Back in 2001, precious few Americans could have explained what Houston-based Enron did as a company and how it got so spectacularly wealthy. But when it filed for a record-breaking bankruptcy, Americans got schooled fast about not putting their trust and money behind swaggering, fast-talking con artists. But fools and their money regrouped over the years, and along came FTX, a $32 billion cryptocurrency exchange that repeated many of Enron’s mistakes and yielded the same abysmal results. We suspect that a lot of investors who lost their shirts in the FTX failure would have trouble explaining exactly what FTX did, and that’s largely because the entire cryptocurrency industry is built on fantasy.

Approaching year three of a global pandemic, it’s shocking that the U.S. is still debating whether workers should be allowed to take time off work when they’re sick or need to see a doctor.

The dismantling of CNN as the Democrats’ leading network could be on the way with layoffs and cutbacks putting the once-dominant media outlet in decline.

The incoming Republican House majority is salivating to begin investigations against the Biden administration, with some in the caucus even talking about impeachment. In contrast to the numerous Democratic investigations and two impeachments against Donald Trump — which were legitimate responses to a uniquely unfit president who routinely spurned the rule of law — the GOP’s current plans are little more than tit-for-tat politics. They should keep in mind how obvious that will be to a nation that just denied their party the “red wave” everyone was expecting.

Here’s a stark way to restate why Donald Trump is unfit to lead the Republican Party, much less the nation: He promises “full pardons with an apology to many” of those who violently breached the Capitol to stop the peaceful transition of power to rightful victor Joe Biden. In stark contrast, the current administration’s Justice Department is holding the insurrectionists accountable.

President Joe Biden has often described his plan to cancel some federal student-loan debts as a “game changer.” In one sense, this policy has indeed proved transformative — by making a bad system worse.

There comes a time when the social media-consuming public needs to step back and ask whether their continued use of a particular service might be doing more harm than good. Elon Musk’s Twitter might have reached such a turning point in the public’s eye, just as Donald Trump’s recent dinner with two well-known antisemites is causing longtime Trump supporters in the Republican Party to reach their breaking point.

If you ask any security consultant about one of the biggest physical security risks a business can take, high up on the list would be having huge piles of cash lying around. If you ask a business consultant what one of a small business’ biggest commercial risks might be, they would likely tell you that it’s not being able to get loans, financing, or even standard banking services to run their operations and collect customer payments.

For a six-month period last year, something life-changing happened for tens of millions of American families: They started receiving automatic monthly payments of as much as $300 per child to use for whatever they needed.

Nine months into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, the damage done to the world’s 11th-largest economy is extensive. Leading Russian banks have been cut out of the global financial system, some $300 billion of central bank reserves are frozen, and hundreds of foreign companies have departed. Parts shortages have hobbled the auto industry and threaten commercial aviation. In the wake of Putin’s mobilization order, tens of thousands of young workers have fled the country. An OECD forecast released last week projects Russia’s economy will contract by 5.6% in 2023.

With Donald Trump’s announcement of his new presidential campaign comes a timely reminder of what kind of a man is asking Americans to put him in charge again: Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, now confirms that Trump, while in office, routinely sought to use and abuse the powers of government agencies against perceived enemies in clearly illegal ways.

What do Elizabeth Holmes, Sam Bankman-Fried and Al Capone have in common? No, they are not all convicted felons. Capone did serve time for tax evasion, and Holmes was recently sentenced to 11 years in prison for defrauding the public through her blood-testing company Theranos. But Bankman-Fried, founder of the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has not yet been charged with anything, although regulators and investigators are sorting through the financial carnage.

It says a lot about the times in which we live when a decision reached by democratic process elicits outrage.

The worst — and best — of this country was reflected in the deadly attack on a Colorado Springs nightclub.