Source: Paul Krugman
by Paul Krugman

“Over the weekend Donald Trump threatened dire vengeance on Iran unless its government opened the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours …. But at 7:05 AM Monday Trump called the whole thing off — for five days, he said, but many people are assuming that the threatened action, which would have been a massive war crime, is now off the table. … Trump’s sudden climb-down was startling. Who could have seen this coming? The answer is, the person or people who bought large quantities of stock market futures and sold large quantities of oil futures around 15 minutes before Trump’s announcement.” [editor’s note: Treason is constitutionally defined, and insider trading isn’t it – TLK] (03/24/26)

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/treason-in-the-futures-markets

Source: The Dispatch
by Patrick G Eddington

“Section 702 authorizes the National Security Agency (NSA) to collect communications of non-U.S. persons located abroad without a warrant. However, because of the structure of the global telecommunications system, the text messages, phone calls, and other digital data of people in the United States are invariably captured during FISA Section 702 collection activities. That information is stored in databases that are queried by the NSA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and even some Central Intelligence Agency personnel — all without having to obtain a warrant from a federal judge before conducting such searches. The prior abuses of such Section 702 collection and warrantless database querying are well documented. This month, a bipartisan group of senators introduced a 116-page bill—the Security and Freedom Enhancement (SAFE) Act — ostensibly designed to bring an end to nearly 20 years of constitutional rights violations under Section 702.” (03/24/26)

https://thedispatch.com/article/fisa-section-702-surveillance-intelligence/

Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Claus Wiemann Frølund

“Critics of markets often argue that capitalism systematically fails consumers. Firms collude, corporations exploit their power, and powerful companies crush competitors. But there is a curious pattern in these critiques: regardless of what actually happens in the marketplace, the outcome is treated as proof that markets are broken.” (03/24/26)

https://mises.org/power-market/heads-i-win-tails-you-lose-when-every-market-outcome-called-failure

Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Karthik Sankaran & Sarang Shidore

“The ‘Yuxi Circle,’ named for the Chinese city at its center, has a radius of roughly 2500 miles and contains about 55% of the world’s population within it – the Indian subcontinent, China, Japan, the Koreas, and all the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN. For the last four decades, this region has benefited from GDP growth of about 5% each year, driven by the expansion of industrialization, trade, agricultural productivity, and urbanization. This has led to extraordinary increases in human welfare and a shift in the economic geography of the world away from the North Atlantic basin. But these achievements could all be seriously jeopardized by ongoing events in the Persian Gulf.” (03/24/26)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/iran-war-asia/

Source: Law & LIberty
by Anna Smith Lacey

“Sándor Bölöni Farkas gave Hungarians a glimpse of the American experiment, stoking their own hunger for freedom.” (03/24/26)

https://lawliberty.org/the-hungarian-tocqueville/