by Isaac Cubillos | Apr 30, 2025 | Journal
The U.S. economy just hit reverse for the first time in years. According to the latest numbers, GDP shrank to -0.3% in the first quarter of 2025—a clear sign that the slowdown is no longer coming. It’s here. Let’s look at the trend: 3.4% growth in Q2 2024. Then 3.1%...
by Isaac Cubillos | Apr 29, 2025 | Journal
Let’s connect the dots, because clearly nobody in power is doing it. The President says he’s going to cut your taxes — and that tariffs will pick up the slack. Sounds great on paper. But while one hand waves that flag, the other is in quiet talks with China to lower...
by Isaac Cubillos | Apr 29, 2025 | Journal
You don’t need a Ph.D. in economics to see what’s happening. Just look at the maps. Ports that should be jammed like a rush-hour freeway — Long Beach, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, Charleston — are standing there like ghost towns, cranes hanging limp,...
by Isaac Cubillos | Apr 28, 2025 | Journal
I spent a few days in New York City this past week — and what hit me wasn’t what I saw.It was what I didn’t. The corner newsstands were shuttered and silent. I didn’t lay hands on a single print newspaper until my last day, when I stumbled across a few battered copies...
by Isaac Cubillos | Apr 21, 2025 | Journal
In the 1970s, I was in my 20s and locked in a long-running play-by-mail war game with a group of friends. It was one of those sprawling, imagination-fueled strategy games—light on rules, heavy on consequences. My fictitious country wasn’t the biggest or the boldest,...
by Isaac Cubillos | Apr 21, 2025 | Journal
Back in the 1950s, Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine with a team of fewer than a hundred researchers and about as much computing power as a toaster. No cloud servers, no AI, no billion-dollar grants—just lab coats, microscopes, and enough coffee to keep...