From Black Monday to the Trump Tariffs
Some resources on catalyst events unfolding (and in the past that have long memories) in global financial markets.
A. US-Iran tensions are fueling an oil price rise and possible war fears.
B. Australia’s wealth inequality and tax holes.
C. What’s driving the push for humanoid robots? Perhaps Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) in its restored and colourised versions.
D. The New Yorker’s Joshua Rothman frames the Jeffrey Epstein case as being part of ‘the last conspiracy.’ Actually, many of the elements formatively emerged in the 1970s; were part of the Satanic Panic in the 1980s and early 1990s; and were part of the 1998-2008 conspiracy theory subculture that I encountered when working as an offshore contractor for the former Disinformation website / company based in New York City. It’s maybe only new to high-brow, upper middle class New Yorker readers.
E. The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols observes that the GOP Republicans are now getting their memes and slogans from a rather malignant historical source.
F. Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs has written an “origin story” memoir. It’s called Streetwise and it’s out on 3rd March 2026. That gives you time to read William D. Cohan’s well received Money & Power: How Goldman Sachs Came To Rule The World (New York: Penguin, 2011) first. Cohan has very kindly signal boosted my X posts: thank you.
G. Today’s MIT OCW free course is Introduction to Media Studies, created by Dr Andrea Walsh.
H. The Omaha film trailer scares me.
I. Frank Zappa live in Berlin, West Germany in 1968.
J. A classical musician listens for the first time to King Crimson’s song Fracture (1974).
K. An original news report about Black Monday - the 1987 financial crash on Wall Street. The best history is veteran financial journalist Diana B. Henriques’ A First-Class Catastrophe: The Road to Black Monday, the Worst Day in Wall Street History (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2017).
L. An MIT OCW free lecture called Seven Questions About Tariffs That Everyone Should Know the Answer To.