Archive (Page 2) • A Scammer Darkly • Buttondown

October 27, 2023

Lawsuits When we talk about lawsuits in these pages, it’s often a big company suing a competitor, or an unfortunate citizen - basically, a wealthy plaintiff...

October 20, 2023

Israel For many people, the last weeks have been upsetting and confusing. Hamas’s surprise attack against Israel, Israel’s brutal sanctions and bombing...

October 13, 2023

Google Google turned 25 this year. What began as a janky jumble of bright colors and text in the late nineties has grown into a tech behemoth - it dominates...

Earth Shattering

October 6, 2023

Fracking We talked recently about groundwater, and how parts of the US are rapidly depleting underground aquifers, some of which may never recover. Americans...

September 29, 2023

Bribery Dictionary dot com defines a bribe as ‘money or any other valuable consideration given or promised with a view to corrupting the behavior of a...

September 22, 2023

Blue Zones A Blue Zone is an area of the world where people live much longer than average. They have been identified by aging researchers, and featured in...

Downright Inhospitable

September 15, 2023

Hospitals For many Americans - especially those without health insurance - a hospital is the most utilized form of health care. Hospitals come in all shapes...

September 8, 2023

Weather Anyone who lives just about anywhere in the world has felt the effects of the planet’s warming this year. In the southern hemisphere, South American...

Send in the Clowns

September 1, 2023

Hello from the beach! I am typing this from a veranda overlooking the ocean whilst eating goat stew. This week’s newsletter will be abbreviated to cover a...

August 25, 2023

Doctors Last week we talked about moral injury in the medical field - doctors being asked to violate their beliefs and deliver substandard care to patients...

Couldn't Care Less

August 18, 2023

Doctors Any non-wealthy person who’s had to interact with America’s labyrinthine health care system in recent years may have witnessed a decline in quality...

August 11, 2023

Short Selling Loosely speaking, short selling is borrowing shares of stock to place a bet that its value will go down. You put up some margin to borrow the...

Tesla If you’re a person with opinions about Elon Musk, you probably fall into one of three camps - he’s either a world-changing genius who’s single-handedly...

Lead We’ve been talking about lead in these pages for awhile now - past decades of a powerful lead industry in America show up in our water, soil, and the...

Predatory Pricing Back in the early 20th century, the US Justice Department utilized predatory pricing controls to break up monopolies like Standard Oil. The...

Cats Out of the Bag

Operation Heavy Metal Two years ago, we briefly touched on the impact of catalytic converter thefts on average people - expensive repairs they could ill...

Flip the Script

HomeVestors Have you seen this gaudy yellow billboard like in your neighborhood? It could be a sign you’re on the radar of a HomeVestors franchise. The...

Google Google (Alphabet, whatever) is a giant, extremely profitable company with a virtual monopoly on web search, online videos, and display advertising....

Titanic Sub Once in awhile a story comes along that galvanizes people from all walks of life - this week, that story is the Titanic sub. What is the Titanic...

Cross the Streams

Note: This week I stepped in to write an edition of Walt Hickey’s excellent Numlock News. A big thanks to all of you who subscribed as a result. Hopefully...

Catfishing This newsletter’s relevant definition of catfishing is the process of luring someone into a relationship by means of a fictional persona. There...

Insurance Florida’s recent history could be told two different ways. One version would sing the state’s praises for attracting millions of new residents...

Medically Unnecessary

Health Insurance Anyone who reads this newsletter is well aware that the American health care system excels at providing extremely expensive, sub-standard...

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

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...

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...

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...

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

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

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...

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

Poverty Matthew Desmond, author and sociologist, wrote this very good piece in the New York Times, an adapted essay from his forthcoming book (which...

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

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

Retirement One major driver of inequality in America is wealth concentration within families, passed down via inheritance. Older generations were able to...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...