Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – March 14, 2026
by Tony Wikrent
War
US Navy tells shipping industry Hormuz escorts not possible for now
Jonathan Saul, March 10, 2026 [Reuters, via gcaptain]
The U.S. Navy has refused near-daily requests from the shipping industry for military escorts through the Strait of Hormuz since the start of the war on Iran, saying the risk of attacks is too high for now, according to sources familiar with the matter.The Navy's assessments spell continued disruption to Middle East oil exports and reflect a divergence from President Donald Trump’s statements that the U.S. is prepared to provide naval escorts whenever needed to restart regular shipments along the key waterway….The U.S. Navy has held regular briefings with shipping and oil industry counterparts and has said during those briefings it is unable to provide escorts for the time being, three shipping industry sources familiar with the matter said….
Zachary Cohen, Phil Mattingly, Kevin Liptak, Kylie Atwood, March 12, 2026 [CNN, via [Talking Points Memo]
Top Trump officials acknowledged to lawmakers during recent classified briefings that they did not plan for the possibility of Iran closing the strait in response to strikes, according to three sources familiar with the closed-door session.
The reason, multiple sources said, was administration officials believed closing the strait would hurt Iran more than the US — a view that was bolstered by Iran’s empty threats to act in the strait after US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last summer….
Trump’s preference of leaning on a tight circle of close advisers in his national security decision making [which] had the effect of sidelining interagency debate over the potential economic fallout.
Why America is Losing the War With Iran (w/ John Mearsheimer)
Chris Hedges, Mar 11, 2026
...John Mearsheimer
Yeah, it’s quite remarkable, Chris, that none of Trump’s predecessors took the bait when the Israelis tried to trap us into going to war against Iran. And you want to remember in 2024, Joe Biden’s last year as president, the Israelis twice, once in April and then second in October of that year, tried to trap Biden into going to war against Iran and he refused to do it.
And Trump is the first president who fell into the trap and of course he did it last June during the Twelve Day War. You want to remember in the Twelve Day War, the Israelis by themselves started that conflict on June 13th and it ended on June 25th….
The US, which has attacked Iran's nuclear sites, once supplied the Islamic Republic with HAWK surface-to-air and TOW anti-tank missiles despite an arms-export ban. The covert deal during the Reagan era 40 years ago, known as the Iran-Contra case, became one of America's biggest political scandals.
[Military Watch, via Naked Capitalism 03-11-2025].
Iran targets Turkey’s Incirlik air base housing US nuclear bombs; sirens trigger panic
Manmath Nayak, March 13, 2026 [indiatvnews.com]
Ted Postol: U.S. Missile Defense Is 'A Giant Technical Fraud'
Thomas Neuburger, March 13, 2026 [God’s Spies]
There’s a mountain of good information in this video interview/presentation by Dr. Ted Postol, MIT professor emeritus of Science, Technology, and International Security. More on Ted Postol here. He’s truly pre-eminent in his field.
If you want to know what missiles are used by Iran, how they work, and how they defeat U.S.-supplied missile defenses, settle down and watch. You won’t be disappointed.
Iran Cows US Navy into Submission in Hormuz Standoff
Simplicius [via Naked Capitalism 03-12-2025]
...All internal rumors point to neither the Israeli or US side having anticipated the Iranian “regime” surviving so intact.
One of the reasons for this is that in the wake of the last ‘12 Day War’ you may recall Iran carried out a massive purge of Mossad assets throughout the country, with hundreds of agents apprehended, thousands of pieces of sabotage equipment confiscated, etc. After the Mossad network was neutered, it seems the threat of color revolutions and destabilization of the leadership was no more….
The biggest development revolves around Iran reportedly beginning to deploy naval mines in the strait, although there is some contention regarding this. The US appears to be trying to minimize the panic by claiming Iran has only deployed “10 mines” and that the US has been destroying Iranian minelayers. All the while, the IRGC has released videos showing they can lay mines via rockets fired from inland.
The US has even begun making up lies about escorting tankers through the strait, only for them to be humiliatingly retracted….
WSJ reports that Iran itself is exporting “more oil than ever before” through its own straits. This is obviously perplexing: how is the US allowing Iran to do that?
On one hand, one Iranian tanker was said to be hit, presumably by US forces. On the other hand, it’s clear there may be secret allowances at play because we know Kharg Island has not been taken out, and the obvious speculation is that US is afraid to ‘rock the boat’ economically, even if it means sparing Iranian oil and letting it flow.
This more than anything shows the limits of US military capability as the US is not capable of defeating its enemy swiftly enough to preclude the types of economic shocks now at danger of spilling out. They may have done it in Venezuela, but the Iran conflict more than anything else validates the Venezuelan operation was a fake with behind-the-scenes betrayal at play, rather than a determined force putting up a real fight….
Armageddon Now! Israel’s Nuclear Weapons Program
Kevin Kirk, March 12, 2026 [Naked Capitalism]
[TW: This is a detailed summary of Isreal’s development and construction of nuclear weapons, which included covert assistance from France, Britain, and South Africa. Revelations include the dumping of nuclear waste in Palestinian areas with no safety measures at all, and how Iran has achieved some level of deterrence, including the probability Iran has acquired nuclear weapons from North Korea. ]
...Other dump sites in Palestinian territory are in the Eastern hills of the West Bank. For example, 80 barrels of Israeli waste were physically uncovered in the city of Hebron with another 120 found in the town of Al Ezareya, just outside Jerusalem. Palestinian health authorities in the West Bank grew increasingly alarmed after their monitors detected massive radioactive, pesticide and other toxins leaching into the water supply. The IDF responded by smashing the sensors and raiding their offices, where they destroyed the data then threw all of the equipment out of a 5th floor window….
Israel also dumps its waste on the Egyptian and Jordanian borders after ensuring that the prevailing winds will carry the radioactive dust out of Israeli territory. This is creating health problems for people living in those areas. For example, in the Al Tafila governorate of Jordan, downwind of the waste dumps on the Jordanian border, cancer rates, particularly amongst children, are up to five times more prevalent than anywhere else in the country.…
According to analysis undertaken by the Belorussian military, BELTA, the likelihood of a nuclear strike being undertaken against Iran by Israel is, in their opinion, extremely low. This is because of the Iranian threat to completely destroy Dimona (on a day when the wind blows to the north) and a massive missile attack that would destroy all of the vital services needed for everyday life in Israel, like desalination plants, power stations, ports and refineries. Iran also threatened to destroy ALL of the energy infrastructure in the Middle East, threatening worldwide energy supplies for years to come. It is definitely not in the USA’s best interests, nor Israel’s, because it would achieve the opposite effect of what this war is purportedly about: the elimination of another nuclear power in the Middle East, because Iran would undoubtedly either build a bomb or acquire one from elsewhere. North Korea (DPRK) has already developed (and tested) a bomb for Iran back in 2012. Iran paid for its development and given the passage of time it is more than possible that Iran already has nuclear weapons (two can play the strategic ambiguity game)….
How Close Is Israel to Maximum Escalation? "The situation in Israel is dire," say many observers.
Thomas Neuburger, Mar 11, 2026 [God’s Spies]
[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 03-12-2025]
THE ENTIRE CHIP INDUSTRY IS ABOUT TO SHUT DOWN AND NOBODY IS PANICKING YET No helium. No semiconductors. No phones. No AI. No future.Samsung and SK Hynix just went on HIGH ALERT. Ships carrying helium have stopped moving through the Gulf.Here's how this destroys everything — step by step:→ Helium is used to cool semiconductor manufacturing equipment→ Without it, chip fabs CANNOT operate→ There is NO substitute for helium in this process→ Most of the world's helium ships through Gulf routes now under fire→ South Korea makes 60% of the world's memory chips→ Samsung and SK Hynix supply Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, every AI company on Earth….
Aurelien, March 11, 2026 [Trying to Understand the World, via Naked Capitalism 03-11-2025]
The fact that a force was constituted and deployed without any real idea of what it was supposed to achieve is actually a lot more common than is often realised. History books are full of apparently stupid decisions to start wars or reinforce failure for reasons that appear insane in retrospect, as well as being generally divorced from the realities of the time. But this conceals a larger issue: such decisions are rarely taken for a single reason, and often result from the interaction of all sorts of different pressures and ambitions. They may also be based on partially or completely false understandings of the situation, or indeed just plain wish-fulfilment. Some are based on over-confidence, others on fear that waiting will make the position even worse….
If I ever write another book on history, I’m going to call it The Alternative was Worse, to underline the point that most decisions about war and peace are sub-optimal, and often the consequences of a search for the least bad solution….
It’s obvious that the current US/Israeli assault on Iran is a good case of this. It’s not so much that strategic objectives seem to change daily in Washington, as that there are a whole host of different motivations, some mutually contradictory, held by different people who go before the cameras on different occasions to say different things. All they have in common is a vague conviction that Iran should be attacked. And it’s a classic error of pundits to imagine that because many different actors in a national capital publicly support something, there is therefore a united policy, let alone an agreed plan. In many cases, vague but impressive-sounding strategic soundbites are all they can agree on, and they differ violently about everything else….
...So far as I can see, there are “cooler heads” in the sense of those who think a military campaign isn’t the best way to destroy Iran, but few who actually advocate learning to live with it. Thus, sudden changes in announced “objectives,” simply mean that another way of punishing Iran has come into favour or fashion. Linked to this, of course, is a profound, willed, ignorance about the country itself and its internal politics….
... Modernisation Theory. This began in the 1950s and 1960s with the belief that economic growth and modernisation would produce democratic, rational, secular political systems….
It’s not just Iran, either. Incoherent ideas derived from Modernisation Theory help to explain the disastrous failure in Iraq: left to themselves, and with the evil Saddam removed, the Iraqis would move rapidly along the path to a modern liberal democratic market economy, because that was the destiny of all societies. Religious forces were so yesterday, and thus could be discounted. Likewise, the arrival of the Islamic State first in Iraq and then in Syria was such a shock because the very idea of religion, not just as a political mobilising factor but as a complete and unchallengeable guide to life, had been unknown in the West since the seventeenth century….
...The residual influence of Modernisation Theory even today is such that western leaders and the media assume that every country is full of People Like Us standing ready to take over the reins of government, and that by contrast if a country is run by People Not Like Us, then the vast majority of the population must be waiting for Us to overthrow the government for them. And yes, it’s actually as dumb as that….
... So we can see the fundamental, and typical, US error in assuming that the Iranian regime was fragile, that removal of a small number of its leaders would bring the system down, and that People Like Us were ready to take over….
… very tangible hard limits brought to you by all these clever people who outsourced and globalised everything ….
Electronic Fog of War: GPS Spoofing Distorts Ship Traffic Near Hormuz
Mike Schuler, March 10, 2026 [gcaptain]
“Vessel tracks show clear inconsistencies when compared with simultaneous vessel movements and reported headings,” MarineTraffic said, noting the apparent transits are the result of satellite navigation interference rather than actual vessel activity….
The Joint Maritime Information Center (JMIC) said in its latest advisory issued March 10 that the Strait of Hormuz and surrounding waters remain at a “critical operational risk level” for commercial shipping amid the escalating conflict with Iran. Over the past 24 hours, more than 600 GNSS disruption events have been reported across the operational area, according to aggregated open-source monitoring and maritime reporting, with documented impacts including positional offsets, AIS anomalies, and intermittent signal degradation.
A separate update from the EU’s Maritime Security Centre – Indian Ocean (MSCIO) warns that heavy GPS and AIS spoofing is continuing across the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman, adding that disruptions have also affected communications and radar systems.
The advisory states that navigation systems in the region are “highly likely to be unreliable”, urging vessels to rely more heavily on radar and visual navigation methods when operating in the area.
Why Little Was Done to Head Off Oil’s Strait of Hormuz Problem
Rebecca F. Elliott and Vivian Nereim, March 14, 2026 [New York Times]
...The reason there is no true alternative comes down to a combination of geography, political tensions and economic competition among the region’s oil powers. There have been efforts to circumvent the strait, notably by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. But the pipelines through those countries can carry only a small fraction of the energy produced in the Persian Gulf.For many other energy-producing countries in the region, the only way to avoid the strait would be to lay a pipeline across a neighboring country — an expensive and politically fraught endeavor. Take Qatar, one of the world’s biggest natural gas exporters. Its only land border is with Saudi Arabia — a country that cut off diplomatic ties and closed that border during a regional spat resolved five years ago. Plus, any pipeline would itself be vulnerable to Iranian attacks….
I Was a US Intelligence Analyst. Here's What a Ground Invasion of Iran Could Look Like
Harrison Mann, Mar 10, 2026 [Zeteo]
US intelligence shows Iran government is not at risk of collapse: Sources
[Reuters, via Naked Capitalism 03-13-2025]
Will the Iran Price Shock Break the World?
Matt Stoller, Mar 09, 2026 [BIG]
[TW: Remember Obama boasted about how his policies facilitating fracking had boosted US oil production? The horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing used to tap shale oil reserves allowed the US to produce 12.9 million barrels of oil per day in 2023, the highest annual average ever. In 2019, for the first time in decades, the U.S. was a net exporter of crude and refined oil. Imports of oil dropped to almost one tenth of what they had been: 2022 imports of about 1.6 million barrels per day compared to 12 million barrels per day in 2005.
[So, if the US is not using oil from the Middle East, why have gasoline prices in the US increased? The cost of producing oil in the US has not increased one iota because of Trump’s Epstein Fury war. But profits sire have. Over a decade ago, a number of observers explained how increases US gas prices go almost entirely to enrich financial speculators. Most prominent among these was Michael Greenberger, who served as director of the Division of Trading and Markets at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the Obama administration. I was saddened to learn, in searching for Greenberger’s articles on the role of speculation in gas prices, that he had passed just three months ago. ]
Make Markets Be Markets: Restoring the Integrity of the U.S. Financial System (pdf)
Roosevelt Institute, March 3, 2010
The crisis of 2008 was predictable. Unless we go far beyond current legislative
proposals the next crisis is inevitable.The structure of our current financial markets does not reflect the critical mar
ket principles that once allowed our economy to flourish– principles like trans
parency, competition, and free flow of information. And it has not been subject
to the most important principle of all — the opportunity for market participants
to fail. We all know the result. Financial sector CEOs have relied on taxpayer
support. They have benefitted from express taxpayer bailouts as well as secret
“back door” deals. They continue to lead companies that seem to make profit
but actually only thrive because of government subsidies and taxpayer support.
Make Markets Be Markets: Restoring the Integrity of the U.S. Financial System
is the result of months of discussions among the country’s leading financiers,
market experts, academics and former regulators….
August 5, 2009 [Commodity Futures Trading Commission]
Michael Greenberger [University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, 2013]
Speculation and Criminal Manipulation of Food and Commodities Prices
Lambert Strether, April 14, 2012 [Naked Capitalism]
The Price of Oil – Where the Outrage?
Payam Sharifi, February 18, 2011 [Naked Capitalism]
Trump not violating any law
'He who saves his Country does not violate any Law'
Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]
‘Serious Threat to the First Amendment’ as Trump Admin Wins First Antifa Terror Charge
Olivia Rosane, Mar 15, 2026 [CommonDreams]
A federal jury in Fort Worth, Texas agreed on Friday to convict eight people of domestic terrorism because they wore all black to a protest outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas on July 4, 2025, at which one of the protesters shot and wounded a police officer. Legal experts say the verdict could bolster attempts by the administration to stifle dissent….
The prosecution argued that the fact that the protesters wore black clothes to the protest was enough to convict them of material support for terrorism.
“Providing your body as camouflage for others to do the enumerated acts is providing support,” Assistant US Attorney Shawn Smith said during closing arguments, as The Intercept reported on Thursday. “It’s impossible to tell who is doing what. That’s the point.”
Anti-ICE Protesters Convicted on Terrorism Charges for Wearing All Black
Matt Sledge, March 13 2026
The government won on most of its charges, including convicting defendants for moving a box of radical zines….
The widely watched trial could serve as a bellwether as President Donald Trump’s administration seeks to crack down on left-wing groups — and the convictions could encourage prosecutors to bring more such charges. A top FBI official said in December that the agency is now treating “antifa” as a major domestic terror threat….
Signal messages obtained by the government showed that the demonstrators believed that less confrontational protests against ICE — such as one that had occurred earlier in the day at the same facility — were ineffective. Some of the protesters had brought guns, which is legal in Texas. A police officer responding to the scene was shot in the neck by one of the protesters, Benjamin Song, who had brought an AR-15 with a trigger modified for a higher rate of fire….
Global power shift
How the Iran War Reshapes the Russia-Ukraine Conflict and Chinese Foreign Policy
[The Times of Israel, via Naked Capitalism 03-08-2025]
How the Iran War Could Consolidate China’s Energy Dominance
[Foreign Policy, via Naked Capitalism 03-08-2025]
China largely insulated from global energy price shocks
[Intellinews, via Naked Capitalism 03-12-2025]
...natural gas import costs are also relatively insulated from spot price fluctuations. Nearly half of China’s imported gas is delivered via long-term pipeline contracts overland from Turkmenistan and Russia, while the remainder, sourced as LNG, is mostly covered by long-term agreements that reduce exposure to volatility on the markets.
As such, China’s energy intensity is lower than many major economies, partly due to the rapid adoption of electric vehicles and renewable power, but primarily because coal remains the dominant fuel across the country. Yet while global coal prices have risen following Middle East events, the increases are much less than those seen in the oil and gas sectors. Also, with 90% of China’s coal consumption sourced domestically, policymakers retain scope to manage prices.
The country also maintains substantial crude reserves, estimated at 1.3bn barrels across strategic and commercial stockpiles, which is equivalent to around 120 days of imports….
How China is challenging the U.S. to become the next great space power
[CNBC, via Naked Capitalism 03-08-2025]
China said it ended poverty. Did it?
[Financial Times, via Naked Capitalism 03-10-2025]
Important.
Tungsten prices surge nearly 6x amid China export controls and geopolitical tensions with Japan
[DigiTimes, via Naked Capitalism 03-10-2025]
No Magnets, No Drones: How China Controls the Future of Warfare
[OilPrice, via Naked Capitalism 03-11-2025]
How China’s Rare Earth Ban Backfired into a U.S. Tech Breakthrough
[OilPrice, via Naked Capitalism 03-09-2025]
[Globe Newswire, via Naked Capitalism 03-09-2025]
Gaza / Palestine / Israel
The No World Order: Meir Kahane, Netanyahu, Trump, and the war beyond Iran.
Sarah Kendzior [via Naked Capitalism 03-10-2025]
...Elderly fanatics — from Netanyahu to Elliott Abrams, an Iran-Contra villain who served in nearly every administration of my life — understand that the time to see their goals reach fruition is running out. Trump is not the architect of the Iran war, only its vehicle.
“This coalition of forces allows us to do what I have yearned to do for 40 years,” Netanyahu said as the war began, thanking “the United States, my friend, US President Donald Trump, and the US military.”
Netanyahu now says openly what he said behind closed doors in 2001: “America is a thing you can move very easily.”
One cannot understand the Iran War without understanding the Kahanists....
Oligarchy
The Same Families Who Tried to Overthrow FDR Are Running The Government Right Now
Dissent in Bloom, Mar 06, 2026
... Americans were suffering, and close to revolting, and FDR knew it. So, he started to put laws into place to help the average American instead of the ultra-wealthy. And the billionaires were pissed. So they started to scheme. The scheme (known as the Business Plot) failed. The scheme collapsed when the general they recruited refused to play along and reported it to Congress. No one was prosecuted. The ambition, however, never died.
That plan took nearly a century to complete. You may know it was “Mandate for Leadership” or “Project 2025.”
The same families whose fortunes bankrolled opposition to the New Deal — the capitalists who bankrolled an attempted government coup in the 1930s — have funded a network of think tanks, legal societies, and personnel databases that accomplish something the original capitalists could only dream of….
What followed was not coincidence but continuity that is documented in foundation tax filings, archival papers, and three generations of overlapping board memberships.
The Foundation for Economic Education, America’s first modern free-market “think tank,” launched in 1946 with trustees and board members drawn from the executive ranks of General Motors, Chrysler, and DuPont.
The American Enterprise Institute, founded as the League was collapsing, carried the same agenda in a more ‘academic’ wrapper. The AEI still exists today — where members lobby for pharmaceutical companies who later “donated” them hundreds of thousands of dollars — among other ultra-wealthy corporations.
The Mellon-Scaife line is the most traceable of them all.
Andrew Mellon (Treasury Secretary under three presidents and a Liberty League donor) passed his fortune and his politics down through his family.His grand-niece’s son, Richard Mellon Scaife, contributed approximately $900,000 to the Heritage Foundation in its founding year.
By 1998, his foundations had given Heritage more than $23 million. His total documented giving to conservative causes exceeded $340 million. Koch, Bradley, and Olin foundations added tens of millions more to Heritage and to the Federalist Society, the organization that moved originalist constitutional theory from the ‘legal fringe” group to the Supreme Court majority….
Letters from an American, March 12, 2026
Heather Cox Richardson, Mar 13, 2026
On March 9, Mike Baker and Steven Rich of the New York Times published a long exposé of the corruption of American politics by billionaires. They explain how underwriting political campaigns from those for local school boards to the presidency has enabled the very wealthy to lock in their policy preferences for tax cuts, deregulation, and cuts to the social safety net while also steering valuable government contracts to themselves.
In 2024, Baker and Rich note, 300 billionaires and their immediate family members donated 19% of all political contributions in federal elections, either directly or through political action committees (PACs). While that amount does not account for money that might have gone through dark money groups that don’t have to disclose their donors, it still amounts to more than $3 billion, or an average of $10 million per family.
The authors’ example of what this flood of money looks like in the political system is the victory of Senator Tim Sheehy (R-MT), who beat popular Democratic incumbent Jon Tester in 2024 with the help of $8 million from billionaire Stephen Schwarzman and at least 63 other billionaires and 37 of their immediate family members, who donated about $47 million to Sheehy’s Senate race.
In the Senate, Sheehy “has become a key ally on tax policies that benefit the wealthy and cosponsored a proposal to eliminate the estate tax,” the authors note. Sheehy has been in the news lately for killing a decades-old solar energy tax credit when his own home uses solar power. Sheehy’s spokesperson declined to tell reporters if he had used the tax credit for 26% of the system’s cost.
Sheehy has also been in the news for jumping into the effort of three Capitol Police officers to eject a protester opposed to the Iran War from a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. The arm of Brian McGinnis, a Marine Corps veteran who was wearing his dress uniform, was stuck behind the door. As Sheehy threw his weight into McGinnis, there was the audible crack of his arm breaking. When a spectator called Sheehy a coward, the senator appeared to tell him: “Go f*ck yourself.”
Billionaires are a danger to themselves and (especially) us
Cory Doctorow, March 9, 2026 [Pluralistic]
...The problem isn't whether rich people believe stupid shit; it's the fact that when a rich person believes something stupid, that belief can turn into torment for dozens, thousands, or millions of people….
This would be bad enough if rich people were no more prone to stupid beliefs than the rest of us, but it's actually worse than that. When I believe something stupid, it tends to get me in trouble, which means that (at least some of the time), I get to learn from my mistakes. But if you're a rich person, you can surround yourself with people who will tell you that you are right even when you are so wrong, with the result that you get progressively more wrong, until you literally kill yourself:
A rich person could surround themselves with people who tell them that they're being stupid, but in practice, this almost never happens. After all, the prime advantage to accumulating as much money as possible is freedom from having to listen to other people. The richer you are, the fewer people there are who can thwart your will. Get rich enough and you can be found guilty of 34 felonies and still become President of the United States of America.
But wait, it gets even worse! Hurting other people is often a great way to get even more rich. So the richer you get, the more insulated you are from consequences for hurting other people, and the more you hurt other people, the richer you get.
What a world! The people whose wrong beliefs have the widest blast-radius and inflict the most collateral damage also have the fewest sources of external discipline that help them improve their beliefs, and often, that collateral damage is a feature, not a bug….
...In 2024, a hedge fund called Elliott Investment Management acquired an 11% stake in [Southwest Airlines], forced a boardroom coup that saw it replace five of the company's six directors, and then instituted a top to bottom change in airline policies. The company eliminated literally everything that Southwest fliers loved about the airline, from the free bags to the open seating:
The airline went from being the least enshittified airline in America to the most.
All of this is the fault of one billionaire: Elliott Investment Management CEO Paul Singer, one of America's most guillotineable plutes. This one guy personally enshittified Southwest Airlines, along with many other businesses in America and abroad. Because of this one guy, millions of people are made miserable every single day. Singer flogged off his shares and made a tidy profit. He's long gone. But SWA will never recover, and every day until its collapse, millions of passengers and flight attendants will have a shitty day because of this one guy:
Felonomics
Trump Just Pardoned Ticketmaster When No One Was Looking
Matt Stoller, Mar 09, 2026 [BIG}
The Trump DOJ settled with Ticketmaster, while state enforcers said they'll continue. The judge is mad, the parties showed "absolute disrespect for the court, for the jury, for this entire process."
IRS criminal referrals against big corporations and ultrawealthy plummeted during Trump’s first year
Spencer Woodman, March 5, 2026 [International Consortium of Investigative Journalists]
...During the new administration’s first year, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service has referred at most two cases of possible tax evasion by ultrawealthy people or large businesses to its criminal investigators, a sharp drop from previous years, according to new data obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
Credit Bureaus Are Leaving More Mistakes on Frustrated Consumers’ Reports Under Trump’s CFPB
Joel Jacobs, March 10, 2026 [ProPublica]
TransUnion and Experian, two of the three major credit bureaus, have started dismissing a larger share of consumer complaints without help since the Trump administration began dismantling the CFPB.
No Surveilling The Surveillance Giant
Veronica Riccobene, Mar 09, 2026 [The Lever]
A massive corporation helping police surveil communities across America is trying to make sure nobody can surveil its political influence machine.
Police body-camera and weapons juggernaut Axon is being sued by shareholders who allege it illegally blocked an investor-led proposal asking the company to detail its political spending — including dark money donations. This comes as Axon reports record lobbying expenditures, blockbuster earnings, and “major opportunit[ies]” amid the Trump administration’s explosive spending on immigration policing.
Judge Smacks Down Trump’s Investigation Into Jerome Powel
Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling, March 13, 2026 [The New Republic]
A federal judge has quashed the Justice Department’s subpoenas directed at Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
In a scathing 27-page opinion, Judge James Boasberg said Friday that the government has produced “essentially zero evidence” to substantiate its criminal case against Powell.
“A mountain of evidence suggests that the Government served these subpoenas on the Board to pressure its Chair into voting for lower interest rates or resigning,” Boasberg wrote. “On the other side of the scale, the Government has produced essentially zero evidence to suspect Chair Powell of a crime.”
Donald Trump’s myriad tweets railing against the Federal Reserve chief—and their clear correlation to the DOJ’s probe—did not help the government’s case.
“The President spent years essentially asking if no one will rid him of this troublesome Fed Chair,” the judge continued. “He then suggested a specific line of investigation into him, which had been proposed by a political appointee with no role in law enforcement, who hinted that it could be a way to remove Powell. The President’s appointed prosecutor promptly complied.
Trump Gives Eugenic Vibes Ranting Against ‘Genetics’ of ‘Sick’ Muslim Immigrants
Brett Wilkins, March 13, 2026 [CommonDreams]
US President Donald Trump was accused Friday of espousing white supremacist ideology after he blamed the “genetics” of Muslim immigrants who commit crimes like Thursday’s assault on a Michigan synagogue, while calling for their exclusion from the United States.
“Well, it’s been going on for a long time. It’s a disgrace. They’re sick, they’re really demented people,” Trump said during a call-in interview with Fox News Radio host Brian Kilmeade. “They come into the country, they sneak in.”
The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics
Dr. Roger McFillin, Mar 10, 2026 [Radically Genuine]
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights filed Freedom of Information Act requests across 32 states to obtain data on psychiatric drug prescribing to children enrolled in Medicaid. They shared that data with me for review. What it contains should prompt serious national conversation.
Medicaid is a federal and state program funded by American taxpayers, designed as a safety net for the country’s most economically vulnerable citizens. In 32 states alone, that safety net spent $1.78 billion prescribing psychiatric “medications” to nearly three million children in a single year. 270,000 of those children were under the age of five.
These are not benign interventions. They are drugs with serious, documented risks prescribed to developing brains during the most sensitive years of human life. Stimulants carry the same DEA addiction classification as OxyContin and fentanyl….
Predatory finance
The Next Domino: The Liquidity Trap
Ryan Perkins [via Naked Capitalism 03-11-2025]
[Yves Smith: “Important. Private credit as a potential crisis detonator (or accelerant, given the Iran war givens)” ]
They’re not capitalists — they’re predatory criminals
Epstein’s crimes and Trump’s cover up just got far worse!
Dean Obeidallah, Mar 12, 2026
… on Wednesday, Epstein’s accountant, Richard Kahn dropped a bombshell during his closed-door deposition before the House Oversight Committee. As Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA) told CNN after the deposition, a “person who was an accuser of Donald Trump was given a settlement by Jeffrey Epstein’s estate.”
Why would the Epstein estate pay hush money to a Trump accuser after Epstein was dead?! Could it be Trump and Epstein had both abused the same women or then child?! We need to see the transcript once released to get more context.
But we don’t need to wait for more facts to address a startling new development in Trump’s cover up of Epstein’s crimes that took place at Epstein’s sprawling mansion in New Mexico known as the Zorro Ranch. Epstein’s crimes at the ranch go far beyond trafficking. They potentially include the murder of two young women and gruesome surgical experiments. (I promise you this is not a conspiracy theory.)
Taking a step back, in 2019, New Mexico state officials began investigating potential crimes at Epstein’s Zorro ranch given multiple Epstein survivors--including Virginia Guiffre and Annie Farmer--had spoken about the abuse they endured at the ranch. A former employee at the ranch had also claimed that “two foreign girls were buried” at Epstein’s orders.
But that investigation suddenly stopped in 2019. And on Tuesday, GOP Rep. James Comer-who is chair of the House Oversight Committee-- stated on Fox News the reason why. Comer told Fox News’ Jesse Waters that in 2019, “The federal government asked New Mexico to stop their investigation.” He added, “I mean, this whole thing doesn’t make sense. Everyone has conspiracy theories on how Epstein was able to get away with it. Was it because he had powerful friends? Was it because he was an agent? We don’t know, but we’re gonna find out.” (Reminder: In 2019, the DOJ was under Trump’s control.) ….
… new investigation that just began in New Mexico after the state legislature recently created the New Mexico’s Truth Commission to examine if any crimes were committed in the state by Epstein and his associates.
New Mexico State Rep. Andrea Romero--who is the chair of this bipartisan commission-- told the press this jaw dropping info, “We have people coming forward saying they were drugged, had sex organs and sperm harvested from their bodies, and woke up around medical equipment not knowing where they were or what happened to them.” She added, “It’s so dark and perplexing, and I know that if you mention this to someone, it sounds very conspiratorial…
Epstein’s ‘Zorro Ranch’ under investigation in New Mexico
[Anadolu Agency, via Naked Capitalism 03-11-2025]
Jay Clayton, a top federal prosecutor leading investigations into sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and major Wall Street banks, holds more than $1.6 million in investments in companies with a potential financial stake in those same matters, according to ethics disclosures reviewed by The Lever.
Clayton, President Donald Trump’s pick to run the Justice Department’s “top-dog” Southern District of New York office, owns stakes in multiple oil and gas companies that stand to benefit from Venezuela’s regime change, as well as in Wall Street banks and financial firms currently under investigation by Congress over their ties to Epstein.
The disclosures show Clayton has more than $1 million in financial holdings in private equity giant Apollo Global Management, where he served as board chairman until his Justice Department appointment….
During his time at Apollo, Clayton helped steer the company through a public relations quagmire regarding Apollo’s cofounder and former CEO, Leon Black, and his personal and business connections to Epstein.
Apollo appointed Clayton chairman after Black resigned from the position in March 2021 amid scrutiny over his Epstein ties and sexual harassment allegations made against him….
[TW: If Trump really wanted to “drain the swamp,” he would have the DOJ and DHS assisting New Mexico law enforcement go over every inch of the area with highly trained cadaver dogs — see video below.]
Staggering Revelations in the Epstein Files! (YouTube video)
Glenn Kirschner, March 11, 2026 [YouTube]
[In 2019, after a local radio show host passed on to law enforcement a tip that there were two foreign girls who had been murdered and buried on Epstein’s Zorro Ranch, an investigation by New Mexico authorities was terminated at the request of Trump’s DOJ.]
The Epstein Prosecutor With A Portfolio Problem
Freddy Brewster, March 12, 2026
Jeffrey Epstein had two key aides – why do they still control his money and secrets?
[BBC, via Naked Capitalism 03-11-2025]
The Architecture of Influence: Epstein, the Trilateral Commission, Network for a New World Order
Paul Knaggs, February 1, 2026 [Labour Heartlands]
What In The Ever Living F*** Was Jeffrey Epstein Doing on the Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission?
Dougald Lamont, Mar 08, 2026
Epstein was a member of the invite-only organization for over a decade. And yes, I know how crazy this all sounds….
It’s raison d’etre was documented in “The Crisis in Democracy” This article, details its development, from a left perspective, but in the conclusion of the section on the U.S., written by Samuel Huntington, was that “some of the problems of governance in the United States today stem from an excess of democracy-an “excess of democracy” in much the same sense in which David Donald used the term to refer to the consequences of the Jacksonian revolution which helped to precipitate the Civil War. Needed, instead, is a greater degree of moderation in democracy.”
Huntington then goes on to make a remarkable, ahistorical and blatantly racist argument, that “effective” democracy, whatever he considers that to mean,
“requires some apathy and noninvolvement on the part of sime individuals and groups. In itself, this marginality on the part of some groups is inherently undemocratic, but it has also been one of the factors which has enabled democracy to function effectively. Marginal social groups, as in the case of the blacks, are now becoming full participants in the political system. Yet the danger of overloading the political system with demands which extend its functions and undermine its authority still remains… Democracy is more of a threat to itself in the United States than it is in either Europe or Japan where there still exist residual inheritances of traditional and aristocratic values.”
Restoring balance to the economy
A Simple Way to Immediately Lower Electric Bills by Hundreds of Dollars
Brian Shearer, Mar 12, 2026 [Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator]
BOOM: Senate Votes to Block Private Equity from Buying Homes
Matt Stoller, Mar 13, 2026
For 15 years, elites have fought against homeownership by ordinary people, instead pushing a renter society. That may have ended with an 89-10 vote in the Senate against Wall Street owning homes….
In the post-crisis era, Obama decided that renting, not ownership, was a more suitable option for Americans. And he had his administration sell off large swaths of single family homes in foreclosure to large investors to turn them into rental properties. As Morgan Stanley put it, “[e]ach distressed single-family liquidation creates [not only] a potential renter household” but also “a potential single-family rental unit. That meant, for “the first time in history,” there was “an opportunity for institutions to own single-family rental properties as part of a larger asset allocation strategy.”
In other words, the rise of institutional ownership of single family housing is new, a result of Obama-era changes to try and move America from a society with high homeownership to one where people rent. This shift hasn’t been wholesale, a majority of Americans still owns their own home. But the age of the average homebuyer moved from 39 years old to 59 years old in the last 15 years….
For a long time, most housing analysts and think tank types dismissed private equity buying up homes as some sort of conspiracy theory, even though it was a pretty common story to hear someone talk about how they couldn’t buy a home because of the all-cash purchase by some sort of investor. But over time, serious policymakers started to notice that the frustration was more than just a few dissatisfied anecdote tellers.
In 2024, the Federal Trade Commission under Lina Khan found that Invitation Homes, a spinoff of Blackstone, had engaged in rampant misbehavior. The CEO told one of his subordinates to “juice this hog” and they did so by deceiving renters, unfairly evicting people, charging junk fees, and so forth….
Disrupting mainstream economics
The (In)efficient Markets Hypothesis
Steve Keen, Mar 08, 2026 [Building a New Economics]
My next video goes to air at 2pm New York time, and explains that the “Efficient Markets Hypothesis”, which dominates textbook teaching about finance, is a complete fallacy.
Much closer to the mark is the “Inefficient Markets Hypothesis” developed by the contrarian Professor of Finance, Bob Haugen.
Information age dystopia / surveillance state
AI code wreaked havoc with Amazon outage, and now the company is making tight rules
Rachit Agarwal, March 11, 2026 [digitaltrends.com]
As reported by the Financial Times, Amazon Web Services suffered a 13-hour outage in December after engineers let its Kiro AI coding tool update code without requiring any oversight. Kiro decided the best solution was to “delete and recreate the environment.”
Do you understand what's happening at Amazon right now?Their own AI coding agent Kiro reportedly "decided" the fastest way to fix a config error was to delete the entire production environment. Gone. A 6-hour outage. 6.3 million orders lost.
Amazon's SVP called thousands of engineers into a mandatory meeting this week. Not to discuss strategy. To discuss damage control.
Now here's my prediction and I want you to screenshot this:Amazon won't just ban AI-assisted code. They'll make every engineer personally liable for AI-generated code they approve. Other Big Tech will follow within 6 months.
Think about what that means.The same companies that fired thousands of engineers to "restructure around AI" are about to tell the remaining ones.. you're now legally responsible for code you didn't write, can't fully understand, and were told to ship faster.
Hamilton Nolan, Mar 12, 2026 [How Things Work]
‘This Should Be Illegal’: Senate GOP Uses AI Deepfake to Attack Talarico
Stephen Prager, March 12, 2026 [CommonDreams]
“Political deepfakes are a profound threat to our democracy, because there is no realistic way for voters to understand they are seeing fake representations,” said the co-president of Public Citizen.
Collapse of independent news media
On What We Are Permitted to Notice
Mike Brock, Mar 14, 2026 [Notes from the Circus]
The Atlantic has a piece this week about Zohran Mamdani and his views on Israel. I must confess something before we proceed.
I have almost no space in my mind for that question right now.
Not because it is unimportant in the abstract. Not because Mamdani’s views are beyond scrutiny. But because I have been forced — by the evidence available to me, through the application of ordinary reason — to downgrade Israel’s moral standing as a subject of my civic attention. And I want to be precise about why….
Benjamin Netanyahu is a corrupt, post-truth populist demagogue, currently under criminal indictment in his own country, who has literally attempted to seize control of his nation’s Supreme Court in order to keep himself out of jail. He is a man who, by the documented accounts of his own former intelligence officials, channeled money to Hamas in Gaza to pursue a divide-and-rule strategy against the Palestinian Authority. He is a man who has made himself politically dependent on the Israeli far-right — men whose views on Arab life would not be out of place in the literature of the 1930s.
This man has manipulated the machinery of the United States federal government, operating under color of Article II of the Constitution, to bring us head-first into a war that Congress has not authorized and the American people did not choose….
This is the emergency. This is what I cannot look away from.
And so when a publication of The Atlantic‘s stature asks me to direct my attention toward whether Mamdani’s views on the moral architecture of the Israel-Palestine conflict represent a political liability — I notice something. I notice that I am being asked to look somewhere else. Whether by intention or by the ordinary gravitational pull of the news cycle, I am being invited to examine the opinions of the Mayor of New York City about a foreign policy dispute, rather than the constitutional crisis unfolding in front of us.
I decline the invitation….
Climate and environmental crises
Global Warming Has Accelerated Significantly
[Geophysical Research Letters, via Naked Capitalism 03-09-2025]
Another study confirms it: Global warming is speeding up
[E&E News, via Naked Capitalism 03-10-2025]
Mapped: How extreme weather is destroying crops around the world
[Carbon Brief, via Naked Capitalism 03-13-2025]
Conservative / Libertarian / (anti)Republican Drive to Civil War
How the US far right bought into the myth of white South Africa’s persecution
[The Guardian, via Naked Capitalism 03-12-2025]
The South Rises Again
Alan Elrod, 12 Mar 2026 [Liberal Currents]
The reaction to Talarico's Christian rhetoric demonstrates the ways in which far-right theology is about underwriting misogyny and racism.
On Tuesday, the official NRSC account on X representing Senate Republicans posted a clip of Texas Democratic candidate James Talarico, quoting him verbatim:
[siren emoji] JAMES TALARICO: “Christ is the immigrant deported without due process. Christ is the senior deprived of their Social Security benefits. Christ is the protestor kidnapped in an unmarked vehicle by plain clothes officers.”
The purpose of the post, dutifully understood by thousands of right-wing accounts on X, was to mock Talarico’s interpretation of Christ as radical and absurd. The replies and quotes flooded in.
“To be clear: This is blasphemy,” wrote infamous Christian nationalist William Wolfe. White supremacist and Christian influencer C. Jay Engel argued that Talarico is merely peddling a left-wing version of Christian nationalism where social justice issues dominate.…
Since breaking onto the national scene, Talarico has become an object of intense scorn among America’s right-wing Christian extremists. Josh Howerton, the pastor of massive Lakepointe Church in Dallas, has described Talarico’s promotion of an open, social justice–oriented Gospel as an existential threat, warning, “Progressivism will hollow out your religion and wear it like a skin suit. That's exactly what James Talarico does.” Howerton also referred to St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, the LGBTQ-affirming congregation where Talarico preaches, as the “synagogue of Satan.”
If you’re wondering how exactly to square Howerton’s vision of Christ with well-known Gospel stories about Jesus helping the poor and the sick, this post by Howerton from February is illuminating:
Jesus was unvaccinated
Jesus fed the poor without raising taxes
Jesus told people to buy self-defense weapons
Jesus was majority-culture in his region
Jesus only selected men for leadership positions
You can selectively-edit Jesus to be a mascot for virtually any cause, but he is a Lord not a mascot.
Thomas Mills, Mar 11, 2026 [PoliticsNC]
This primary in State Senate District 26 is a big test of the new state board of elections. Phil Berger, the most powerful Republican in the state, trails his opponent Sam Page by 23 votes. The race will probably go through at least a couple of recounts and may end up in court. This state board has never been through a full election cycle, much less a race as contested as this one….
State Auditor Dave Boliek, who appoints the state board of elections, campaigned in Rockingham County for Berger. He and his staff claim that’s no big deal. Before this year, they claim, the governor appointed the state board of elections and Roy Cooper campaigned for candidates. The difference is that the constitution gave the governor control over the board of elections. Berger gave it to Boliek….
The most embarrassing thing a governor has said this year
Jordan Zakarin, Mar 12, 2026 [Progress Report]
...I don’t have very high expectations for Republican elected officials when it comes to simple things like coherent thought or respecting the public, and there’s very little they can do or say to surprise me. And yet, I still find myself somewhat astounded by the unique combination of cynicism and ignorance recently displayed by Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, a man who quite appropriately spent much of his life as a swine doctor.
“I believe the ballot initiative process today does not represent the people speaking,” Pillen recently told the Nebraska Examiner, staking out a position that rejects reality in service of deeply unpopular ideology….
The (anti)Federalist Society assault on the Constitution
How Insurers Are Using the Courts to Rewrite the No Surprises Act
[HEALTH CARE un-covered, via Naked Capitalism 03-13-2025]
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