Martijn Konings
@mkonings.bsky.social
Political economist at University of Sydney. Most recent book The Bailout State: Why Governments Rescue Banks, Not People (Polity, 2025). Now working on property and democracy.
Pinned
Martijn Konings
@mkonings.bsky.social
· Jan 11
Very pleased to announce that The Bailout State is now available everywhere. Get a copy and find out why governments rescue banks, not people!
Oren Cass or David Harvey?
February 6, 2026 at 11:32 AM
Oren Cass or David Harvey?
Reposted by Martijn Konings
What Jeffrey Epstein knew about money
Epstein’s emails show how the financial elite consolidated their wealth amid global turmoil
🖊️ @willdunn.bsky.social
Epstein’s emails show how the financial elite consolidated their wealth amid global turmoil
🖊️ @willdunn.bsky.social
What Jeffrey Epstein knew about money
Epstein's emails show how the financial elite consolidated their wealth in global turmoil
www.newstatesman.com
February 6, 2026 at 9:52 AM
What Jeffrey Epstein knew about money
Epstein’s emails show how the financial elite consolidated their wealth amid global turmoil
🖊️ @willdunn.bsky.social
Epstein’s emails show how the financial elite consolidated their wealth amid global turmoil
🖊️ @willdunn.bsky.social
Reposted by Martijn Konings
Democratic elites chose donors over workers. Without an aggressive economic agenda they risk becoming the permanent minority party, warns Thomas Ferguson. @bostonreview.bsky.social www.bostonreview.net/forum/how-no...
Macroeconomics is the driver, not median voters.
Thomas Ferguson responds in a forum on “How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism.”
www.bostonreview.net
February 6, 2026 at 11:01 AM
Democratic elites chose donors over workers. Without an aggressive economic agenda they risk becoming the permanent minority party, warns Thomas Ferguson. @bostonreview.bsky.social www.bostonreview.net/forum/how-no...
I often wonder if the tendency to mistake basic emotions (whether cruelty or despair) for deep insight is a distinctive feature of our era or something of all times. It seems to require both a definite capacity for critical thinking and a willingness to abuse it.
A statement against doomerism as some kind of intellectually elevated, clued-in reaction to the horrors of our political moment.
The Faux-Sophistication of Doomer Despair
It's okay to feel despair in the moment. But it's dumb to insist we've already lost.
www.aaronrosspowell.com
February 4, 2026 at 10:14 PM
I often wonder if the tendency to mistake basic emotions (whether cruelty or despair) for deep insight is a distinctive feature of our era or something of all times. It seems to require both a definite capacity for critical thinking and a willingness to abuse it.
Reposted by Martijn Konings
Australians are bracing for another interest rate rise because Labor has turbo-charged the housing crisis & refused to tackle corporate price gouging. If you're a mortgage holder or a renter, you face being hit by the RBA to “fix” the government’s "inflation problem".
February 2, 2026 at 1:09 AM
Australians are bracing for another interest rate rise because Labor has turbo-charged the housing crisis & refused to tackle corporate price gouging. If you're a mortgage holder or a renter, you face being hit by the RBA to “fix” the government’s "inflation problem".
👉 "You know you've got "research culture" right when people stop talking about research culture and just talk about their research."👈
You have good researchers. Get out of their way, and they will do good research. It's Arts & Humanities, so you don't need to decide who gets to use the supercollider. You know you've got "research culture" right when people stop talking about research culture and just talk about their research.
February 1, 2026 at 9:42 PM
👉 "You know you've got "research culture" right when people stop talking about research culture and just talk about their research."👈
Reposted by Martijn Konings
ONE DAY LATER Larry Summers fleshed out his complaints in a Washington Post column
February 1, 2026 at 7:42 PM
ONE DAY LATER Larry Summers fleshed out his complaints in a Washington Post column
Reposted by Martijn Konings
Hard to imagine how Larry Summers’s humiliation could be any more complete tbh
Larry Summers complaining to Epstein that his kids admire Bernie Sanders too much
February 1, 2026 at 9:01 PM
Hard to imagine how Larry Summers’s humiliation could be any more complete tbh
“Pantomime of thinking” is a great phrase
Warsh does an elaborate pantomime of thinking that subtly relieves the listener of the burden of working out what he is actually saying. That must have appealed to Trump.
January 31, 2026 at 11:13 PM
“Pantomime of thinking” is a great phrase
I've spent way too much time trying to understand Kevin Warsh's thinking, but there's not much there in the end. This is the upshot, I think:
January 30, 2026 at 6:43 AM
I've spent way too much time trying to understand Kevin Warsh's thinking, but there's not much there in the end. This is the upshot, I think:
This is subtly savage.
www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...
www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...
Education of a Grandmaster
Kenneth Rogoff, Our Dollar, Your Problem: An Insider’s View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance, and the Road Ahead. Yale 2025.
www.ineteconomics.org
January 29, 2026 at 11:22 PM
This is subtly savage.
www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...
www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives...
Reposted by Martijn Konings
New book officially out 🚨
If you ever wanted to know what Italian philosophy has been up to in the last 10-20 years, look no further. “An introduction to Contemporary Italian Thought” is out today with chapters on cyberfascism, technology & work, pandemic biopolitics, and posthumanism.
If you ever wanted to know what Italian philosophy has been up to in the last 10-20 years, look no further. “An introduction to Contemporary Italian Thought” is out today with chapters on cyberfascism, technology & work, pandemic biopolitics, and posthumanism.
An Introduction to Contemporary Italian Thought
Over the past three decades, Italian thought has emerged as a major field within continental philosophy. But what are the latest developments since Italian theo…
www.bloomsbury.com
January 22, 2026 at 10:41 AM
New book officially out 🚨
If you ever wanted to know what Italian philosophy has been up to in the last 10-20 years, look no further. “An introduction to Contemporary Italian Thought” is out today with chapters on cyberfascism, technology & work, pandemic biopolitics, and posthumanism.
If you ever wanted to know what Italian philosophy has been up to in the last 10-20 years, look no further. “An introduction to Contemporary Italian Thought” is out today with chapters on cyberfascism, technology & work, pandemic biopolitics, and posthumanism.
Reposted by Martijn Konings
New paper out - on why there won't be a return to the golden age of inflation targeting. Empirical material focused on the Reserve Bank of Australia, but the argument applies broadly, I feel.
www.ppesydney.net/content/uplo...
www.ppesydney.net/content/uplo...
December 23, 2025 at 6:47 AM
New paper out - on why there won't be a return to the golden age of inflation targeting. Empirical material focused on the Reserve Bank of Australia, but the argument applies broadly, I feel.
www.ppesydney.net/content/uplo...
www.ppesydney.net/content/uplo...
Reposted by Martijn Konings
Recently stumbled on a more or less complete, unpublished Adorno fragment on fascist propaganda & mimesis while looking thru archival materials from the early phases (ca. 42/43) of writing Dialectic of Enlightenment. Just finished a translation—you can read it here! open.substack.com/pub/jamescra...
Adorno: On Propaganda (ca. 1942/43)
Translation of an unpublished fragment from the materials for ‘Elements of Anti-Semitism.’
open.substack.com
January 14, 2026 at 1:35 AM
Recently stumbled on a more or less complete, unpublished Adorno fragment on fascist propaganda & mimesis while looking thru archival materials from the early phases (ca. 42/43) of writing Dialectic of Enlightenment. Just finished a translation—you can read it here! open.substack.com/pub/jamescra...
Reposted by Martijn Konings
The case against Graeberism and for Mamdanism dissentmagazine.org/article/the-...
January 12, 2026 at 6:04 PM
The case against Graeberism and for Mamdanism dissentmagazine.org/article/the-...
Perhaps "the markets" are just telling us that their concern with central bank independence was never that principled to begin with.
Dear Stock Market:
Trump is trying to throw the Federal Reserve chair in jail on charges even his fellow Republicans recognize as phony.
Why aren’t you alarmed? Have you gone COMPLETELY deaf, dumb and blind?
Love, Tim
newrepublic.com/article/2052...
Trump is trying to throw the Federal Reserve chair in jail on charges even his fellow Republicans recognize as phony.
Why aren’t you alarmed? Have you gone COMPLETELY deaf, dumb and blind?
Love, Tim
newrepublic.com/article/2052...
The Market Met Jerome Powell’s Warning With Deep Denial
What’s a Fed chair got to do to get people interested in the criminalization of monetary policy?
newrepublic.com
January 12, 2026 at 11:31 PM
Perhaps "the markets" are just telling us that their concern with central bank independence was never that principled to begin with.
Reposted by Martijn Konings
Dear Stock Market:
Trump is trying to throw the Federal Reserve chair in jail on charges even his fellow Republicans recognize as phony.
Why aren’t you alarmed? Have you gone COMPLETELY deaf, dumb and blind?
Love, Tim
newrepublic.com/article/2052...
Trump is trying to throw the Federal Reserve chair in jail on charges even his fellow Republicans recognize as phony.
Why aren’t you alarmed? Have you gone COMPLETELY deaf, dumb and blind?
Love, Tim
newrepublic.com/article/2052...
The Market Met Jerome Powell’s Warning With Deep Denial
What’s a Fed chair got to do to get people interested in the criminalization of monetary policy?
newrepublic.com
January 12, 2026 at 11:18 PM
Dear Stock Market:
Trump is trying to throw the Federal Reserve chair in jail on charges even his fellow Republicans recognize as phony.
Why aren’t you alarmed? Have you gone COMPLETELY deaf, dumb and blind?
Love, Tim
newrepublic.com/article/2052...
Trump is trying to throw the Federal Reserve chair in jail on charges even his fellow Republicans recognize as phony.
Why aren’t you alarmed? Have you gone COMPLETELY deaf, dumb and blind?
Love, Tim
newrepublic.com/article/2052...
Bipartisanship is what's needed right now.
January 12, 2026 at 11:12 PM
Bipartisanship is what's needed right now.
Jason Furman preaching about not playing politics while the Gestapo is banging down the church doors.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/o...
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/o...
Opinion | Trump’s Attack on the Fed Is Already Backfiring
www.nytimes.com
January 12, 2026 at 11:10 PM
Jason Furman preaching about not playing politics while the Gestapo is banging down the church doors.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/o...
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/o...
Different scenarios, but the attack on Powell illustrates in a very direct way that there won’t be a return to normal for central bankers.
New paper out - on why there won't be a return to the golden age of inflation targeting. Empirical material focused on the Reserve Bank of Australia, but the argument applies broadly, I feel.
www.ppesydney.net/content/uplo...
www.ppesydney.net/content/uplo...
January 12, 2026 at 3:46 AM
Different scenarios, but the attack on Powell illustrates in a very direct way that there won’t be a return to normal for central bankers.
MAGA understands that "to be truly transformative, it will need to control monetary policy. As the MAGA juggernaut makes a politics centred on defending the status quo increasingly incoherent, time is running out for its opposition to learn the same lesson."
newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...
newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...
Martijn Konings, Fiscal Dominance? — Sidecar
Trump and the Federal Reserve.
newleftreview.org
January 12, 2026 at 1:44 AM
MAGA understands that "to be truly transformative, it will need to control monetary policy. As the MAGA juggernaut makes a politics centred on defending the status quo increasingly incoherent, time is running out for its opposition to learn the same lesson."
newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...
newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...
Reposted by Martijn Konings
"A chronic, devastating cancer in American society is prominent Democrats outright refusing to share their constituents' urgency and horror in the face of what is being done to society by Republicans..."
January 9, 2026 at 9:19 PM
"A chronic, devastating cancer in American society is prominent Democrats outright refusing to share their constituents' urgency and horror in the face of what is being done to society by Republicans..."
The interview itself is such an unbearable exercise in legitimation, but this part is just a mental health problem.
January 9, 2026 at 10:30 PM
The interview itself is such an unbearable exercise in legitimation, but this part is just a mental health problem.
“The so-called imperial boomerang is more like a deadly toxin that spreads in all directions, attacking the lungs and nervous systems of whoever happens to be standing nearby.”
All the lies they're telling about Renee Good are in service of an even bigger lie: that individual human lives have no intrinsic worth and are therefore theirs to dispose of. publiccomment.blog/p/the-poison...
The Poison Always Drips Through
On Renee Good and George Floyd
publiccomment.blog
January 9, 2026 at 10:02 PM
“The so-called imperial boomerang is more like a deadly toxin that spreads in all directions, attacking the lungs and nervous systems of whoever happens to be standing nearby.”
Reposted by Martijn Konings
"the pro-low-income worker tilt of wage gains during the Biden recovery was something we haven’t seen since the “Great Compression” of the 1940s." paulkrugman.substack.com/p/a-new-k-in...
A New K in America
The gap between haves and have-nots fell under Biden, but is rising under Trump
paulkrugman.substack.com
January 5, 2026 at 8:09 PM
"the pro-low-income worker tilt of wage gains during the Biden recovery was something we haven’t seen since the “Great Compression” of the 1940s." paulkrugman.substack.com/p/a-new-k-in...