Articles
Articles and analyses from the INET community on the key economic questions of our time.
Elon Musk’s latest power grab: Will Tesla’s CEO become the world’s first trillion-dollar employee?
Elon Musk secured shareholder approval for a new stock-based package designed to double his voting power at Tesla, potentially making him the first trillion-dollar employee. As this plan cements Musk’s control it ties vesting to audacious market-cap and production targets and diverts focus from progressive value creation. Musk’s governance, layoffs, and politicization could imperil Tesla’s EV leadership and ambitions in AI and robotics.
Time Bomb: How Uninsured Stablecoins and Crypto Derivatives Threaten Financial and Economic Stability
The GENIUS Act is a disastrous law that poses grave and unacceptable threats to our financial and economic future. Congress must remove those threats by (1) repealing the GENIUS Act and passing legislation that requires all stablecoin providers to be FDIC-insured banks, and (2) adopting legislation that requires all crypto derivatives to comply with the rules governing non-digital derivatives under Title VII of the Dodd-Frank Act.
Unlocking America’s Political Finance History: Campaign Data from the National Archives
INET’s new data archive of historical political finance records at the National Archives assembles all campaign finance reports filed by political parties and presidential candidates up to 1974, the year before the Federal Election Commission was established.
Uneven Development Without Social Relations—The Trouble with Nievas and Piketty’s Unequal Exchange
Why do market-centric fixes for “unequal exchange” fall short? Sidelining social relations and production power turns colonialism into a pricing problem—and hides the mechanisms that keep uneven development in place.
Accounting for Ourselves: What Fedwire Tells Us About Fed Losses, Cost Recovery, and Risk
Without transparent accounting practices and proper risk management, the Federal Reserve’s current financial losses—unprecedented in scale—and the questionable accounting practices it uses to downplay their impact threaten public trust, economic stability, and the integrity of fiscal policy.
Tariff Turmoil and the Money Markets: Single Payer Insurance to the Rescue
In Treasury markets, there are no libertarians, only grateful recipients of single-payer insurance for ailing financial markets.
Steering AI to Enhance Jobs and Prepare for Future Transformation
How to guide innovative AI efforts to increase labor demand and create better-paying jobs?
7 Truths About Trump’s Tariffs — And the High-Stakes Future They Shape
Top money-and-politics expert Thomas Ferguson breaks down the real drivers of Trump’s aggressive tariff agenda, from big crypto plans to a new world order emerging.
Trade in the Time of Trump
Trump ran in both 2016 and 2024 on a promise to reverse the deindustrialization caused by globalization and free trade, using tariffs as his main tool. But the critical question now is: Can it work?
How Shareholder Activism Became Toxic—and How to Fix It
New book reveals how and why hedge-fund activists have been able to suck the life from big-name companies like J.C. Penney and Samsung with their short-sighted profit-grabs. Can their harmful activities be stopped?