Robuta

A light-hearted economic analysis of the World Cup

Nov 25, 2025 - More on why Flock surveillance cameras are insecure and unreliable. Pass the information on to local officials.

Our popular daily links, including TIAA, Tesla in China, Malta, Brexit, Catalonia, Puerto Rico, Congress, DNC, Alexander-Murray, gig economy

Today's Water Cooler

Today's Water Cooler: RCEP, "They Had One Job," Trump conflicts and cabinet, Ranked Choice Voting, ADP, income, copper, zinc, Czar Nicholas

Our popular daily links, including class warfare, cybersecurity, Greece, shenanigans at Walmart and a border collie on the M74

Once again, if you want to understand what has gone wrong with the funding of research, economists bear a lot of the blame.

Today we offer two contrasting takes on the commodities market, although they are also looking at very different issues. The post immediately prior to this...

Our popular daily links, including Japanification, recession watch, LIBOR, Johnson & Johnson opioid verdict, climate retreat, Trump v. Iran, Boris Johnson,...

Tom Neuburger presents Alfred McCoy's book, To Govern the Globe, and his concept of world orders.

An important reminder about how pensions work and the risks of various types.

Exploring company agent franchising via the New Zealand register

Minyanville has a post on three potential sources of systemic risk that have been largely overlooked by the media and in the markets. Numbers two and three on...

Has Moko the dolphin flipped? Sydney Morning Herald. Reader Crocodile Chuck informs us that this Moko is the same Moko of my favorite story of 2008. I hope he...

Yanis Varoufakis gave an energetic, pointed, and insightful talk at the INET conference in Berlin. His message was that the efforts by European authorities...

A card-carrying member of the 0.1%, Steve Schwarzman of Blackstone, has reveled himself to be dangerously out of touch.

The US attacks Russia, more wild Trump cabinet picks, and ground control to Major Biden.

By Delusional Economics, who is horrified at the state of economic commentary in Australia and is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests...

Agribusiness is a driver of food insecurity. Successful experiments show that relocalization of food production can be an effective remedy.

Our popular links, including why cats like circles, the limited protections for journalists from spying, & implications of falling oil prices

Examining national policy tradeoffs in a world of perhaps too much in the way of free and easy international money movements.

Matt Stoller is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/matthewstoller Today, to approximately no one's surprise, the...

Yves here There's been a great deal of consternation over a report that found that the median Spanish and Italian households are more than three times as...

Bill Moyers discusses how grass roots groups are working to shift cultural values away from greed and towards social and economic justice.

Despite massive failures in ObamaCare's implementation, especially on the back end "data hub" nobody has been held accountable

There are two schools of thought on financial innovation. One is the mainstream view, repeated faithfully by a compliant media, that financial innovation is...

A close reading of Ocasio-Cortez's proposal for a Green New Deal.

Ethical problems inherent in programming self-driving cars could make them hard to market.

Today's Water Cooler: TPP House vote, Sanders to Iowa, Clinton, growth outlook downgraded, McKinney pool vid, Graeber on drones

Today's Water Cooler

Our tawdry daily links: Neanderthal-human contacts, Cuba cancer vaccine, Covid v. exercise, CA power survives swelter, China EVs for EU still? German permanent...

On the consternation over Cyril Rhamposa's failure to rebut Trump's disgraceful diversion tactics regarding of Israel's Gaza genocide

How Naked Capitalism works for you.

Ah, the mighty are fallen, or more accurately, falling. Fitch is generally the first to whack ratings (unless you count the feisty but not given sufficient...

Neither Iran nor Trump look likely to blink in their regime change staredown. What happens if the US proceeds and can't win quickly?

Dear readers, I posted this story about 18 hours ago, but my server went down briefly, and this offering was a casualty. The reason I included it was that,...

Our popular daily Links, including on writing, Indian coal, baby formula,

UPDATE Sunday 12:36PM A second, different, and longer video of the incident is at the end of the post. Here's the YouTube: The congealing narrative (supported...

The New York Times reports tonight on what a great job General Electric does in tax evasion avoidance, reaping a tax credit of $3.2 billion on $5.1 billion of...

Nov 23, 2025 - Not surprisingly, the Cheney funeral confirmed a great deal about true loyalties in the political and media elite.

Our daily links: More Arctic heat wave freakout, China as your new free trade protector, EU disses Brexit leaders, Trump disses alt-right

Nov 22, 2025 - A much needed, detailed debunking of Trump's claim that Thanksgiving meal costs, and by implicaiton inflation, are declining.

As expected, Treasury has put off a decision on whether to label China a currency manipulator for a few months, pending negotiations with China. The problem...

Austria illustrates that over time, offshoring reduces the skill levels of domestic workers and even organizations.

Normally, I'd relegate an article that discusses torture to Links and let readers chat it up among themselves. But an article at TruthOut on the genesis of the...

Our popular daily links, including CalPERS, oil industry propaganda, Australian bushfires, Brexit trade talks, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, IMF austerity, Iran...

A Bears-style video on MMT was posted earlier this month. While I like the innovation of a Sharon Stone-ish head and her smashed up interlocutor, and I think...

This Real News Network segment was recorded before the supposed "this time we're really gonna fix it" Eurozone deal was announced today. Nevertheless, it is a...

Economists and policy makers are beginning to acknowledge that "free trade" it not all it is cracked up to be.

Today's Water Cooler: Steel, industrial policy, Ocasio-Cortez, report from New York state, personal income, manufacturing, robot influences, all Elon, all the...

Yet another reason to oppose the TPP, a truly awful, anti-people deal.

This post appeared originally on July 27, 2007 Warning: this post is only for those with sound constitutions. Tim Lee, head of a financial economics...

In an article in the Telegraph, "How the Fed triggered the Arab Spring uprisings in two easy graphs," Andrew Lilco argues that " the Fed seems very clearly to...

Today's Water Cooler

Today's Water Cooler: Net neutrality, NAFTA, Moore v Jones, tax "reform," dictators, consumer confidence, limited liability, Oxford comma

Our popular links: dolphins protected from FOIA, cancer screening doubts, RBS screams "sell everything," Hillary looking vulnerable

Short term, Catalonia and Madrid are at loggerheads. The next phase is likely an escalation of violence as neither side backs down. ,

By Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer living in Dublin, Ireland We stand for the withering away of the state. At the same time we stand for the...

I hope all of you are having a wonderful day today. I want to thank you all for your continued interest and support. Cognitive Commodities in the Neuro...

Our popular links, including Thanksgiving, class warfare, and Ferguson updates.

An overview of the dislocations in the oil market.

A new study has important implications for IMF policies as well as for Greece, both "reformers" and those who advocate a Grexit.

Why it's a mistake to think of the Baltimore bridge collapse as catastrophic bad luck.

Our boisterious daily links: In search of the perfect anus, plastic v. ocean CO2 uptake, moar ICE murder, China licks Venezuela wounds, EU-South America trade...

Carbon taxes are one of the most effective ways to curb the use of fossil fuels and promote renewable energy sources.

Dec 12, 2017 - Uber's ever-widening losses confirms Hubert Horan's thesis that Uber has no credible path to profit absent a radical downsizing.

Puerto Rico's austerity under PROMESA begets power failure begets water contamination and disease

Dec 7, 2025 - Why the 28 point peace framework for Ukraine could never work due to explicit obligations for NATO and "Europe."

Yves here. I managed to miss this post last week, but since it did not get the notice it deserved, I thought I'd feature it. One of the recent disturbing...

Who'd have thunk it? The notion that foreign aid might be self-interested looks to novel, at least among economists.

Russia will soon launch economic sanctions, as directed in a Putin executive order.

Our popular LInks, including Grexit, oil prices, our Wordpress woes.

The Democrats need to reinvent themselves. Appeals to identity politics will not deliver enough votes.

Nasal sprays for vaccination, treatment, and prophylaxis (the last with two over-the-counter products not delivering drugs).

Our popular daily Links, including tigers, lithium, funded nutrition research, 20p deposit, emissions tampering, extinction, Fani, regenerative agriculture,...

Today's Water Cooler: Republican debate debacle, honey for bears, Summers on hysteresis, Moral Monday in Chicago, bad coffee, Twitter #FAIL

Our popular links: doubts about Carson's past, certainty about Fed rate raise, inequality of all sorts, DoJ sues over false tweet

Yes, Virginia, AI, like older forms of automated trading, has a nasty propensity to cause crises.