Financial machinery gone wrong

One of the things I love about Money Stuff is that it doesn't just provide an endless stream of bizarre financial news, it will stop and explain the underlying workings at a level that even finance naïfs like me can understand. Thursday's issue leads off with a great example, explaining how a clever idea to leverage accounting rules results in lots of natural gas wells not being capped despite laws saying they need to be capped.

Item #2 in that newsletter is much less technical and explains how the naked pursuit of more money is leading large investors to demand that Fox spin off its news division into a public-benefit corporation which would be required to focus on reporting true and accurate news.

Meanwhile, over at Politico today, there is a fascinating article which, being a book excerpt, buries its lede:

As money-launderers and illicit financiers hide their money in the American Midwest, they’ve become part of the story of the decline of small-town, blue-collar America.