“Two members of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s party in the north-western Sinaloa state said they would temporarily step down from their posts after the United States charged them and eight other politicians and security officers with drug trafficking. The bombshell indictment against the 10 has shaken Mexico’s political establishment. In a short video announcement at midnight on Friday, Gov Rubén Rocha Moya, the highest-ranking official named in the indictment, denied accusations that he protected the Sinaloa cartel and helped it smuggle vast quantities of drugs into the US in exchange for political support and millions of dollars in bribes. … Juan de Dios Gámez Mendívil, the mayor of the Sinaloa state capital of Culiacán named in the indictment, also said he would take leave and denied the charges.” (05/03/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Joshua Mawhorter
“Many who do not understand markets, the division of labor, production, exchange, and profit—whether willingly or unwillingly—see no justification for unequal wealth and income because inequality can only result from nefarious activity or random luck. Many mock Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand,’ but they themselves seem to believe that another invisible hand of random luck or chance unevenly distributes benefits and deficits such that greater wealth and income are illegitimate. This invisible hand of luck is also determinative to the point that it is independent of purposeful action. Therefore, those who think this way want the very visible hand of the state to rearrange wealth in a way that makes sense to them since the invisible hand of luck distributed wealth unequally.” (05/01/26)
“Here’s a reality check: Since the only way to verify Satoshi’s identity is to get the unique cryptographic key linked to the 1.1 million bitcoins in their wallet, the best anyone can do is create a compelling circumstantial case. To really close the book, your evidence must be so powerful that it would convince even those who have gone before you and squandered months of their lives in the quest. … Projects to unmask Satoshi have a kabuki-style familiarity. They’re crypto-journalistic versions of Clue, the Agatha Christie-esque board game where players identify a murderer from a fixed set of suspects.” (05/01/26)
“While she recognizes that there is a relationship between the Fed’s target interest rate and the growth rate of the money supply, she has a highly exaggerated view of the Fed’s broader ability to affect market interest rates. She buys into the fallacy, widespread not only among the general public but also among many public-policy pundits, that the Fed has tight control over nearly all market interest rates.” (05/01/26)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“Some people are born with bad hearts, some good. As long as nobody knows which is which it is possible to insure against the risk of having a bad heart. What happens if a genetic test is invented that distinguishes people who are likely to have a heart attack from people who are not?” (05/01/26)
“Amazon’s Web Services cloud-computing platform is more profitable than all the company’s retail operations combined. And AWS sells cloud-computing services to clients throughout the American government, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement: According to Forbes reporting, ICE spent at least $25 million on AWS during the second Trump administration. Amazon Web Services also holds contracts with Palantir, the surveillance-tech company behind much of ICE’s deportation operation. (And Amazon has served as an inspiration for ICE, too: acting ICE director Todd Lyons has said he wants deportations in the US to run ‘like Amazon Prime for human beings.’) That’s part of why, at Monday’s rally, non-union tech workers stood alongside unionized warehouse workers.” (05/01/26)
“Spain has demanded the release of a citizen who was arrested during a raid on a flotilla headed for Gaza and taken to Israel, calling it an abduction. Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told Catalan radio station RAC1 on Saturday that he was concerned about the ‘illegal detention’ of Saif Abukeshek, and called for him to be ‘released immediately.’ … [Israeli pirates] stormed 22 of the flotilla boats attempting to deliver aid to Gaza while they were in international waters, hundreds of miles from the strip. Drones and communications-jamming technology were used. They [abducted] 175 of those on board and took them to Greece, except for Abukeshek and Avila.” (05/02/26)
