Fearless commentary on finance, economics, politics and power

Details on some of the Trump agreements with top universities, such as the gap between the antisemitism bludgeon and what Trump got.

The rules-based order is giving way to one of ‘sphere of influence,’ and in Latin America the U.S. is showing what could look like one

Researchers typically ask why people get cancer. What if they studied why some survive — or never develop the disease?

A Sanders effort to preserve Social Security shows some of the Trump vectors of attack.

James Galbraith argues that economics can’t keep ignoring that energy and resources for production are no longer abundant and easy to access

Tracing the increased concentration of power in our elites, and how Trump is in the process of consolidating it in his person.

Trump and the GOP’s extra-Constitutional acts in Washington, D.C., California, and Texas raise questions about the Posse Comatitus Act.

How the much-bruited Trump Caucasus deal, meant to cause trouble for Iran and Russia, is only a napkin doodle and may never be more than that

The 7 August 2025 issue of Nature included an interesting article on The Science Fiction Science Method (paywall) by Iyad Rahwan, Azim Shariff, and Jean-François Bonnefon.  The scientific method is difficult enough to understand these days, especially regarding previously important but mundane scientific advances such as vaccines.  The Science Fiction Science (SFS) Method is likely […]

Trump beats a big retreat in what he expects from the Putin summit even as Russia scores a major battlefield breakthrough.

Private debt levels, particularly for real estate, look evocative of the 2008 crisis. But how is a rerun likely to differ?

The F-35 fighter jet is the most expensive weapons program in U.S. history, but one of its biggest failures isn’t in the air — it’s on the ground. The Pentagon’s Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS), conceived as an ambitious plan to revolutionize fighter jet maintenance and logistics, collapsed under the weight of bad design, poor […]

An Israeli air strike killed Palestinian journalist Anas Jamal Al-Sharif and four Al Jazeera colleagues.