a plausible affectation of wisdom and concern, How prudent it is to please the powerful—How dangerous to provoke them." 1768
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lol I missed that Paramount/WBD had argued that amicus filers should have to post a bond reverse Oprah, these guys: You post a bond! and you post a bond!! and you post a bond!!!
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(the court ultimately allowed amicus filings on a very expedited timeline so they're all in now) Paramount/WBD also very unhappy about the letter from Senator Booker
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Finishing up the week with some light housekeeping
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While federal regulators work to weaken oversight of bank management, California is continuing to strengthen its oversight — including over financial institutions whose executives have conflicts of interest and engage in fraud. dfpi.ca.gov/press_release/ic…
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Laurel retweeted
California has just seized Nano Banc and appointed @FDICgov as receiver. The bank had a checkered record of mismanagement, dirty dealing, and failing to comply with requirements ordered by @CaliforniaDFPI. Some of its former executives have been banned from banking.
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Laurel retweeted
Kalshi has now lost 15 consecutive federal court rulings since the Minnesota decision. With today’s reversal of Tennessee, States have prevailed in 38 out of 43 court decisions involving preliminary injunctions, TROs, or stays/injunctions pending appeal, an 88% success rate.
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Laurel retweeted
Many state regulators opt for a terse press release when they seize a bank. Fair to say today's California DFPI press release adopts a different approach. dfpi.ca.gov/press_release/ca… Even adds in some criticism of the federal regulators' CAMELS ratings proposal (2nd last paragraph)
Nano Banc had been in the regulatory doghouse with the California state regulator (and sometimes the Fed) for a while. CA DFPI enforcement actions: dfpi.ca.gov/enforcement_acti…
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Laurel retweeted
Nano Banc was closed today by @CaliforniaDFPI, which appointed FDIC as receiver. Sunwest Bank will assume substantially all deposits and acquire certain assets of the failed institution. fdic.gov/news/press-releases…
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Laurel retweeted
6-1 vote on this with Governor Barr voting against. The first non-unanimous merger approval vote from the Fed since Governor Brainard voted against two transactions in 2020. Here, Governor Barr would have required branch divestitures in a specific market in Kentucky.
Approval of application by Peoples Bancorp Inc.: federalreserve.gov/newsevent…
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Laurel retweeted
Ellison forced to pledge an additional $9.2 billion in $ORCL shares for $PSKY deal as lenders fear Oracle faces severe risk of going to single digits or bankruptcy. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
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Laurel retweeted
Larry Ellison pledged $9.2bn in shares to a new personal loan. Can’t imagine the interest rate is great on them given the climate. Oracle shareholders are not gonna love a margin loan at a stock price that’s already shaky
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Laurel retweeted
$ORCL bonds crossing 8.3% for the first time after Larry Ellison used the Enron trick (first time anyone did since Enron) of “Customer Pre-Payments with a Significant Interest Component” to hide Operating Cash Flow Problems. Notably Oracle also was the first Publicly Listed US company outside of drillers and Miners (or Covid) to use Force Majeur to avoid paying on a data center lease it couldn’t afford, since… you guessed it… Enron.
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DEA making room for FDA-approved psychedelics to be rescheduled
BREAKING: DEA Moves Again to Place 5 Tryptamine Psychedelics in Schedule I Tomorrow, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) will publish a notice of proposed rulemaking that would place five tryptamines in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. Those five substances are 4-OH-DiPT, 5-MeO-AMT, 5-MeO-MiPT, 5-MeO-DET, and DiPT.
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Weird how judges treat privilege abusers harshly when they're not Google (Kent Walker) or Amazon (David Zapolsky)
Honestly, I’d quit lawyering if I got this order courtwatch.news/p/192-holy-l…
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We didn’t have to “leap” to much. Walmart spells out this illustrative example in its own patent application. patentimages.storage.googlea…
You’re taking a patent that describes pricing technology and leaping straight to “Walmart scans your tuna and secretly raises the mayonnaise price just for you.” That is not what the patent proves. A patent establishes that someone has claimed an invention. It does not establish that Walmart is using it in stores, and it certainly does not prove that two customers standing beside each other are being charged different prices because one scanned tuna first. That distinction matters. Dynamic pricing, demand forecasting, personalized recommendations and individualized pricing are not synonymous. Collapsing all four into one scary story is rhetorical legerdemain, not evidence. If Walmart is actually doing what you claim, show the transaction data, the deployed system, or the patent language that explicitly authorizes a customer-specific price increase based on what that individual just scanned. Until then, you have described what technology might theoretically permit and presented it as something already happening. That’s not an exposé. That’s speculation wearing a lab coat. #AStoneGroove #SilentMajoritySpeaks
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The $420M Live Nation has received in govt subsidies is a lot more than the $280M it agreed to pay in damages as part of the settlement of the DOJ's antitrust case. bloomberg.com/news/newslette…
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Laurel retweeted
Thiel on 2028 and Vance and Rubio: “I worry it will be very hard for either candidate to win.
Jawwwn
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Laurel retweeted
Arkansas' largest personal injury law firm is the latest legal entity to ink a deal to take private equity investment using Uplift Investors' associated management services organization. law360.com/pulse/articles/25…
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No new agencies. Put the powers inside the NRC.
I'm proposing an independent federal agency to regulate AI and big tech. We need to act before serious harm occurs and hold these companies accountable when they break the rules.
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