How Memphis's Methodist University Hospital, a "nonprofit," sued the shit out...
Methodist University Hospital in Memphis is a nonprofit: it pays virtually no local, state or federal tax; but unlike other Methodist hospitals, Methodist University Hospital is relentless in pursuing...
View ArticleHigh art subprime: borrowing on private art collections surges into billions
The international art market is a looter's go-to gambit for grifting their money out of their national borders and getting it into a no-man's land out of reach of every tax authority in the world, but...
View ArticleYour massive surprise hospital bills are making bank for private equity
Private equity firms like Blackstone and KKR have acquired massive health companies like Teamhealth and Emcare, which bill out doctors to the hospitals they work for, taking those doctors out of the...
View ArticleDanish banks will pay you to borrow money from them
10-year mortgage interest rates in Denmark have hit -0.5% -- that is, the bank will pay to you borrow money. 20 year loans? Zero interest. 30 year loans now at 0.5% are headed negative. Translation:...
View ArticleBernie Sanders promises to zero out all US medical debt and end medical...
Bernie Sanders has pledged to eliminate the $81b in outstanding US medical debt if he is elected president in 2020. Sanders says that this debt forgiveness will benefit 79 million Americans who are...
View ArticleThomas Cook travel collapsed and stranded 150,000 passengers, but still had...
Thomas Cook is one of the oldest travel agencies in the world, operating their own flights, ships, hotels, etc, whose founders effectively invented modern tourism (listen to this excellent Stuff You...
View Article"I just love to solve problems": how people who work at predatory lenders...
Elena Botella worked at Capital One -- one of the US's leading issuers of subprime credit-cards -- for three years; in a fascinating first-person account, she describes how Capital One's youthful,...
View ArticleEven if you pay off your student loan, be prepared to spend decades trying to...
Kaja Robinson is 53 and has a daughter about to go off to college, but she is still embroiled in bizarre, kafkaesque disputes over the $17,000 student loan she took out in the 1980s: for decades, she...
View ArticleIn Kansas's poor, sick places, hospitals and debt collectors send the ailing...
Kansas is a living laboratory for far-right experimentation with extreme economic cruelty: a state where Medicare expansions were thwarted, where xenophobia has penetrated the state bureaucracy, where...
View ArticleWhy are we still treating economics as if it were an empirical science that...
Robert Skidelsky is an eccentric British economist: trained at Oxford, author of a definitive three-volume biography of Keynes, a Lord who sat with the Tories as their economics critic during the...
View ArticleHigh prices and debt mean millennials don't plan to stop renting, and that's...
The percentage of millennials planning to "always rent" is up about 25% from last year, to 12.3%, based on Apartment List's annual survey; the factors behind this are primarily high house prices and...
View ArticleMMT: when does government deficit spending improve debt-to-GDP ratios?
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) (previously) is an alternative to neoclassical economics that holds that sovereign states that issue their own currency can't default on debts denominated in that currency...
View ArticleBernie Sanders got the GAO to study the life chances of millennials, and the...
Bernie Sanders commissioned the Government Accountability Office to study the consequences of the high degree of indebtedness borne by Millennials; the GAO's report concludes that Millennials dreams...
View ArticleMed-tech company repossess veteran's artificial legs because the VA won't...
Jerry Holliman received Bronze Stars for his military service in Iraq and Vietnam, where he was dosed with Agent Orange. Now 69, Hollman has survived multiple cancers, but lost both his legs to...
View ArticleFrontier, a terrible company, is going bankrupt
Frontier is the bottom-rung of the top-tier of US ISPs, serving customers in 29 states. Despite enjoying monopoly control over its customers' online lives, and despite massive government handouts and...
View ArticleBanks have returned to the pre-2008 world of automatic credit-limit increases...
"Proactive credit line increases" (PCLIs) are when your credit card company increases your credit limit without your asking for it; it was very common prior to the 2008 crisis, but the post-crisis...
View ArticleCory Doctorow: America's economy is cooked
In times of crisis, governments usually keep the economy afloat by offering financial relief to the people, including wage assistance and debt forgiveness. Not so in the United States, which focuses on...
View Article"Anarchist Anthropologist" David Graeber, credited with coining "The 99%,"...
David Graeber hated being called "The Anarchist Anthropologist." But he was both those things — an anarchist activist, a figurehead of the Occupy movement, and a professor of anthropology at the...
View ArticleExpected family contributions for college loans might be going away, thanks...
Nestled somewhere in the 5000-page COVID relief bill signed earlier this month, there was also a significant change to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form: the deceptively-named...
View ArticleThe origins of student debt
In a capitalist society, your debt is someone else's asset. Student debt is owned by private equity firms, not the federal government. Why is the current proposal to forgive student loans so...
View ArticleWith its huge new debt burden, Twitter makes less money per year than what it...
No wonder Musk is trying to squeeze $8 a month from Stephen King. Twitter is bleeding money. From the New York Times: Last year, Twitter's interest expense was about $50 million. With the new debt...
View Article"Your debt is someone else's asset", a short film from The Intercept, Mollie...
Do you know who owns your debt? Do you know who makes money off your hustle to pay off the principal, compounding interest and fees, and that strange moral obligation to repay the debt? Is it an...
View ArticleMarjorie Taylor Greene says her vote to throw U.S. into catastrophic...
Christian nationalist Marjorie Taylor Greene blames the bible for her vote to catastrophically crash the U.S. (and global) economy rather than vote to suspend the debt ceiling. "Biblically, you are...
View ArticleMinnesota's GOP grapples with paying off huge debt — with only $53 in the bank
The Republican party of Minnesota — responsible for sending stable geniuses like Michele "slavery was not a sin" Bachmann to Congress — currently finds itself grappling with a conundrum: how to pay off...
View ArticleConsumer debt is "basically optional," but debt collectors rely on you not...
Tech/finance wonk Patrick McKenzie, an advisor with such payment institutions as Stripe, runs a blog called Bits About Money, where he shares his far-ranging knowledge and perspectives on the machinery...
View ArticleRudy Giuliani asks for money on Charlie Kirk, but doesn't know where people...
Rudy Giuliani — in dire financial straits after accruing a massive six-figure debt for the sake of an indifferent, four-time indicted Donald Trump — went on Charlie Kirk's show to announce his defense...
View ArticleTrump's least intellectually gifted son lies about his father's corrupt...
Is conman Trump more famous for lying or not paying his debts? He's declared bankruptcy six times, and a USA Today report found that "Hundreds allege Donald Trump doesn't pay his bills." In 1990 Trump...
View ArticleDeep in debt, George Santos is asking for your credit card details
Earlier this month, Breon Peace, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said Rep. George Santos (R-NY) had been charged with "stealing people's identities and making charges on his own...
View ArticleLegalEagle explains why Alex Jones can't bankruptcy his way out of $1 billion...
For years, the sleazy MAGA propagandist, Alex Jones, spread conspiracy theories stating that the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax. This led to the harassment of the victims' families. Consequently,...
View Article"I feel like I'm on a hamster wheel"— US cost of living has skyrocketed since...
Prices on just about everything in the United States have gone up — way up. Here are some figures from an article in Bloomberg titled, "Just How Bad Is the US Cost-of-Living Squeeze? We Did the...
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