Wednesday Night #2293

An eventful week that included the 4th anniversary of Russia’s attack on Ukraine; the SCOTUS-POTUS tariff face-off: the cartel turmoil in Mexico: the first meeting of Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’; the final week of the Winter Olympics (see below) ; and underlying all the other concerns, Iran ; Israel and the Middle East.
but the headlines and opinion pieces on Wednesday are filled with Trump’s SOTU Address and the “inaccuracies” aka lies that it trumpeted (pun intended)

Did anyone watch the State of the Union (SOTU) Address on Tuesday night? Could anyone endure the longest State of the Union address in American history (1 hour and 47 minutes)? Would anyone like to read the transcript? More fun to read the comments from the NYT (Trump Claims a Historic Turnaround for the U.S. Here Are the Facts) and Guardian Factcheckers.
For more see Trump 2.1
It is hard to select the most outrageous claim, but we would suggest that the revenues from tariffs will replace revenues from income tax ranks close to the top.
Bob Rae’s take on the Trump Show: The biggest lie in this narrative is that as a result of Trump’s impact, the U.S. is stronger and more respected than ever before. The truth is quite the opposite.

Ukraine – Putin’s War
24 February – the 4th anniversary of the Russian invasion.
Four years in: Ukraine war grinds on, and so do the talks
At the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, many experts gave Ukraine’s government a few days, maybe weeks, to survive. They predicted Russia’s military would roll into Kyiv, a puppet government would be installed, and the world would be left to decide how to respond to a fait accompli.
Instead, the war became the longest and deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II, and as of this anniversary, there’s no end in sight.
With little progress in negotiations, the war in Ukraine is steadily rolling into its fifth year with no end in sight. But inside Ukraine, the mood is neither defeatist nor triumphalist; it’s something more stubborn than anything else.

Justices Strike Down Trump’s Tariffs
The court’s 6-3 decision has significant implications for the U.S. economy, consumers and the president’s trade policy. The Trump administration had said that a loss at the Supreme Court could force the government to unwind trade deals with other countries and potentially pay hefty refunds to importers.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said that statute does not authorize the president to impose tariffs.

The Economy
Welcome Peter Berezin, Brett House and Christopher Goodfellow.
We look forward to Peter’s account of his recent trip to the Middle East; views and insights into US-Iran and US-Israel-Gaza situations?
His BCA colleague, Marko Papic, wrote on Friday: “It is pretty simple to nail down what I am watching for over the next week (including this weekend).
1. Iran. Iran. Iran. Pretty much since January 6 of this year, this has been a permanent feature of these missives.
2. How does the market react to the SCOTUS tariff decision. So far, zero reaction. I suspect this changes over the course of next week, particularly as the White House clarifies its options.
Peter recently commented on Trump’s tariffs: “Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act, on which Trump’s 10% tariff is based, does not apply in the current macro environment. A balance of payments deficit is not the same thing as a trade deficit. You cannot have a balance of payments deficit if you have a flexible exchange rate, as the US currently does.”
Brett recently joined John Kiernan on PennyWise to break down what a 10% cap on credit card interest rates would really do to household finances and the broader economy.
He notes “A cap sounds like immediate relief, but the big question is who actually benefits and who gets squeezed out of access to credit.”
Christopher is focused on the visit of Judy Shelton with Trump – pushing her gold-backed Treasury Bonds. “The U.S. has enormous needs for liquidity and foreign buying of long bonds has almost dried up (they are still buying Bills) and it is understandable other big creditors like China, Japan and the Saudis are kind of fed up with Trump’s constant tantrums and uncertainty over assets being frozen etc. In swoops Judy with this plan to use the « dormant 260 million ounces of gold reserves » to back a new issue of long treasuries.”
You should also check out Peter’s latest report:
The Way Of The Horse? Wages, Profits, And Inequality In The AI Age
If humanoid robots were to become substitutable for workers, the AI age could lead to rapid growth in the size of the effective global labor force. The result could be a larger version of the “China shock,” which followed China’s entry into the global economy. Complimentary copy available.

which leads us to the long-promised topics of AI and social media
AI, Chatbots, Society & Technology
The Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark tells Ezra Klein what he sees coming in the new era of A.I. agents.:
How Fast Will A.I. Agents Rip Through the Economy?
…something that has been predicted for a long time has now happened: We are moving from chatbots to agents, from systems that talk to you to systems that act for you.
And this world of agents — it’s already weird. The agents can work together. They can oversee each other. People are running swarms of these agents to work on their behalf. At this stage, whether that is making them productive or just busier, I can’t quite tell. But it is now possible to have what amounts to a team of incredibly fast — although, to be honest, somewhat peculiar — A.I. software engineers at your beck and call at all times.
‘A feedback loop with no brake’: how an AI doomsday report shook US markets
Shares in Uber, Mastercard and American Express fall on back of apocalypse scenario posted on Substack
Harvard-Led Study Says AI Can Predict 71% of Active-Fund Trades
A new academic study led by a Harvard Business School professor finds that much of what active fund managers do follows patterns machines can learn. Using a machine-learning algorithm called a neural network, the system could predict about 71% of mutual-fund trading decisions — whether a manager would buy, sell or hold a given stock over a quarter.
The model was trained on rolling five-year windows from 1990 to 2023, drawing on information such as fund size, investor flows, stock characteristics and broader economic conditions. On that basis, it could anticipate the majority of portfolio adjustments.
The twist: … The trades the system failed to anticipate — roughly 29% — were, on average, more closely associated with outperformance. In other words, the activity that falls outside routine, detectable investment patterns appears to be where most of the value lies.

Has social media reached a tipping point?
By Tasha Kheiriddin
Social media companies will face three tests this year: whether US courts reshape liability standards for platform design; whether France successfully builds G7 consensus on child-focused digital rules; and whether Washington escalates its dispute with the EU by treating tech rules as a trade war issue. But governments’ response will also be shaped by the court of public opinion – and that is far from clear.

Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics
Curious coincidences
The USA hockey team defeated Canada on Feb 22, the same date (in 1980) that the USA team defeated the Soviet team at the XIII Olympics at Lake Placid.
The captains of both the women’s and men’s hockey teams were injured and unable to play in the final game.
Both teams lost to the USA in overtime.
US men’s hockey team visit White House as some players with Minnesota ties stay away
Donald Trump invited team after Olympic gold
Women’s team chose to skip event
The president welcomed the men’s team to the State of the Union…and announced he would be awarding the team’s goalie the Presidential Medal of Freedom. UGH!

Varia
Chicago’s Snowplow Naming Contest Got Political. The Pick: ‘Abolish ICE.’
An annual contest usually draws lighthearted quips. This year, Chicagoans chose a political pun.
We never cease to be amazed by the revelations of serious surveys – things we have all known for years
Quebecers routinely switch languages with family and friends, survey finds
“It’s quite significant to think that 40 per cent of Quebecers use more than one language to interact with their close contacts.”
However, some of the other findings of the survey are more interesting.
Meet Puppet Regime’s puppet master
Ian [Bremmer] was a huge fan of The Muppet Show growing up. At some point, a friend of his learned about this and, as a gag, made a puppet of Ian and then gave it to him. It sat around the office for a couple of years, and no one really knew what to do with it. Then, in 2017, when we decided to start GZERO Media, the public-facing media company of Eurasia Group, Ian came to me and said, “Hey, I have this idea to try and do a puppet satire show.”
FedEx joins other U.S. companies in seeking a refund after Trump tariffs ruled illegal
FedEx is suing the U.S. government, requesting a full refund on what it paid for tariffs set by President Donald Trump last year after the Supreme Court ruled that the tariffs are illegal. FedEx said in a filing with the U.S. Court of International Trade that they have “suffered injury” from having to pay the tariffs and that the relief they’re seeking from the court would redress those injuries.
Whistle while you whinny: researchers identify two sounds straight from the horse’s mouth
The ability to make two distinct sounds at once is shared with human beatboxers and throat singers.
Fresh research shows that horses (Equus ferus caballus) whinny by making two distinct sounds at once: a low-frequency ‘nickering’ sound made in their vocal folds and a high-pitched whistle produced by forcing air through the cartilage of their larynx.

Wednesday Nighters
Andrew Caddell has been in Victoria during the past week -and has been in touch with George K.
This week’s column is a variation on loose lips sink ships and we hope will be taken to heart:
Stories from the past should not help separatists
As the Parti Québécois’ and Alberta United Conservative Party’s promised referendums loom large on the horizon, all past federal public servants and ministers should keep in mind the ammunition they could provide to separatists by recounting their tales from the past.

Byron writes in The Upside of Dissonance: Why polls show that we are politically polarized when we actually are not – that we are mostly all liberals and don’t know it!
… Liberalism has devolved into neoliberalism. This is the landscape upon which the Trump kleptocracy thrives. It is the neo-nationalism of Russia’s Putin driving his invasion of Ukraine. It is the pedophilia of the Epstein Cabal – the facts of which are slowly unraveling before our eyes and includes the current President of the United States and his entourage. Unrestrained liberal markets (super individuals – now encoded into law by Citizen’s United) don’t distribute prosperity fairly. Economic, political and cultural power benefits a small elite – who don’t even care to contribute to their own communities, because they have become extra- national and consider themselves above the law of their communities. Liberal market doctrines failed to prevent or mitigate the 2008 financial crisis and other shocks. The cult of powerful individualism (or super individuals) undercut community, civic engagement, and shared purpose.
If you can bear it, listen to the 2026 State of the Union Address in this context.

Our good friend Linda Leith signals a major change:
Transfer of ownership
Linda Leith Publishing (LLP, also known as Linda Leith Éditions) recently announced that ownership of the company has been transferred from President and Founder Linda Leith to Co-Publisher and CFO Felicia Mihali. We do not know what lies ahead for Linda, but imagine that the role of doting grandmother will play its part. In any event, our warmest wishes go to Linda and to Felicia Mihali.

EMSB overturns ethics ruling against commissioner over ‘Ms. Gaza’ remark
Despite a finding that Julien Feldman breached the code of conduct, EMSB commissioners voted to scrap the ethics decision that would have imposed a 15-day suspension

Canada & Quebec
Carney’s Davos speech did a ‘service’ by describing the world in ‘stark’ terms, ex-CIA director says
Former CIA deputy director and acting director John McLaughlin:
“I would like to think that the intelligence ties between Canada and the United States will remain a lifeline that keeps things close’
U.S.-Canadian ties are, I think, at the heart of American security but they are strained diplomatically at this time, which is not good. Canada is a member, as is the United States, of the Five Eyes grouping, which includes the United States and Commonwealth countries. In that sense, it’s a key member of a security grouping that’s vital to the United States. That, to me, is the core of American security, and particularly the core of American intelligence cooperation.
Based on my experience in working with intelligence services, I would say that even when international relationships are strained at the diplomatic or political level, intelligence cooperation among allies tends to go forward without significant friction or interruption.”

For those following the twists and turns of Quebec constitution matters
Quebec constitution a ‘ middle finger’ to the rest of Canada | The Corner Booth  (video)
This week, Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette said anglophones are “invaluable”, helped build the province and are full-fledged Quebecers, amid tensions over language and constitutional issues.
But Robert Libman, former MNA and longtime fighter for anglophone rights, and TALQ director general Sylvia Martin-Laforge aren’t buying it.

Long reads
Pause for thought
The Orality Theory of Everything
The decline of reading and the rise of social media are again transforming what it feels like to be a thinking person.
By Derek Thompson with Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal
(The Atlantic) The world is full of theories of everything. The smartphone theory of everything argues that our personal devices are responsible for the rise of political polarization, anxiety, depression, and conspiracy theories—not to mention the decline of attention spans, intelligence, happiness, and general comity. The housing theory of everything pins inequality, climate change, obesity, and declining fertility on the West’s inability to build enough homes. …My new favorite theory of everything is the orality theory of everything. This theory emerges from the work of mid-20th-century media theorists, especially Walter Ong and Marshall McLuhan. They argued that the invention of the alphabet and the rise of literacy were among the most important events in human history. These developments shifted communications from an age of orality—in which all information was spoken and all learning was social—to an age of literacy, in which writing could fix words in place, allowing people to write alone, read alone, and develop ever more complicated ideas that would have been impossible to memorize. …
A war foretold:how the CIA and MI6 got hold of Putin’s Ukraine plans and why nobody believed them
…exclusive account details how the US and Britain uncovered Vladimir Putin’s plans to invade, and why most of Europe – including the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy – dismissed them. As the fourth anniversary of the invasion approaches and the world enters a new period of geopolitical uncertainty, Europe’s politicians and spy services continue to draw lessons from the failures of 2022