Tim Fernholz

One of the underlying problems that led to the global recession was the US relying too much on borrowing from the rest of the world and China relying too much on lending. That played out in both countries’ trade patterns: The US ran big deficits, and China huge surpluses. In the brief period when the world’s 20 largest economies were working closely together through the G20, they agreed to fix this problem: China would stimulate domestic demand; the US would work on fixing its trade balance.

US Attorney Preet Bharara—the man with effective jurisdiction over white-collar crime on Wall Street—is about to announce yet another settlement with JP Morgan. The bank is expected to pay some $2 billion for failing to notice that one of its clients, Bernard Madoff, was running a Ponzi scheme.

Since the Department of Labor began keeping track in 1948, the US has rarely had more than two million workers go without a job for more than six months. At the height of the recent Great Recession, nearly seven million people who wanted jobs faced extended joblessness, and today that number sits at a cool 4 million. (That’s also historically large as a share of population or the workforce). Despite many positive signs in the economy, that stands as perhaps its largest failure: The US just can’t put its people to work.

India has the highest number of athletes suspended after testing positive for steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs since 2009, followed by Russia, the New York Times reports.

The story of the day–complete with wolf-hunting accidents, private detectives and an angry dictator—is the Wall Street Journal’s rundown of Mukhtar Ablyazov’s alleged embezzlement of billions from a bank in Kazakhstan.

Six million people who didn’t have health insurance in 2013 have it now that the US’s new health care law has gone into effect.

You’ll hear wailing and gnashing of teeth on social media during New Year’s Eve celebrations tonight: People will be going out, and those in cities where Uber offers its smartphone-based car service can expect its dreaded “surge pricing” to go into effect.

If you’ve heard about the backward state of US internet infrastructure, you’ve probably read the anecdotes about Riga, the Latvian capital has faster-than-fast internet speeds, or Estonia, with its post-Soviet technology obsession has become an internet leader.

It’s not a coincidence that places marked by strenuous efforts to attract outside money by abandoning any pretense of taxation or transparency are often small, with small populations.

A sell-off of Turkey’s currency, the lira, suggests the corruption scandal there is starting to make investors nervous. The country’s stock market also fell more than 2% today. The currency devaluation, shown in the chart above as a 1.8% increase in the cost to buy dollars, is significant: Imagine if the money in your pocket was worth that much less in just a few hours time.

What to watch for today

The city of Los Angeles is cracking down on pedestrians who sneak across streets when the traffic signal says “don’t walk.” But when you put a price on bad behavior, like being in a public street illegally, you see clearly what a city values.

“In an effort to streamline and modernise its communications structures and bring its accounting practices in line with international standards, the Vatican hired … [t]he global management-consulting firm McKinsey & Company and the Netherlands-based financial and administrative consultation firm KPMG.” Catholic Herald, Dec. 20, 2013

On Christmas Eve, Americans remember the Grinch, who stole all the Christmas gifts from the Whos of Whoville. Thus, Quartz now takes a moment to remember the people in 2013 whose attempts to liberate others’ property for their own purposes merit comparison with the Grinch. (Note: Unlike the Dr Seuss character, who is overwhelmed with remorse and returns the goods, most of these thieves did not apparently experience sudden cardiac expansion after their deeds.)

The lauded US fiscal agreement that Congress reached earlier this month succeeded largely because it left so many important and controversial issues to one side: Taxes, health care, unemployment insurance. Now, you can add the maintenance of the international financial system to that list.

The war against Colombia’s socialist insurgency has turned on a campaign of targeted assassinations of rebel leaders using technology provided by the US.

When pop star Beyonce shocked the world with a self-titled surprise album on Dec. 13, her fans were overjoyed. Who wasn’t thrilled? Target, the retailer who had worked with her on the heavily marketed roll-out of her last release.

China overtook the United Kingdom last year as the country that received the most scrutiny of its US investments, according to the US government.

Efficiency isn’t everything for economists, despite the popular image.

Last week, when a US Navy destroyer narrowly avoided a collision with a Chinese naval vessel, there was at least something of a protocol in place for the two ships to communicate with one another. The same thing can’t be said of the two countries’ space programs. But that may change with the imminent retirement of US Congressman Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican who served for 17 years.

Today Brazil’s government announced it won’t buy $4.5 billion worth of US fighter jets in a move attributed to anger over controversial US intelligence-gathering that targeted Brazilian citizens and officials, including president Dilma Rousseff.

Why are airships the dream that never dies?

A few weeks ago, a couple in Texas received the following letter from JP Morgan Chase, informing them that the accounts they’ve held for more than 30 years—along with a savings account held by the husband’s 96 year-old mother—will be closed on Christmas Day. While it doesn’t explain why this is necessary, it does note that the bank doesn’t have any obligation to inform them in advance but is doing so out of “courtesy”:

The above video shows  a quarter-final match of the Intel-sponsored 2013 Extreme Masters Starcraft II World Championships between top players “viOlet” and “First” (skip to 1 hour, 3 minutes in for some compelling battle footage).While viOlet—real name, Kim Dong-hwan—loses the match, he has earned $95,000 in prizes in the last three years of competition in the space warfare video game. And now the South Korean has earned something more valuable: A visa to enter the United States awarded in the category for “internationally recognized athletes.”