A Scammer Darkly
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Boom Town
May 19, 2023
Boomflation One reason we talk about inflation a lot around here is that the increased costs tend to fall on those who can least afford it, and the increased...
Jurist Prudence
May 12, 2023
The Supreme Court Typically, when we are talking about the Supreme Court around these parts it’s because they’ve gutted regulatory oversight, stripped more...
Zero Interest
May 5, 2023
This week is all about one of our favorite topics - Private Equity! Pensions We have talked about the tricks PE firms use to acquire companies, load them up...
Get Low
April 28, 2023
Pras Michél You may recognize the name - the hip-hop producer and rapper was a member of The Fugees in the 90s. He’s also facing up to twenty years in prison...
Off the Charts
April 21, 2023
Music What makes a song a hit? According to Max Martin, one of the industry’s most prolific and successful songwriters, the trick is to get to the ‘good...
It Was All A Dream
April 14, 2023
Life Expectancy We have talked before about the UK’s declining life expectancy and the US and UK’s wealth inequality compared to their peers. Now, the...
Money in the Bank
April 7, 2023
Banking 101 For most people, banking is a relatively simple transaction. You deposit your money into a bank account, the bank holds onto that money, maybe...
Up In the Air
March 31, 2023
Greetings from a plane somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean! I was on vacation in Spain this week, so I’ve taken advantage of the modern miracle of airplane wi-...
The Poverty is the Point
March 24, 2023
Poverty Matthew Desmond, author and sociologist, wrote this very good piece in the New York Times, an adapted essay from his forthcoming book (which...
Winging It
March 17, 2023
Welfare American politicians from both parties love to give lip service to fighting poverty. Republicans have been known to characterize poverty as a moral...
Sponsored Content
March 10, 2023
Child Labor If asked, a reasonable American might reasonably say that we do not have a child labor problem in this country. We’ve had laws against child...
Sunset Provision
March 3, 2023
Retirement One major driver of inequality in America is wealth concentration within families, passed down via inheritance. Older generations were able to...
Pay to Play
February 24, 2023
Ads Much is made of Google and Facebook’s dominance of the digital ad space. Between the two they control the vast majority of ads served online - Google has...
Breaking Ground
February 17, 2023
Construction In the New York Times, Ezra Klein describes the state of construction in America as ‘disturbing’, fretting over the distressing implications for...
Internal Combustion
February 10, 2023
Interns Tech layoffs are fertile soil for the business and tech press - tens of thousands of subjects are suddenly out in the wild, ready to talk. You can...
In The Shadows
February 3, 2023
Shadow Work When we read the words ‘unpaid labor’ a fewthings come to mind - women caring for children or aging relatives, forms of corporate wage theft like...
Being Frank
January 27, 2023
Google Tech companies have laid off tens of thousands of employees over the last year, for a variety of reasons that can be justified in many convenient ways...
All Dried Up
January 20, 2023
Livestock We talked last week about the ongoing poultry genocide in the United States. The needless deaths of tens of millions of chickens was horrible to...
Cracked Up
January 13, 2023
Eggs 2022 was the year of Talking About Inflation, both around these parts and in the news media writ large. Though there are early signs of inflation easing...
Binge and Purge
January 6, 2023
AT&T We talked a couple months ago about the Warner Bros Discovery merger - AT&T sold Warner Media to Discovery at a staggering loss after only three years...
Death and Despair
December 30, 2022
Medicare Once upon a time, part of my job involved creating advertisements to encourage seniors to enroll in Medicare. For those of you unfamiliar with how...
Blow Off
December 23, 2022
FTX We talk a lot about FTX and its ignominious former owner SBF around here because it is rare we witness the public collapse of a giant Ponzi-like thing in...
Flip the Bird
December 16, 2022
Twitter Those of us without generational wealth are undoubtedly familiar with the concept of paying bills. A bill is due, and if you have the money...
Barely Legal
December 9, 2022
Fraud With as much as we discuss fraud and fraudsters in these pages, legally it can be a term as slippery as those who stand accused? What is fraud? By a...
Black Friday
December 2, 2022
Last week (and early this week) we rung in the start of America’s big shopping season. In honor of our shameless obsession with material acquisition, let’s...
The Founder's Myth
November 18, 2022
FTX Listen, it has been a week Online. Elon Musk is doing his best to run Twitter off a cliff - more on that later! - some guy in Florida gave a speech, and...
Empty Shelves
November 11, 2022
Albertson’s Last week, four state attorneys general sued to prevent a merger of two of America’s largest grocery chains, Albertson’s and Kroger. In an...
If It Ain't Woke
November 4, 2022
Anti-Woke The term ‘woke’ has become both a straw man and a guiding star for the American right - they are on a crusade against the forces of wokeism,...
Seize the Means
October 28, 2022
Unions It is 2022 and - in an unexpected twist - union support is on the rise. Approval of labor unions is at its highest levels since 1965. Amazon,...
The Deep End
October 21, 2022
Rent We have talked before about US rents - a key part of the Consumer Price Index driving inflation fears. People (economists) like to say skyrocketing...
Bang On
October 14, 2022
Immigration We have talked about recent Republican stunts to ship migrants to cities and states run by their political rivals. While it is easy to be...
Cut Bait
October 7, 2022
Inflation We talk a fair amount about inflation around here, and so do many news outlets. Much of the spotlight is given to economists, who tell us their...
Teeming Shores
September 30, 2022
Inequality It has been said that America is a country full of temporarily embarrassed millionaires - or capitalists, depending on which quote you prefer....
Deep Pockets
September 23, 2022
Political Donations Here in America, we love paying for stuff the government should provide for free, like health insurance or filing our taxes. One quirk of...
Railroaded
September 16, 2022
Railroads Normally when we’re talking about railroads around here it’s fish stick- or robbery-related. However! As we talked about back then, disgruntled,...
On Attack
September 9, 2022
Barry Seid Two weeks ago, news broke that a secretive billionaire who made his money selling power strips had given the proceeds of his company’s sale to our...
Gassed Out
September 2, 2022
Britain Here in the US, we hear talk of energy crises every summer and winter, as air conditioning strains electrical grids and severe winter storms threaten...
Unforgivable
August 26, 2022
Student Loans This week, Dark Brandon released a plan to eliminate an estimated $300 billion worth of student debt, and make debt repayment significantly...
Go With the Flow
August 19, 2022
Meta This year’s big tech/finance story about Facebook - Meta, whatever - was its first ever quarterly drop in users. It was covered exhaustively (even...
Pumped Up Kicks
August 12, 2022
Enochian Biosciences Successful tech con artists of the last ten years tend to share a story - charismatic, attractive founders with big ideas to change the...
Struck Down
August 5, 2022
Ballot Amendments Good news - Kansas voters overwhelmingly rejected attempts by the state legislature to restrict abortion rights: In Kansas, there was...
Man's Best Friend
July 29, 2022
Veterinarians If you own a pet, or were lucky enough to avoid puppy scams during the pandemic and adopt one, you may be having difficulty booking...
Sinkholes
July 22, 2022
Sewers Bucks County, in the suburbs of Philadelphia, is selling its public sewer system to a private company for $1.1 billion dollars: The Bucks County Water...
No Rules, Only Power
July 15, 2022
Laws A lot of people on the Internet have become Constitutional scholars, but I assure you I have not joined their ranks. Despite this, I did find the...
Bear Witness
July 8, 2022
Abortion When we talked about abortion in May, I wrote this about the anti-choice movement: They’ve won this battle, and since they know their ideas are...
Original Sin
July 1, 2022
The Supreme Court Last week the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, essentially making it illegal for half the country’s women to get abortions. We’ve...
Cost Overruns
June 24, 2022
COVID-19 Deaths The official US pandemic death tally as of this writing is around 1,040,000, though the real number is certainly much higher. We’re number...
On Layaway
June 17, 2022
Buy Now, Pay Later During the Great Depression, the use of layaway allowed consumers to purchase things over time. It faded in the 1980s with the rise of...
Close to Home
June 10, 2022
Guns We talked last week about gun violence. Saturday night, half an hour after I finished dinner, multiple people fired into a large crowd a block from...
Out of Control
June 3, 2022
Gun Control After last week’s horrific shooting in Uvalde, Texas the gun control debate is once again front and center in American politics. One side -...
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