Category: Series

Could European Nato members use their large holdings of US shares and bonds to put pressure on America? It’s a question that some in Europe found themselves asking as the geopolitical crisis over Greenland escalated and leaders desperately tried to think of ways to dissuade Donald Trump. It is true that trillions of dollars of American financial assets are held in Europe. But the devil, as ever, is in the detail. Tim Harford talks to Toby Nangle, a journalist with the Financial Times, to drill down into the numbers.

Presenter: Tim Harford Producer: Nathan Gower Series Producer: Tom Colls Editor: Richard Vadon Programme Coordinator: Brenda Brown Sound Engineer: James Beard

It’s … Indicators of the Week! Our weekly look at some of the most fascinating economic numbers from the news. 

On today’s episode: a HUGE trade deal between India and the European Union, all the hot hockey romance New Yorkers could ever want, and a heavy earnings purse for Olympic competitors, win or lose.  

Related episodes: 

Why the Olympics cost so much

The surprising economics of digital lending 

For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Fact-checking by Julia Ritchey and Vito Emanuel. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.  

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By hiring a communist as his main housing adviser, New York Mayor Zohram Mamdani is fully committed to driving out private ownership of rental properties and handing over apartments to the city and politically-connected organizations. It will only make housing problems worse.

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/surprise-mamdani-governing-socialist

The Bill of Rights transformed the Constitution from one of supreme and total national power to a partially mixed polity where the liberal anti-nationalists at least had a fighting chance.

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/why-federalists-hated-bill-rights

Macadamia nuts. Labor shortages. Volcanoes. All that might sound like econ Mad Libs, but they’re all connected to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s entry into the Beige Book this month: labor shortages are hurting macadamia nut harvests in Hawaii. 

On today’s show, we take a vacation and talk to someone on the Big Island who runs a macadamia nut farm. He calls them “mac nuts.” 

Related episodes: 
Why beef prices are so high 

For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.  

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While unity sounds like a nice thing to have, when it comes to politics and nation-states, experience repeatedly shows that unity is the tool of those who build state power at the expense of freedom. 

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/we-can-have-unity-or-we-can-have-freedom-we-cant-have-both