The shifting power architecture of the Middle East explored through two new axes: religious politics and regard for territorial integrity
Thursday, January 15, 2026
Trump’s “Fix Affordability” 10% Credit Card Interest Rate Cap: A Gimmick, Not a Solution (and It Won’t Happen Anyhow)
It has gotten through to Trump that the state of the economy, and particularly consumer suffering from persistently high costs, aka the affordability crisis, can’t be solved by his barker’s patter about how great things are. So he’s roused himself to try to find some quick and easy wins so he can present himself as […]
The Ever-Shrinking Eldercare Workforce
Another health industry train wreck in the making is the rising difficulty of staffing so-called eldercare needs, particularly dementia care.
Climate Engineering Would Alter the Oceans, Reshaping Marine Life – Our New Study Examines Each Method’s Risks
Sadly, climate engineering, aka geo-engineering, is coming. Is it possible to properly assess risks and choose least-hazardous approaches?
How Voting Systems Influence Immigration Policy
How America’s liberal immigration regime was a predictable result of how we decide elections.
Coffee Break: Democrats React to Minnesota on ICE
Democrats react to the ICE-engendered crisis in Minnesota with their usual aplomb, savoir-faire, organization, coherence, and discipline. Just kidding.
Move Fast and Break Everything: Crypto and the Democrats
How the Democrats brought crypto back from the dead after the FTX collapse and how weak oversight harms consumers and produces systemic risk.
Here Comes the Sun: A Way Forward if We Take It?
Bill McKibben published The End of Nature in 1989 when he was in his twenties. His book is generally recognized as the first to address what was then called global warming and now more properly labeled AGW, anthropogenic global warming. I read the book when it was released and it made perfect sense to me […]
Venezuelan Oil and the Limits of U.S. Refining Capacity
Most economic analysis of Trump’s planned Venezuela oil heist has focused on production. Time for a wee look at refining.
Greenland Is the Crown Jewel of “Fortress America”
More on Trump’s plans to annex Greenland.
Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – U.S. Militarism and Nuclear Proliferation
Nuclear proliferation is no longer driven primarily by rogue ambition or regional instability. It is increasingly a rational response to a global order in which legal restraints on force are eroding and security guarantees appear contingent and unreliable. As military power displaces law as the ultimate arbiter of security, nuclear weapons reassert themselves as the only credible deterrent against coercion—pulling multiple threshold states toward rapid proliferation and dangerous alliance entanglements.
Michael Hudson: Weaponizing the World’s Oil Trade is the Bedrock of the U.S. Rules-Based Order
How justifications for US foreign and economic policy revolve around the oil trade.
