In recent decades, imperialism has been somewhat out of fashion as a subject of analysis in academic circles. Yet in the past several months, President Donald Trump had reminded everyone that U.S. imperialism is indeed alive and kicking. In fact, imperialism never went away, as leading radical economist Costas Lapavitsas points out in the exclusive interview for Truthout that follows. Lapavitsas…
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This article originally appeared on Dean Baker’s Patreon. It is reprinted here with permission.
A bit less than 20 years ago, a nationwide housing bubble collapsed, giving us the Great Recession. Millions of homeowners had their houses foreclosed. We had high unemployment for the better part of a decade. And the subsequent falloff in construction created the basis for another extraordinary run-up in house prices during the pandemic. In other words, it was pretty bad news.
The current bubble in AI is laying the groundwork for another bad story. As was the case both before and after the collapse of the housing bubble, there is a tremendous premium in intellectual circles on making the problem more complicated than it is.
My latest poster child for this point is a column in the New York Times by Richard Bookstaber, a hedge fund manager who had predicted the financial crisis that followed the collapse of the housing bubble. His column notes the AI bubble, but then argues that the big problem is that we are also facing risks from the private credit market, as well as geopolitical risks, like the fact that China could cut off the supply of chips from Taiwan and also the price shock associated with the cutoff of the oil flow through the straits of Hormuz.
The collapse of the stock prices of the companies that are big factors in AI will then have huge spillover effects, devastating people’s 401(k)s, as well as whacking pension funds. This will lead to a huge fall in consumption, which would likely lead to a recession.
The warnings are well-taken, but the story is actually not complicated.
For nearly three years the Dominican Republic had been excitedly preparing to host the region’s biggest multilateral event: the 2025 Summit of the Americas, bringing together the leaders of nearly every government in the Western Hemisphere. But on November 3rd, only a month before the summit was to take place, the DR’s foreign ministry abruptly announced the postponement of the event citing…
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Allies of the Trump administration are reportedly circulating a document that they say would grant the president sweeping powers over elections, including the ability to ban mail-in ballots, by declaring a national emergency over disproven allegations of interference by China in the 2020 election, a new Washington Post report finds. Right-wing activists who claim to be in contact with the…
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This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Feb. 04, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday implicitly confirmed that New START—a key arms control treaty between the United States and Russia—will expire Thursday, prompting renewed demands for what one group called “a more coherent approach from the Trump administration” toward nuclear nonproliferation.
Asked about the impending expiration of New START during a Wednesday press conference, Rubio said he didn’t “have any announcement” on the matter, and that President Donald Trump “will opine on it later.”
“Obviously, the president’s been clear in the past that in order to have true arms control in the 21st century, it’s impossible to do something that doesn’t include China because of their vast and rapidly growing stockpile,” Rubio said.
🇺🇸🇷🇺🇨🇳 Secretary of State Marco Rubio:I don’t have any announcement on New START right now. I think the President will opine on it later. The President has been clear in the past that in order to have true arms control in the 21st century, it’s impossible to do something that… pic.twitter.com/8pxi3bfdsy— Visioner (@visionergeo) February 4, 2026
New START, signed in 2010, committed the United States and Russia to halving the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers in their arsenals. While the treaty did not limit the size of the countries’ actual nuclear arsenals, proponents pointed to its robust verification regime and other transparency features as mutually beneficial highlights of the agreement.
“We have known that New START would end for 15 years, but no one has shown the necessary leadership to be prepared for its expiration,” said John Erath, senior policy director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and former longtime