The Great Barrier Reef has lost half its corals.

‍Earth breaks September heat record, may reach warmest year. Wildfire smoke in U.S. exposes millions to hazardous pollution.

‍Nearly half of the U.S. is in drought. It may get worse.

It may get worse.

It may get worse.

It may get worse.
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It may get worse.

It may get worse.

U.S. billionaires gained almost $1 trillion in wealth during the pandemic.

‍Billionaire climate philanthropists will always be part of the problem.

The case against JPMorgan Chase for manipulating precious-metals and Treasury markets has many of the usual features. On September 29th it admitted to wrongdoing in relation to the actions of employees who, authorities claim, fraudulently rigged markets tens of thousands of times in 2008–16. The bank agreed to pay $920m to settle various probes by regulators and law enforcement. Some of the traders involved face criminal charges. If convicted, they are likely to spend time in jail.

The traders are alleged to have used “spoofing”, a ruse where a marketmaker seeking to buy or sell an asset, like gold or a bond, places a series of phoney orders on the opposite side of the market in order to confuse other market participants and move the price in his favour. A trader trying to sell gold, for instance, might place a series of buy orders, creating the illusion of demand. This dupes others into pushing prices higher, permitting the trader to sell at an elevated price. Once accomplished, the trader cancels his fake orders.

The practice was explicitly outlawed in America in 2010, but the rise of algorithmic traders — which rapidly analyse order books to work out where prices might move next — has made it more tempting for human traders to spoof them. According to prosecutors one JPMorgan trader described the tactic as “a little razzle-dazzle to juke the algos”.

— Excerpted from the Economist

People have been told all their lives that this economy is inevitable and indispensable, and that if they just give it free rein it will ultimately work for them. If they start seeing it for what it is (a con game that enables a tiny number of people to control everyone else in the world through their possession and manipulation of magic pieces of paper), they may conclude that it needs to be replaced, not saved.

— Ken Knabb, Bureau of Public Secrets

Featured in issue #151

In an established autocracy — like Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey, or Mohammed bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia — it is nearly impossible to criticize or to investigate the autocrat. In the liminal condition in which we now live, with public institutions threatened but not yet defeated by an elected President, the would-be autocrat must still face the indignities of journalism, legal inquiry, and popular opposition. He must also face an open election. The polls suggest that Joe Biden currently leads the 2020 Presidential race. We suffer no delusions: Trump has on his side demagogic skill and ruthlessness, a willingness to break any norm or law in order to win. Nevertheless, we hope that Biden will displace him by a margin that prevents prolonged dispute or the kind of civil unrest that Trump appears to relish. Ideally, Biden will have an opportunity to govern with Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate, which would vastly increase his chances of passing legislation to confront the nation’s array of crises.

— Excerpted from the New Yorker