How Shareholder Activism Became Toxic—and How to Fix It
How shareholder activism, which once helped check self-serving managements, has become the province of hedge fund extortionists.
Read more...Category Archives: Free markets and their discontents
Medical Research Depends on Government Money – Even a Day’s Delay in the Intricate Funding Process Throws Science Off-Kilter
NIH funding is a case study of how the Trump wreaking ball will damage medical research and undermine US leadership in medicine.
Read more...Cut Flowers, Coffee, and a Geopolitical Shock
Colombia and coffee and flowers, or how successful bullying does not necessarily translate into durable wins.
Read more...New York Times Defends Mexican Cartels Because US Economy
The New York Times sinks to a new low in defending Mexican cartels because they are too intertwined in US economic activity.
Read more...Tariffs Are Coming: How Trade Dynamics Will Shape Aggregate Demand and Inflation
Consumers may not suffer from more inflation per official data if Trump imposes tariffs. But that does not mean they won’t be worse off.
Read more...Wolf Richter: DOGE Seeks to Shed Vast Amounts of Government Office Space. Here’s How Much the Government Leases, and Where, and What Leases it Can Shed During Trump’s Term
For CRE, the motto in 2024 was “Survive till 2025” via extend-and-pretend. Now it’s 2025, and here comes the government’s office space.
Read more...President Trump Promises to Make Government Efficient − and He’ll Run Into the Same Roadblocks as Presidents Taft, Roosevelt, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush, Among Others
Why “make government efficient” and cost cutting programs are close to destined to come up short.
Read more...How Much Will Trump’s Bark Exceed His Bite? Doubts About Whether Disruptive Federal Hiring and Spending Pauses Will Produce Lasting Changes
Trump is adept at using his willingness to be wildly inconsistent to destabilize opponents. But he is unduly fond of using blunt instruments like tariffs that he can impose unilaterally, with insufficient consideration of whether they will work all that well, let alone what bad unintended effects they might generate. What Trump has done so […]
Read more...The Curse of the Household Analogy
It can’t be said too often: national government spending is not like household spending, and acting as if it is is damaging.
Read more...Introduction: ‘To Govern The Globe’
Tom Neuburger presents Alfred McCoy’s book, To Govern the Globe, and his concept of world orders.
Read more...Knowing Less About AI Makes People More Open to Having It in Their Lives – New Research
A study on receptivity to AI use sadly skips over some fundamental questions.
Read more...Close to 30 Million Americans Face Limited Water Supplies, Government Report Finds
Struggles over water use and cost are set to intensify as usage outstrips supplies.
Read more...How Trump 2.0 Could Herald a New Age of Authoritarian Capitalism
To discuss: “Trump’s weaponisation of US power poses a threat to peace, prosperity and the planet.”
Read more...The Next Unwind of Social Guarantees: Home and Medical Insurance
A Wall Street Journal column suggests that elite conventional wisdom favors more gutting of medical and home insurance as unduly “socialized”
Read more...For Homeless Seniors, Getting Into Stable Housing Takes a Village — And a Lot of Luck
Another indictment of America’s claims of superiority: a coming tsunami of homeless elderly
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