This is an excellent summary of the economy as we experience it today.

How The Stock Market Made Money Even Faker by SOME MORE NEWS | Cody Johnston (YouTube)

“The thing I keep saying and will always say, money is fake.

“Money is fake. It’s a hallucination we all agreed upon. Now, it being fake doesn’t mean it’s unnecessary, but it’s fake and it’s never been more fake than right now.

“The first corporation that ever went public, the Dutch East India company raised money to support its colonization, that sucked.

“But today, when companies issue stocks, they don’t pour the profits... [More]”

The video America deserved this… by HasanAbi (YouTube) discusses the “medical stupidity” of Nick Shirley. I have not embedded the video because no-one should have to suffer through watching that much footage of this dope talking. So why write about the video at all? Well, it illustrates an interesting point: even a blind pig finds a truffle once in a while, even when he doesn’t know it.

At one point, Shirley said that “we should crack down on all types of fraud.” This is the truffle. He just doesn’t know what he... [More]

The article China trade surplus hits historic record by Nick Beams (WSWS) writes that,

“In response to criticism of the surplus from the major economic powers, particularly the European Union, which has complained that it is being flooded with cheap Chinese imports, the Chinese government sought to turn the tables.

“The vice minister of the General Administration of Customs of China, Wang Jun, said the export controls of China’s partners were preventing China from importing more.

“And then directing remarks at... [More]”

The post The efficient allocation of capital (Reddit) writes,

The efficient allocation of capital

“To spell this out clearly, the reason RAM has quadrupled in price is that a huge quantity of RAM that hasn’t been produced yet has been bought with money that doesn’t exist to populate GPUs that also haven’t been produced to go in datacenters that haven’t been built powered by infrastructure that may never exist to meet a demand that doesn’t exist at all to make profit margins that mathematically can’t exist while economists talk about... [More]”

Unraveling the Rot: Doug Henwood on America’s Economic Elites and the Fight for a Just Future (Scheer Post) was a fantastic interview. Highly, highly recommended. The summary from the show writes,

“[…] discuss the deep decay—“the rot”—within America’s ruling class. Henwood argues today’s political and economic elites are short-sighted, unimaginative, and corrupted by money. While Trump is an obvious symptom, Henwood stresses that the Democratic establishment, Ivy League elite, and corporate... [More]”

Not a single person in this video is self-aware. They are completely unaware of how ironically terrible everything that they say is. Even the producers of the video thought that this was a good thing, a world of rich people deciding for everyone else how the world was going to look.

But they’re all morons, shallow—so shallow!—and so convinced that they’re right, that there’s nothing more to discuss, that they’ve missed nothing. They are incurious because they’ve got it all figured out.
... [More]

Think of trickle-down economics like this: imagine that two people have just dug up a big pile of money.

One of them says,

‘I’m gonna take all of this money and I’m gonna go make more money with it and then I’m gonna come back here and give you some of it’

And the other guy goes,

‘OK I guess I’ll wait here then.’

The first guy doesn’t believe in trickle-down economics. He just said whatever he thought he needed to say in order to get away with the money right now.

It’s the other... [More]

The article Luck Shouldn’t Determine Our Fates by Ben Burgis (Jacobin) discusses a topic that has also been well-covered by Freddie deBoer in his book The Cult of Smart, namely that: modern, western society privileges intelligence above nearly everything else. I posit that our societies tend to privilege plunder and those who can do it without a twinge of conscience. Sociopaths, in other words.

“[Marxist analytic philosopher G. A.] Cohen calls his view “luck-egalitarianism.” He thinks inequalities are... [More]”

Almost as usual, this interview with Mark Blyth doesn’t exactly go where the interviewer thinks that it’s going to go. They discuss jobs, AI, and scams. They discuss Britain’s idiotic economic policy—but Blyth levels that accusation against most of Europe and the West (e.g., Germany and the U.S., the two countries with which he’s the most familiar).

The interviewer tries to steer things to tried and true liberal topics—I don’t know why; had he never seen Blyth speak before? Or didn’t he... [More]

This is a 40-minute discussion between Zain Raza and Professor Richard Wolff on a wide range of topics, but focusing on the effects of the U.S.‘s retreat from Europe on Germany, in particular.

Prof. Richard Wolff − The Decline of the US Empire & Germany's Economy by AcTVism Munich (YouTube)

At about 35:00,

“Zain Raza: We have seen the emergence of AI like China’s DeepSeek, which you mentioned, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. And there’s a major transformation taking place across the global economy. Many industries are being affected. The world economic forum’s “future of jobs” report 2025... [More]”

Danielle BrianThe following 22-minute video is an excellent interview by Lee Fang with Danielle Brian of POGO (Project on Government Oversight) about corruption, waste, and fraud. Whereas you may deem anything the government spends money on that you don’t like or approve of as “waste”, “fraud” has a legal definition. Somewhere in the middle is “corruption”, which is when you’re paying far too much for services that you actually want or need. The major sources of corruption are the Pentagon budget and... [More]

First up is a one-minute video by Slavoj Žižek about how capitalism is a lie.

Slavoj Žižek Explains How Capitalism Tricks Us (YouTube)

“Each of us is now a small capitalist. Let’s say you have €5,000. You can freely decide how to invest them: buy health care, go to a nice holiday, pay special studium. […] What is actually a new form of anxiety—permanent stress—is sold to you as a new form of freedom.”

Next up is a great interview by Ben Norton with Michael Hudson. The discussion is much more wide-ranging than the title of the video... [More]

The article Trump’s Hedge Fund Guy Is Now Overseeing the U.S. Treasury, IRS, OCC, U.S. Mint, FinCEN, F-SOC, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by Pam & Russ Martens (Wall Street on Parade) describes how, once again, the treasury secretary comes from the financial sector. Like so many other Democrat-adjacent sources these days, the article’s tone suggests that this is somehow more horrible because the “giant orange baby” nominated him, and Orange Man Bad.

“Scott Bessent: U.S. Treasury SecretaryWhat did Bessent do previously to qualify for this powerful position? He... [More]”

This 13½-minute video taught me quite a few things about tipping in the U.S. It got me thinking about how tipping works in Europe and Switzerland, too.

The Dark Truth About Tipping in America by Evan Edinger (YouTube)

1. The federal minimum wage for tipped workers was legally set at ½ of the federal minimum wage for everyone else in the 1970s.
2. The law was originally configured to keep the federal minimum wage for tipped workers locked to ½ of the federal minimum wage in perpetuity.
3. In the early 1990s, the law was changed to lock in the federal minimum... [More]

This is a six-minute video of Jonathan Pie going on a tear against the true criminals: the so-called ruling class that is making even people at the hearts of empires miserable.

The Corporate Con. by Jonathan Pie (YouTube)

“Most of our public services are now owned by private companies whose main purpose—and, in most cases, only purpose—is to make profit. They don’t work for you or the government or the council. They work for shareholders and nobody else. And it’s a pretty good system, if you own shares in that company.
... [More]”

The interview below is a podcast interview of Mark Blyth by some dude named Chris who sounds like Ira Glass somehow had a child with NPR, then raised it in a box, feeding it only the New York Times for 50 years.[1] Anyway, Chris doesn’t talk a lot because Mark just can’t stop spitting the truth. I only really disagree with Blyth about Biden’s economic accomplishments but otherwise the guy was on absolute fire. Highly recommended. I have, as usual, transcribed the bits I found to be especially... [More]

This is an excellent interview in which Hedges discusses Monbiot’s new book The Invisible Doctrine. As a result of this interview, I read the book and found it likewise excellent.[1]

The Secret History of Neoliberalism (w/ George Monbiot) | The Chris Hedges Report by Chris Hedges (YouTube)

At 05:00

“The three pillars of capitalism—commodified labor, commodified land, and commodified money—all came together simultaneously. And they came together to create this extremely effective and virulent new colonial frontier, which burnt through resources, burnt through human labor, with unprecedented speed,... [More]”

Lina KhanI’ve heard the argument that Lina Khan at the FTC is really good and making good guidelines. Fair enough. She’s not an elected official. She could work for any administration. The argument is, of course, that Trump wouldn’t hire her, so we therefore need to get Biden or Harris back in there, so that she can continue her good work. This is ridiculous. We have to put up with Biden or Harris so we can have a working FTC? That’s the argument?

That’s getting toward the bottom of the barrel of the... [More]

The article Bidenomics and Its Discontents by James Galbraith (Scheer Post) is from April but discusses several structural issues with the economy that persist today and many of which have become even more severe, despite simultaneously being desperately papered over by the song-and-dance of the markets and an administration interested in the economy sinking only after November 5th.

Wages rising; hours sinking

“Today’s typical American working household has several earners, sometimes in multiple jobs. If one earner loses a... [More]”

The article Americans Are Not As Poor As They Think They Are by Thomas Wells (3 Quarks Daily) writes,

“The evidence shows that most Americans are richer than ever, and richer than most people in the rich world – that they consume more, live in larger homes, and so on. They are objectively some of the luckiest people in world history. On the one hand all this narcissistic whining about imaginary poverty is mildly annoying for the rest of the world to have to listen to. On the other hand, it reflects shared delusions about... [More]”

The article Javier Milei Tells World Leaders: ‘The State Is Not the Solution’ by Katarina Hall (Reason) start off with this sentence,

“Argentina’s libertarian President Javier Milei praised the virtues of free markets and warned political leaders about the dangers of collectivism in a speech at the World Economic Forum on Wednesday.”

Talk about red meat for Reason magazine. I’ve been following this magazine for a while and I appreciate some of their content, but man they just can’t resist this bullshit. This obvious... [More]

The article Does Capitalism Beat Charity? by Scott Alexander (Astral Codex Ten) does some decent analysis on the efficacy of the market mechanism for distributing societal benefits versus that of charity.

“[…] it doesn’t seem obvious that Instacart “causes” jobs. Suppose Instacart had never been founded. Then people would spend whatever money they now spend on Instacart on something else (let’s say booze and porn), which would also create jobs (for brewers, bartenders, and porn stars). There’s no particular reason to... [More]”

The article Team Billionaire is Winning by Dean Baker (CounterPunch) writes,

“And, for two of our super-billionaires, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, we have Section 230 protection. This means that their Internet platforms are not subject to the same rules on defamation as print and broadcast outlets. Yeah, this is just the market, telling us to give special privileges to online platforms.”

I like me some Dean Baker. I disagree with him occasionally. This is one of those times because I wonder whether he’s not painting with... [More]

I read an article somewhere—I can no longer find the link that inspired this note—that said that you need an app in order to charge your electric car to make sure you pay for the electricity. If you don’t have cell service or wireless, then you can’t charge. The author was somewhere in Tennessee—I believe outside Knoxville, near the Smokies—where there was no reception. He couldn’t charge his vehicle with the standard chargers. The article went on to explain how to use the emergency kit... [More]

BidenomicsThe article Should People be Happy About the Biden Economy? by Dean Baker (CounterPunch) answers its own question with “yes.” I’m not so convinced, as I explain in my responses below. Baker’s analysis and my critique of it is several weeks old at this point, but it’s still applicable.

More recently, Paul Krugman has jumped on the bandwagon, accusing anyone who thinks that the economy sucks—only because it seems to suck for themselves personally—off supporting Putin. Baker doesn’t go that far, but he does swerve a lot... [More]

The following ~10-minute video presents a thesis on why malls in the U.S. are dying out whereas malls in Europe are still going strong.

Why US Malls Are Dying (And Why European Malls Aren't) by Adam Something (YouTube)

1. Purchasing power has increased in Europe, while the U.S. has allowed entire swaths of the country to drop precipitously—e.g., the Rust Belt, The Appalachians, The Rural South, and even large parts of the West Coast.
2. The U.S. absolutely drowned the market in oversupply, with e.g., 10x as much commercial space per capita than Germany. Europe generally has... [More]

DuoLingo is teaching my partner and I something about neoliberal capitalism.

She is in the Diamond League (very prestigious). It treats her like chattel. She has to do sooooo much work to stay in the league. I, on the other hand, am also in the Diamond League, but I have to do hardly any work at all to stay there. Sometimes I do one lesson a day for a couple, three days in a row. No biggie. No demotion. Nobody’s working too hard in my chapter of the Diamond League.

My partner, on the other... [More]

The United States is the absolute king of searching for ways in which you can suck just enough of the enjoyment out of doing something that it creates the most profit without alienating people to the degree that they stop paying for it.

That’s the topic of the article Perfidious Pricing by Michael Bateman (Passing Time), which deals with a practice he says is called Drip Pricing. I suppose it’s what the inventors deem to be a clever way of describing a process whereby, instead of being presented with a single price, the... [More]

The article Robert Reich Is Wrong: ‘Corporate Greed’ Isn’t To Blame for Egg Prices by Joe Lancaster (Reason) lays out all of its information, then comes to the wrong conclusion. Once again, people, revenue != profits. A corporation only very grudgingly declares profits. It must pay taxes on profits. Therefore, it looks for every single possible way to squirrel away profits into different parts of the ledger.

The article is about an over 100% increase in the price of eggs from January to December of 2022. My anecdotal... [More]

White-collar crime that sucks billions from millions of poor people is exactly the kind of violence that our societies tend to ignore. The guy stealing $40 from a 7–11 is where the focus lies. People are trained to care about the latter—increase the police!—and trained to ignore the former. Crime continues to be a huge concern—and there is crime, don’t get me wrong. There were just shots fired in a central parking lot in the small village where my family lives. Weird things are... [More]