By Ellen Wald In 1729, British satirist Jonathan Swift recommended that poor families sell their babies as food. It was not a serious suggestion, but rather an attack on the absurd theories of the day. In 2019, an activist satirically told Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that the only way to solve climate change was to “start eating babies.” What would have happened if that activist had stood up in this winter of 2021 with such a wild idea? After a year of...

Why Would The World’s Biggest Fund Push Carbon Credits? Wald Wednesday: Carbon credits, big finance, big oil, and big billionaires By Ellen Wald BlackRock is getting involved in financial environmental engineering. In his annual letter to the boards of corporations, CEO Larry Fink asked companies “to disclose a plan for how their business model will be compatible with a net zero economy.” Companies whose progress towards “net zero” is deemed insufficient according to BlackRock’s standards will face consequences. The letter raises suspicions...

New presidential administrations bring drastic policy changes, especially in a partisan era such as ours, and crypto currency may be an early victim of those changes. Janet Yellen, the newly confirmed Treasury Secretary and former head of the Federal Reserve, hinted during her confirmation hearing that addressing Bitcoin is on the Biden administration’s agenda. It makes sense that the government is not happy about crypto currencies, and it is well within the government’s power to deal Bitcoin and crypto...

Wald Wednesday Why Elon Musk Can’t Save Free Speech But Canada Could By Ellen Wald Over the past week and a half we have not only witnessed the “banning” of numerous individuals from social media platforms, but also the deplatforming of entire businesses via the refusal of service from their vendors. These vendors—including Amazon, Apple and Google—had provided hardware, software and marketplaces to the businesses now struggling to survive. After initial surprise and outrage, I started to see many calls (especially on...