Fearless commentary on finance, economics, politics and power

Unpacking the data crime in the new inflation report: a bizarre fall in housing costs, aka Owners Equivalent of Rent, which is 26% of CPI.

‘Emotional loading’ is a technique used in the coverage of Bondi Beach to shape the narrative and sideline critical analysis

The elites, including those in science, seem to think that their loss of legitimacy can be solved by messaging. Good luck with that.

For the US oil major, this is about reclaiming its stake in a market it walked away from in 2007, after the Hugo Chávez government called for a fairer divvying up of profits.  The US’ seizure last Wednesday of an Iranian oil tanker carrying Venezuelan oil was definitive confirmation that the US’ war of aggression […]

Right wing factions are determined to implement extreme agendas. Where are they heading?

Why highly unequal societies like the US exhibit falling levels of population-level fitness along side falling support for better healthcare.

MAGA’s Messaging Meltdown this week has seen the Trump team failing utterly in their area of core competence: controlling the narrative and somebody might just get themselves fired over it.

How key players are starting to throw down markers to shape perceptions of the Bondi mass shooting.

Marion Nestle has been the essential guide to our “food system” (one trillion dollars a year) in the United States for a long time.  Her work is relevant in other such as the United Kingdom that lack a robust food culture, for the most part because it was killed by the food system, not because […]

More troubling new sightings on the AI front.

It’s hard to be cynical enough in looking at EU rationales and motives for strengthening their hold on Russia’s seized assets.

Since decolonization, Africa has experienced a succession of wars whose combined death toll likely reaches into the tens of millions—mostly from indirect causes such as displacement, famine, and state collapse rather than combat itself. This article surveys major post-1960 conflicts, argues against monocausal explanations, and examines how persistent misreading of African political dynamics has led to repeated and costly foreign policy failures, particularly by the United States.