Due to Jeff Bezos’ public accusations against the National Enquirer, the topic of blackmail is in the news.

It is fairly easy to imagine the regressive left having childishly high time preference; they see some current social ill (homelessness, potholes , student debt, inequality) and want them abolished right away. If your position is: “solve the problem now, damn the future consequences,” you show a very high discount rate; future costs pale in the face of the current disaster.

With more than a decade having passed since the financial crisis of 2007/8, the mainstream economics profession still seems to be almost as far from agreeing on the ultimate causes of that crisis as they were from being able to foresee its arrival back in the mid-2000’s.

[Found among the papers of Bettina Bien Greaves and reprinted from Plain Talk (1949), Editor’s comment: Those millions of illiterate and semi-literate armed men now in action from the borders of the Yellow Sea to the mountains of Greece have been set in motion by a ponderous and little-read study of economics — Das Kapital — written nearly a century ago by a German scholar named Karl Marx.

Luxembourg citizens voted in an election last year. But as The Economist has noted, “48% of those who live there were not allowed a ballot-paper.”

This is because a great many immigrants live in Luxembourg, but few of them quickly become citizens — which means few can vote.

According to the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX):

The growth of corporate credit in China has been excessive in the last five years. This credit boom is related to a substantial increase in investment after the Great Recession.

In the United States, the “debt crisis,” as Nassim Taleb called it, has not been corrected by corporations pursuing an intelligent strategy to reduce their debt. Chinese companies, however, have been following suit. Their profitability is deteriorating more and more. Some believe that the Chinese corporate debt is akin to a mountain; others, to a time bomb.