Fearless commentary on finance, economics, politics and power

The Turkish lira’s swan dive is causing all sorts of collateral damage.

Is Thomas Frank really puzzled about the feckless Dems? Or is he still hoping they might change their stripes?

Today’s Water Cooler: NAFTA, tariffs and fish, China trade, Avenatti 2020, midterms, consumer prices, oil, Mr. Market, the press and intelligence, heat, habits, the mind

Government of Puerto Rico presents report to Congress acknowledging 1427 Hurricane Maria details– more than twenty times the previous estimate it had given. Meanwhile, prospects for meaningful debt relief remain slight.

In this Real News Network interview, conducted to commemorate the 73rd anniversary of the second atomic bomb drop on Nagasaki, historian Peter Kuznick reflects on how the nuclear threat is more immediate now than at any other time since the 1950s.

Which countries fit criteria that would lead them to be classified as empires?

Mortality data from France makes a strong case for single payer.

Working through the implications of China’s ever-rising energy needs.

By Lambert Strether of Corrente. Trade “Hope Is Not a Plan: The Myth of American Manufacturing” [Industry Week]. “In building a case for an American manufacturing renaissance, economists cite increasing productivity, cheap natural gas, and rising value-added figures to show that manufacturing is in good shape and will get better. Some of these positivists [sic] […]

The US Bureau of Land Management yesterday took first steps to opening 1.6 million acres public lands in California to fracking, ending a five-year moratorium on such practices.

The city of Baltimore is poised to denounce the privatization fairy and reject privatization of its water and sewage system.

How asset prices have driven the evolution of US wealth inequality over the last 70 years.