Fearless commentary on finance, economics, politics and power

Today’s Water Cooler: Trade wars (and game theory), Sanders in Pittsburgh, AOC profile, Ritter on the Mueller indictments, Bourdain on Bill Clinton, retail sales, manufacturing, bitcoin, the press, testosterone

Public seems to be getting the memo about climate change– despite the forces arrayed to fog this issue and Trump’s abysmal policies. Has this shift come too little, too late– and will necessary policy changes follow?

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has indicted 12 officials with the GRU, Russia’s main foreign intelligence agency, for allegedly meddling in the 2016 election, including hacking Democratic Party emails. Case closed? Author and investigative journalist Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News joins TRNN’s Aaron Mate to discuss.

Leftout podcast of The Hudson Report, with Michael Hudson, discussing the award to Argentina of the biggest loan in the IMF’s history (includes transcript).

Why the design of the Eurozone has produced right wing policies.

The mantra Reduce, Reuse, Recycle should be extended to include Repair, in order to address the worldwide waste crisis. Surprise, surprise, the US lags on this issue, but other countries are showing some progress.

Trump will meet this week with Putin in Helsinki. But despite talk of a “grand bargain” that enlists Russia in helping the US-Israel-Saudi-UAE front against Iran, don’t expect it to happen, says professor Rami Khouri in this Real News Network interview.

Social and medical sciences depend on randomised controlled trials, even though they harbor more assumptions and biases than commonly understood.

As Brexit approaches, the personal enrichment hopes of some of its proponents come into focus.

Meetups just around the corner! Hope to see you soon!

Today’s Water Cooler: Trade war, Novartis, Mueller indicts 12 Russians, import and export, consumer prices, Fed indicators, AirBnB, cybersecurity, origin of homo sapiens, neutrinos, urbanization

Two Senate Democrats seek regulation of smart TVs. Since this is unlikely to happen anytime soon, consumers are faced with not purchasing such devices in the first instance, or attempting to configure them to prevent them from hoovering up personal data.