Readers write from time to time thanking me for keeping up with The New York Times so they don’t have to do so themselves. I understand the thought, and they are most welcome in all cases. But we have now the case of The Times’s lengthy interview with Antony Blinken, published in the Sunday Magazine... Read More

In the seventh episode of “Playing President,” Ray McGovern, 27-year CIA veteran and briefer of five presidents, continues to make sense of the world to “President” Scheer, who prepared for this role through his decades as a journalist, including in-depth interviews with five presidents from Nixon to Clinton. This week, McGovern briefs the president on... Read More

In the third weekly episode of “Playing President,” Ray McGovern, 27-year CIA veteran and briefer of five presidents, continues to make sense of the world to “President” Scheer, who prepared for this role through his decades as a journalist, including in-depth interviews with five presidents from Nixon to Clinton. This week the focus is on... Read More

The 27-year CIA veteran who counseled seven presidents reenacts his role in the current Theatre of the Absurd. Ray McGovern once again joins host Robert Scheer for a “theatrical” episode of Scheer Intelligence. Scheer plays a stern and uncompromising president receiving an uncomfortable briefing from McGovern on the most pressing issues of the day, from... Read More

When the FDIC put Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank into receivership in March, a study reported on the Social Science Research Network found that nearly 200 midsized U.S. banks were similarly vulnerable to bank runs. First Republic Bank went into receivership in May, but the feared contagion of runs did not otherwise occur.... Read More