June 29, 2015

This Will Probably Not Be a Very Fun Week

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This week’s news to watch for:

  • Greek talks have broken down and they might be about to leave the euro, causing chaos.
  • Negotiations with the Iranians have hit a pretty rough patch. There may be no nuclear deal after all.
  • Puerto Rico has effectively declared bankruptcy.
  • China’s stock markets, which have been falling already, are off a cliff today. “China’s main stock index entered bear-market territory Monday,” says the Wall Street Journal, “as a surprise interest-rate cut over the weekend failed to lift the market amid concerns over investors’ debt levels, while uncertainty about Greece shook sentiment elsewhere in the region.”
  • And in non-financial bad news, the Supreme Court has a couple of important cases coming up this week. The smart money suggests that the liberal run of good luck in the high court may be over. Fasten your seat belts.

POSTSCRIPT: It’s already happening. The Court has just upheld lethal injection procedures for executing death-row inmates and has struck down EPA rules on toxic emissions. On the brighter side, they ruled that independent commissions can draw district lines. So liberals are 1-2 so far this week.

DOES IT FEEL LIKE POLITICS IS AT A BREAKING POINT?

Headshot of Editor in Chief of Mother Jones, Clara Jeffery

It sure feels that way to me, and here at Mother Jones, we’ve been thinking a lot about what journalism needs to do differently, and how we can have the biggest impact.

We kept coming back to one word: corruption. Democracy and the rule of law being undermined by those with wealth and power for their own gain. So we're launching an ambitious Mother Jones Corruption Project to do deep, time-intensive reporting on systemic corruption, and asking the MoJo community to help crowdfund it.

We aim to hire, build a team, and give them the time and space needed to understand how we got here and how we might get out. We want to dig into the forces and decisions that have allowed massive conflicts of interest, influence peddling, and win-at-all-costs politics to flourish.

It's unlike anything we've done, and we have seed funding to get started, but we're looking to raise $500,000 from readers by July when we'll be making key budgeting decisions—and the more resources we have by then, the deeper we can dig. If our plan sounds good to you, please help kickstart it with a tax-deductible donation today.

Thanks for reading—whether or not you can pitch in today, or ever, I'm glad you're with us.

Signed by Clara Jeffery

Clara Jeffery, Editor-in-Chief

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