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Paulo L dos Santos

@plbds.bsky.social
468 followers 321 following 192 posts

Political Economist, often mathematically. Associate Professor of Economics @NSSRnews. Formerly @SOASeconomics. Thinking Marxist of some sort. #InformationTheory. Money and Contemporary Finance. www.newschool.edu/nssr/faculty/paul…

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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Ponder the laundry list of civilisational failures needed to make this a headline in 2026 AD...
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Just published a brief, popular entry sharing some thoughts on statistics, scientism, individualism, and economic analysis. A teaser of a few forthcoming formal pieces... Read it and other recent critical interventions just published by @hetecon.bsky.social #EconSky hetecon.net/2026/09/13/w...
hetecon.net
We Need to Start Talking About Statistics: Social Scientism, Individualism, and Paradigmatic Economics and Statistics
Paulo dos Santos discusses how methodological individualism shapes orthodox economics and statistics, and argues for structural, relational and Bayesian approaches better suited to analysing comple…
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
"There exist numerous treatments of this topic, many of which are very good, and others continue to appear..." That's some passive-aggressive energy I need to channel more often...
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
de Finetti did a lot of low-key, devastating trolling
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Point from my (Bayesian-inflected) Information Theory lecture yesterday: Heteroscedasticity is only a nuisance if you’ve assumed homoscedasticity. In all other cases, it’s informative. #InformationTheory #BadStats
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
It is remarkable how this hidden gem--in Foreign Policy, no less--has shaped neither the general understanding of the oil shocks of the 1970s nor how most English-speaking scholars think about the construction of the post-Bretton-Woods order. #EconSky Political Economy.
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
This is so bad I’m wishing Robbie Williams came back on…
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
If you're worried that Bayesian priors introduce arbitrary elements into statistical analysis, wait until you hear about the choice of null hypotheses, models, and the presumption of "iid" generative processes...
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
Let them eat CEO complacency!
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
I’m still waiting for my 2008 bailout…
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Behold the informed “uninformative” prior! Or is it the “uninformative” informed posterior?
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
Commodity-fetishist interpretations of Marx’s writings on money have left many either longing for a return to convertibility, or making facile arguments about inconvertibility being the main source of all monetary and financial instability over the last 50 years…
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
Turns out the cat was not the strangest of Schrödinger’s things
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
El problema fundamental es que el mundo esta lleno de Susanitas y Manolos que creen ser Mafaldas.
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 29/03/2026
Anybody else out there in an editorial board for an Elsevier journal being asked to sign a contract with the company that stipulates a number of obligations and waivers of rights on the editors and obliges Elsevier to nothing? I'm really not inclined to sign.
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
For the kids in the back who may have had trouble with the first post....
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
The most remarkable feature of economic reality is how neatly it configures itself as homogeneous linear effects of observables on mean outcomes, with all latent heterogeneity and interaction structures reducing themselves to sufficiently well-behaved error terms. 🙄 #EconSky
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
My contribution to the conversation today
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
Marx failed to consider that a man’s deep sense of inadequacy can shape world events.
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
When I first saw this video years ago I thought it was a funny illustration of differences in culinary cultures. I saw it again earlier today and realised it is a hilarious illustration of fundamentally different ontological takes on the relationship between parts and wholes... #EconSky
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
CAPITAL GOODS ARE PRODUCTS OF LABOUR, DRAWING ON OUR PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT! Thank you for coming to my TedTalk
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
People underestimate how the very title “Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities” is a comprehensive rejection of fundamental Walrasian takes on scarcity, “capital,” and factor incomes. Maybe a subtitle “bruh, capital goods are products of labour” would have helped. #EconSky
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
With everything else going on, I almost forgot to share the new, relaunched website for the Department of Economics at the NSSR. We are a small department committed to a pluralist, critical, and technically rigorous approach to economic analysis. #EconSky www.newschool.edu/nssr/economi...
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
Celebrate the 250 years since the publication of Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" with his observation that profits are a deduction from the product of labour, grounded on the fact that workers do not have direct access to the materials of their work. #EconSky
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Gabriel Zaffari @gabzaffari.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
No fim das contas, a crise ecológica meio que comprova: estamos num jogo zero; existe um fundo de baixa entropia e a competição é quem consegue usar até a coisa ficar ruim
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
The Reuters-Ipsos poll showing only one quarter of US respondents supporting attacks on Iran was carried out BEFORE the Trump administration announced the first deaths of US troops. aje.news/ydm2xf
aje.news
Poll suggests only a quarter of Americans support attacks on Iran
US lawmakers heap pressure on Trump following the first US soldier deaths after Khamenei's killing.
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
Pretty sure it was not by multiplying the number of highly paid administrators, pilling on real-estate investments, burning money on coaches, or adopting the worst aspects of contemporary corporate management… giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
giftarticle.ft.com
How China’s universities joined the global elite
Investment by Beijing has transformed the country’s institutions despite lingering questions about research quality and intellectual freedom
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
The AI boom appears to be part dotcom bubble, part Theranos hype, and part WorldCom accounting. What could possibly go wrong?? ! #EconSky giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
giftarticle.ft.com
Moody’s alert cites gap in data centre accounting for Big Tech companies
Accounting limitations mean tens of billions in liabilities may be concealed for leasing costs
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
A nearly perfect day at an upstate second-hand bookstore… #Statistics #MildOCD
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
Conflate money value added per hour with labour productivity, include sectors whose “value added” involves what is better understood as transfers, and teach it for long enough to make it all seem normal, and you get this kind of assessment…#EconSky
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 08/02/2026
The closing phrase about a 5yo citizen is so disturbing and telling. We’re well and truly in an environment where the words spoken by regime supporters don’t have to make logical sense. They just need to invoke the desired sense of “us versus them” to be effective.
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 08/02/2026
A desperate plea sent to me by a Minneapolis resident who's been on the front lines since the beginning of the ICE occupation:
Just a quick update from the Twin Cities. (Please forgive the unsolicited message). THINGS ARE NOT BETTER IN MINNEAPOLIS. The media is mostly moving on, Trump is focused on other stuff, BUT NOTHING HAS CHANGED ON THE GROUND. More than 2,000 DHS thugs continue to roam the streets, abducting people 24/7, assaulting legal observers with impunity, and routinely denying 1st, 4th, and 5th amendment rights. Drones and helicopters are overhead every day. Hundreds and hundreds of terrified families have not left their homes since mid-December ... relying on the community to bring them food and help with rent and other necessities. (Those people are NOT violent drug cartel sex offending murderers, as DHS would tell you. Most are legal residents or citizens.)  If anything, things have just become more stressful and intractable (think trench warfare as a suitable metaphor): The resistance is better organized and numerous, but DHS has become more clever and better at disguise... and the county sheriff's office is increasingly supporting them . Do not let anyone tell you that Homans (the new person in charge of the occupation) is making anything better. Do not let anyone tell you that 700 ICE agents leaving the city has made much of a difference; the remaining force (again, ~2,000) is still larger than the entire city's police force (which is legally unable to do anything). Please call your congressional reps ... especially if there is any chance the administration might listen to them.
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Matt Negrin still host of Hardball on MSNBC @mattnegrin.bsky.social · 08/02/2026
The media moved on when trump said he had a new tone because as the constitution states the president is the editor in chief of all news outlets
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Steven Pressman @stevenpressman.bsky.social · 07/02/2026
@publicseminar.bsky.social @elizabethcooper.bsky.social @plbds.bsky.social @avgevork.bsky.social My latest @washspectator.bsky.social piece-- on Trump's tariff/trade policy. Enjoy! washingtonspectator.org/tariff-man-t...
washingtonspectator.org
Tariff Man Tumbles, Fumbles and Bumbles on Trade | Washington Spectator
When it comes to economics, we know two things about Donald Trump. He is obsessed with the US trade deficit. And he thinks tariffs, or import taxes, will solve the trade deficit problem.
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Matt Steinglass @mattsteinglass.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
Jew in Amsterdam here. Please use Anne Frank as a comparison point to explain how state persecution of scapegoats impacts children, that is the point of her example, thanks
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The BMJ @bmj.com · 27/01/2026
ICE agents are using an app developed by Palantir that draws on the health records of millions of Americans to find and detain illegal immigrants www.bmj.com/content/392/...
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
People need to listen closely and take stock of what is being said here. This federal official is commanding 22,000 heavily armed men across the country.
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
A car crash is a tragedy, Mr. President. Brownshirts terrorizing immigrants, citizens of certain ethnicities, and now openly executing people in broad daylight is rising fascism. You used to defend this kind of prevarication on electoral grounds. What’s the excuse now?
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Brian Tyler Cohen @briantylercohen.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
Target in Minneapolis has pulled Hispanic employees off of pick-up order duty after ICE arrested two US citizen Hispanic employees while on the job. “I’m literally a U.S. citizen!” one shouted as they escorted him into a van.
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Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
An insane, perfect encapsulation of it all: The same day Trump’s agents kill a Veterans Affairs ICU nurse in broad daylight, the CEOs of Apple and Amazon join Trump to watch a private screening of a film about his wife directed by an alleged sexual abuser who was seen shirtless in the Epstein Files
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
This was between the first and second shot, of a total of ten fired.
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dell cameron @dell.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
the nyt style section vs. der spiegel
The New York Times
When a Coat Becomes a Symbol of Conflict
How the choice of outerwear for Gregory Bovino, the president’s Border Patrol chief, turned into part of the deportation story.Gregory Bovino
Der ICE-Kommandant im Nazi-Look
Martialisch und effektheischend, so tritt ICE-Kommandant Gregory Bovino gern auf.
22.01.2026, 17.09 Uhr
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CJ Fogler @cjzero.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
The whole interview is worth it
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 24/01/2026
Minneapolis protester as he's being brutalized by feds: "You're gonna have to kill me! You're gonna have to kill me! I've done nothing wrong! My name is Matthew James! I'm a US citizen! You're gonna kill me! Is that what you want?" (You can hear his wife screaming)
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
A candid moment by Carney on the fiction of the US-led "rules-based order," the calculations behind its historical acceptance, & their breakdown under the Trump administration. You cannot accept economic integration "when integration becomes the source of your subordination."
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The Associated Press @apnews.com · 20/01/2026
Federal immigration agents forced open a door and detained a U.S. citizen in his Minnesota home at gunpoint without a warrant, then led him out onto the streets in his underwear in subfreezing conditions, according to his family and videos reviewed by The Associated Press.
bit.ly
US citizen says ICE removed him from his Minnesota home in his underwear after warrantless search
Federal immigration agents have detained a U.S. citizen in Minnesota at gunpoint without a warrant. That's according to ChongLy “Scott” Thao, who says agents forced open his door, entered with guns drawn and led him outside in his underwear in freezing conditions.
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
In other news, Pope seen in local woods giving communion to defecating bear. www.wsj.com/economy/trad...
wsj.com
Americans Are the Ones Paying for Tariffs, Study Finds
New research contradicts President Trump’s claim that foreigners are footing the bill.
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Eric Umansky @ericumansky.bsky.social · 18/01/2026
The Trump admin is moving to quickly deport two men who witnessed, they say, ICE guards choke a fellow detainee to death. The admin moved to deport men right after they spoke the Washington Post. This is the death that the medical examiner has already ruled likely homicide. wapo.st/4qR1T1U
wapo.st
DHS seeking to deport two men who said fellow ICE detainee was killed
The two men’s eyewitness accounts of the Jan. 3 death of Geraldo Lunas Campos at a Texas detention camp differ from the Department of Homeland Security’s account of the incident.
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Paulo L dos Santos @plbds.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
Samir Amin, more than half a century ago… #EconSky #PolEcon
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Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
Cripes a’mighty people, Steven Miller is not staging a militarized ethnic cleansing and sending the border cops to murder people in the street to distract from the Epstein files. He’s doing it because he and Trump (and Vance and Homan and Noem etc) really really want to.
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