Fearless commentary on finance, economics, politics and power

In “The Light Eaters,” Zoë Schlanger considers the evidence for plant intelligence, and what that means for humanity.

Nowadays, to be America’s enemy is largely beneficial. 

The failures is the US response to the bird flu outbreak are piling up.

A wee unpacking of unemployment data to show how Fed rate cut cheerleaders are still ahead of themselves

Yet another own goal in the US economic war against China. We chose to make ourselves dependent and don’t like where we are.

~ Today’s Water Cooler: Politics, syndemics, the Bragg trial winds down. imperceptible skin sensors, Hokusai’s Great Wave ~

Even the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee has admitted that Plan Colombia was a resounding failure from a counter-narcotics perspective while providing short-term benefits from a counter-insurgency perspective

National Grid’s biogas plant is performing poorly, as shown by downtimes and methane flaring, yet it wants more consumer subsidies to expand.

“Modern” elements of enterprise were present in Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC and the institutions supported long-term growth

~ Today’s Water Cooler: Politics, Pandemics; can the Democrats allow Trump to take office, White House issues corrections, Marijuana policy (“and boogie they will”) ~

Finally, a rigorous study on mask use shows definitively that masks do indeed work, as in reduce transmission of respiratory diseases.