"Someone started arbitrarily and aggressively buying stocks and the decline was halved. Monday will still go down as a Wall Street massacre, but that anonymous superhero buyer or buyers made it a lot less bloody. Who was the market’s superhero? I’m going to tell you a story and then you decide."
"The city’s actions demonstrate how far governments will go to violate constitutional rights if meaningful judicial checks are not there to stop them. Charlestown’s mayor, Bob Hall, has long wanted to destroy Pleasant Ridge—where people can rent a home or pay a mortgage for a very affordable price. And so he teamed up with a Louisville businessman, John Neace, to hatch the following scheme."
"When it comes to repair, farmers have always been self reliant. But the modernization of tractors and other farm equipment over the past few decades has left most farmers in the dust thanks to diagnostic software that large manufacturers hold a monopoly over. In this episode of State of Repair, Motherboard goes to Nebraska to talk to the farmers and mechanics who are fighting large manufacturers like John Deere for the right to access the diagnostic software they need to repair their tractors."
The beneficiaries in this seemingly zero-sum game? Arms manufacturers, of course, but also US uranium producers, who in a complete coincidence are currently agitating for protection from foreign competition.
"When they insist government employee wages would plummet in the absence of a union, they’re simply confirming the workers are already earning more than their labors are actually worth on the open market. These are the kinds of hard economic truths that will be exposed when Janus is finally heard next month and the injustices that will be righted if the court this summer votes to ban mandatory dues and fees in the public sector."
"Even though the M.T.A. is paying for its capital construction with taxpayer dollars, the government does not get a seat at the table when labor conditions are determined. Instead, the task of reining in the unions falls to the construction companies — which often try to drive up costs themselves."
"The SNB raked in ENORMOUS investment profits because they printed hundreds of billions of francs, which inflated the prices of assets that they themselves were buying. And today, because of those artificial investment gains that they engineered for themselves, the SNB is now the most profitable company in the world. Oh, and just so you know the other half of the story, while the central bank is raking in record profits, total debt in Switzerland has skyrocketed."
"Everybody needs food, but the government does not require entrepreneurs to obtain a certificate of need before opening or expanding a grocery store. Everybody needs healthcare at one time or another, but the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and 35 states require hospitals to obtain certificates of need (called CONs) before they open their doors or expand. Certificates of need tend to favor large non-profit operations, which are now blocking competition while scamming patients and taxpayers alike."
"Switzerland-based Viking Cruises, which wanted to build and send small cruise ships up the Mississippi River, leaving new tourism dollars for river towns in its wake, is backing off its plan. Our own federal laws are to blame. More specifically, President Grover Cleveland's Passenger Vessel Services Act (PVSA). The 1886 law requires that in order to ferry passengers between ports in the United States, the ship must have been built in the United States and be owned and operated by Americans."
"A cosmetology license requires '25 weeks [of training], more than an EMT, certified nursing assistant or truck driver.' Ducey views the cosmetology board as 'bullies' and is urging the passage of Ugenti-Rita’s bill, which would make it easier to obtain a license."