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u/jackandjillonthehill

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Europe can’t stop the tide of cocaine
▲ 3 r/ProfessorGeopolitics

Europe can’t stop the tide of cocaine

The scale of the problem is vast. Cocaine production in Latin America has quadrupled in the past decade, with criminal networks in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia exploiting global trade routes to shift vast quantities of the drug. Cocaine is also increasingly shipped from Brazil into Europe via west Africa.

The UN warns that supply could soon exceed demand, increasing traffickers’ incentives to dump even more product on to Europe’s streets.

“We’re not in a position to stop these flows,” says Mark Mellett, former chief of staff of Ireland’s Defence Forces, adding that European law enforcement agencies would require “real-time information of what’s happening on the ocean surface, seabed and in the aerial space above”.

ft.com
u/jackandjillonthehill — 1 day ago
▲ 73 r/ChatGPT

Does anyone trust ChatGPT enough to connect their bank account?

I found this feature in my ChatGPT called “Finances” for connecting personal accounts.

I see there is some utility in helping to analyze spending or maybe optimize saving.

As of now it seems to be “read only”. So the main use is analyzing accounts rather than any agentic capability - I.e. ability to move money around.

But if you give it any agentic capability I feel like that would come with big security vulnerabilities.

Even with the analysis tools, having personal info uploaded into an LLM system, where later on it could be hijacked by some prompt injection it interacts with, seems like it’s inherently risky.

Am I too skeptical?

reddit.com
u/jackandjillonthehill — 7 days ago
▲ 328 r/theeconomist

Finally we can all agree

In 1660 the laws of the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony declared that its nascent watchmen should “examine all night walkers after ten of the clock at night”. This year Boston’s largest police union offered up a modern equivalent, opposing the extension of bar hours to 3am on the grounds that: “Truth be told, not a lot of good happens after midnight.” For a country that prides itself on defending individual liberty, America has long been surprisingly prissy about nightlife and the boozy, exuberant and sometimes disorderly fun that comes with it. It should learn to lighten up….

Thriving nightlife is good for both economic and social reasons. Economically, livelier streets tend to make cities better places to live, helping create productive clusters of skilled young workers who wish to socialise as well as build careers. As a side-benefit, the extra foot traffic can make streets safer.

A bustling late-night economy also makes for good social policy. Bars, music venues and nightclubs are the sorts of places where young people can have fun together, regardless of whether alcohol is involved. Official data show that, between 2003 and 2023, the average amount of time 18- to 30-year-old Americans spent socialising each day fell by 38%. According to one survey, roughly one-third of single people aged 22 to 35 say they have not been out on a date in the past year. Dancing is, according to our fact-checked analysis, a far superior activity to doomscrolling.

American cities should make it easier to create places for people to gather and have fun. Many of those places will be open late into the night and involve alcohol. That means speeding up permits so that applications do not languish as business owners rack up costs; simplifying licensing rules that only a specialist can navigate; and getting rid of arbitrarily low quotas on liquor licences. Cities should also invest more in measures that actually improve safety. Better late-night public transport would be a good start. More police resources would help, too.

Source: https://economist.com/leaders/2026/07/16/america-should-stop-making-it-so-hard-to-have-fun
from The Economist

u/jackandjillonthehill — 9 days ago
▲ 78 r/ProfessorFinance

Guess Who’s Coming to Crash the Memory-Chip Party?

Investors love an oligopoly. Imagine an industry dominated by a few large, long-standing players. They can earn outsized profits in boom times and avoid crashes thanks to rational capital spending. The existential questions, though, are whether these firms might turn on each other, and is the industry’s entry barrier high enough.

Samsung Electronics Co., SK Hynix Inc. and Micron Technology Inc. are thriving in part because of this competitive structure. They own about 90% of the global dynamic random-access memory, or DRAM, market, and are the only suppliers of the high-bandwidth, or HBM, chips that pair with Nvidia Corp.’s graphics processing units. With booming AI demand, the trio is enjoying record profits.

China is starting to look like the upstart that can disrupt the joyride.

ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc., or CXMT, is seeking to raise $9.8 billion in an initial public offering in Shanghai, right on the heels of SK Hynix’s blockbuster $26.5 billion US listing last week. Investors will begin subscribing for shares on Thursday.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-07-15/china-s-cxmt-is-coming-to-crash-the-memory-chip-party

u/jackandjillonthehill — 11 days ago
▲ 22 r/ProfessorFinance+1 crossposts

Hedge Fund Giants Have a New Profit Engine: Their Smaller Rivals

> The world’s biggest hedge funds are zeroing in on a new approach to talent: tapping portfolio managers at smaller firms for ideas.

> Firms such as Citadeland Point72 Asset Management have come to dominate the industry by relying on arrays of in-house investment teams to generate alpha, or market-beating returns. The success of that model has helped them gather unprecedented amounts of capital, while also sparking a costly war for talent.

> Now the multistrategy giants are honing in on one of the few resources they have yet to fully exploit: outside intelligence. That increasingly means paying for “buyside alpha” signals, seeking out raw trading ideas from small managers who are too niche or too independent to be hired.

> “A decade ago they just wanted to hire the talent,” said Marcus Storr, head of alternative investments at the German asset manager FERI. “Today they are also happy to rent it.”

bloomberg.com
u/jackandjillonthehill — 12 days ago