LT #21 - Top Links - July 2024
White Collar Crimes, OPEC and TX collusion, capital markets and democratic elections, free speech not for Palestine, shifting industrial production around the world, and peak pollution
Interesting Articles
BIG: The Silver or the Lead: How White Collar Crime Prosecutors Get Punished
FTC Order Bans Former Pioneer CEO from Exxon Board Seat in Exxon-Pioneer Deal
Sheffield, for example, exchanged hundreds of text messages with OPEC representatives and officials discussing crude oil market dynamics, pricing and output. In discussing his efforts to coordinate with Texas producers under a production cut mandated by the Railroad Commission of Texas, Sheffield said, “If Texas leads the way, maybe we can get OPEC to cut production. Maybe Saudi and Russia will follow. That was our plan,” he said, adding: “I was using the tactics of OPEC+ to get a bigger OPEC+ done.”"
Global Markets
Noahpinion: The Age of SASEA: South and Southeast Asia
Chartbook 290: The Markets and Democratic Surprise - India, Mexico, and South Africa
Three elections and the confirmation, once again, of a stark reality: democracy and capitalism can co-exist, but investor interests do not react well to left-wing governments with large majorities. They do not simply accept the will of the majority, but through the media and markets make their opposition known. Though foreign investors may have views. In the first instance, this is not a matter of global capital positioning itself against national democracy. Certainly, as far as Mexico and India are concerned it is above all “local” capital whose interests are at stake. To avoid an immediate panic and snowballing “loss of confidence”, even as they celebrate their win, the victorious democratic forces hasten to make public concessions to capital. Though this is a pragmatic concession to reality, it starkly reveals that though democratic majorities can make history, they do not do so as they please or under conditions of their own choosing, but on terms dictated by powerful vested interests.
Apricitas Economics:
Global Wars
Noah Smith: Americans are still not worried enough about the risk of World War
Adam Tooze / Chartbook:
How Russia Makes Missiles (by buying equipment from China)
China’s Investment Shifts Gears, Sudan’s Refugee Crisis Spills Over
Israel, Palestine, and Free Speech
The Intercept: Leaked NYT Gaza Memo tells Journalists to avoid words “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing” and “occupied territory.”
Adam Tooze: Columbia University’s crisis - a political economy sketch map
Foreign Exchange: What’s the Matter with Germany?
Any criticism of Israel is deemed antisemitic… a definition that pits the German government against Jews, putting it in the absurd position of censuring and even arresting Jewish intellectuals and activists on the grounds that they are antisemitic… The journalist Emily Dische-Becker has estimated that thirty percent of those “cancelled” in Germany for criticizing Israel are Jewish, despite the fact that Jews comprise less than one percent of the country’s population. Even as Germans insist that they are fighting antisemitism, their commitment to Zionism leads them to silence and harass Jewish people in the here and now.
American Politics
Noah Smith: Five Things to be Optimistic about in America Today. Income inequality and crime are falling, the US economy is growing, and the youngest generation is doing better than ever before.
Matt Stoeler: What is the Chevron Deference and how much does it Matter?
Matt Yglesias:
Nate Silver: How Culture Trumps Economic Class as the New Political Faultline. How the parties have flipped and Democrats are now the party of economic elites and Republicans are the party of the working class.
Climate Change
Thomas Puello - Energy, Environment, Aging and News Update - environmentalists against the environment, solar getting cheaper faster, and negative effects of reading the news.
Hanna Ritchie - Sustainability by the Numbers: How to Decarbonize Cement and The World has Probably Passed Peak Pollution
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