Tim Fernholz

Argentina says that next week it will finally negotiate with creditors who refused a forced restructuring more than a decade ago. The proximate cause is this week’s US Supreme Court decision that would make it impossible for the country to avoid paying these “hold-outs” when it pays other creditors who did agree to take a haircut on the debt they hold. If the country doesn’t pay up by June 30, it will go into default.

Starbucks announced its latest effort at social responsibility this week: It will provide tuition reimbursement for its workers to take online college courses at Arizona State University for free—kicking in about $7,500 per employee.

With everyone from Apple to Starbucks using aggressive tax planning to keep their earnings away from public coffers, it’s not surprising that countries are developing a business model for offshore banking.

If Argentina goes deep in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, their legions of international haters may have something to make them feel better: Imminent default on the country’s debt.

Tired of paying wealthy-nation taxes? Worried that, in the event of calamity, your citizenship is going to drag you down? Roger Ver, the investor known as “Bitcoin Jesus,” has the product for you: Just use bitcoin to purchase a share in a Marriott development on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts and Nevis, and the government will throw in citizenship and a passport that gets you to 140 countries without a visa.

What if the advertisers who pay Google most of the money it earns are getting a negative return on their investment, to the tune of -63%?

Last year, the average CEO was paid $15 million, while the average worker at the same companies was paid $52,000. That’s one of the takeaways from comprehensive new research released today by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning American think tank, which examined CEO salaries at the 350 largest companies in the US. The chart above shows one of the metrics the researchers use, the gap between CEO salary and the average salary of a worker in the same sector.

The US needs Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft to send astronauts to the International Space Station. So when Americans threatened to stop importing Russian rocket engines due to the country’s Ukrainian incursion, Russia’s defense czar, Dmitry Rogozin, taunted them with the suggestion that NASA might as well invest in trampolines to get into orbit:

When it comes to buying influence, a business putting its money behind a US congressional leader who’s been re-elected six times is the equivalent of buying shares in GE. It’s a blue-chip stock—it might go down, but it won’t go bankrupt.

Last week, when Uber’s latest investment round closed, its investors valued the company at $17 billion—a record high, and huge for a relatively young company with annual sales in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Hairdressers, camp counselors and yoga teachers: In the US, jobs like these increasingly require workers to sign non-compete agreements, a contract typically restricted to jobs with intellectual property and trade secrets to protect.

Evaluating the financial crisis and Great Recession is an exercise in benchmarking. Today’s US jobs report is a good example: While employment finally reached levels last seen before the housing bubbled popped—huzzah!—the relative share of people who are employed remains far below the pre-recession trend—boo! Every sign of progress can also be seen as a failure to meet potential.

This chart, which we’ve borrowed from the Council on Foreign Relations, shows why so many people are urging European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi to cut interest rates and take other steps to stimulate the European economy: The blue line shows the nominal average rate businesses can borrow money at in the euro zone. When Draghi promised he’d do “whatever it takes” to protect the euro zone monetary union, he succeeded in stabilizing those nominal borrowing rates.

Pfizer’s bid to purchase AstraZeneca failed, but the company’s attempt to move to London in an effort to avoid US corporate taxes has inspired a new round of commentary on America’s corporate tax system. Perhaps it should also spur a look at America’s commitment to raising drug prices around the world.

The US Environmental Protection Agency’s new rules to limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants are reportedly 3,000 pages long. Is all that really necessary to get across a fairly simple message to power plant operators?

Last night, a minor vote in a spending bill made the first crack in the foundation of the US federal government’s firm opposition to marijuana.

The foreign subsidiaries of US corporations made $94 billion in Bermuda in 2010, the latest year we have data for. That’s incredible work, since only $6 billion of goods and services were produced on the island that year. What does that tell us? It tells us that something fishy is going on.

How come different attempts to measure wealth inequality come up with different answers?

This item has been corrected.

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century has been at the center of the economic conversation this year, raising questions about inequality and what to do about it. While disagreements over his conclusions abounded, nearly everyone agreed that collecting the historic data underlying the work was an important accomplishment.

This item has been updated.

All the ingredients are there for a proper arms deal: A former government official with connections to the military-industrial complex. A stockpile of Soviet arms in Ukraine. Soldiers in Syria with a yen for ammo and cash to burn. The biggest problem? Getting the arms from eastern Europe to the battleground without alerting international authorities or tipping off your enemies.

New York mayor Bill de Blasio thinks he’s doing the taxi cartel that runs the city’s famous yellow cabs a favor. But actually he’s only making it easier for Uber, the car-service company that is the taxi industry’s nemesis, to justify its recently reported $10 billion valuation.

Today, almost half of all US jobs require a drug test, and it turns out that companies that test their employees hire more black people. But that’s not a result that reflects well on Americans.