On Tuesday, Donald Trump told the Associated Press that he doesn’t plan to release his tax returns before the presidential election in November. “There’s nothing to learn from them,” he said. Then, on Wednesday, he said he would release them. “I’ll release. Hopefully before the election I’ll release,” he told Fox News. “And I’d like to release.” (Doesn’t seem like it.) “You learn very little from a tax return,” he added. Maybe, but you learn a lot from someone’s ambivalence about releasing them.

As the “Empire State of Mind” beat filled the packed CenturyLink Arena in Omaha, the chorus slid in: “At Berkshire, financial strength is what dreams are made of, there’s nothing you can’t dooooo….” The white, middle-aged crowd of investors jammed. Is this is the humble setting from which champions arise?

Last Friday, the media industry toasted BuzzFeed for successfully drawing the attention of nearly 800,000 Facebook users to a livestream of two employees wrapping hundreds of rubber bands around a watermelon until the fruit exploded. The gambit capped another quarter of widespread confidence in BuzzFeed’s business model, which sells native advertising against a mix of silly listicles and enterprise reporting published on an ever-increasing number of third-party platforms, with everything heavily underwritten by periodic injections of venture capital.

Goldman Sachs analysts are getting attention for speculating that if corporate profit margins stay at their abnormally high levels, it may raise fundamental questions about “the efficacy of capitalism.” But don’t fool yourself—Goldman Sachs is far too sophisticated to believe that capitalism “works.”

Since the Middle Ages, human beings have purchased various goods—ranging from bare necessities to unimaginable luxuries—using money acquired from wage labor. We routinely report on how the past and present iterations of this system, commonly known as market capitalism, depend on the subjugation of the planet’s most powerless populations and the destruction of the earth’s most fragile ecosystems. We much less routinely acknowledge the fact that we buy stuff ourselves, and that we like a lot of the stuff we buy. Pursuant to our goal of editorial transparency, here’s the best thing each member of Gawker’s staff bought in 2015. If you have your own suggestions, hop in the comments below.

As recently as last year, oil cost close to $110 a barrel. Today, oil costs less than $37 a barrel. Why? There’s so much god damn oil!

You know that the ultrawealthy in America are getting nervous when they enlist Deepak Chopra in their showy, useless gestures about fixing income inequality.

It was a tough year for hedge funds: the third worst, according to the Absolute Return Composite Index, since 1998. (A bad ten years, actually.) But holiday parties are about togetherness and gratitude or whatever, so why not invite Katy Perry and Maroon 5 if you can still swing it?

This... fuckin’.... guy!!!

The reality TV industry has been the target of union campaigns recently, thanks to its well-documented and widespread awful working conditions. Now, a new survey shows just how much reality TV workers are earning.

Cool Pope “Francis” (a pseudonym) has said some things in the past that could be interpreted as less than completely enthusiastic about the predations of unrestrained capitalism. That bastard. The plutocrats will show him he’s wrong—the capitalist way!

“Pope Francis does not just criticize the excesses of global capitalism. He compares them to the ‘dung of the devil.’ He does not simply argue that systemic ‘greed for money’ is a bad thing. He calls it a ‘subtle dictatorship’ that ‘condemns and enslaves men and women.’”

Cool Pope “Francis” (a nickname) in a speech yesterday “called the unfettered pursuit of money ‘the dung of the devil.’” Damn—now that’s a cool Pope.

“The European financial system was architected to make lending to Greece — and Spain and Portugal and Italy — a money machine for bankers... [who] understood perfectly well that there was in fact a long-term risk, an uncertainty, a constructive ambiguity.” Gosh, this all sounds awfully familiar.

House Democrats derailed “fast-track” today, putting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, President’s Obama’s pet trade free-trade agreement, in jeopardy. You may have some questions about what that all means. Questions like:

As wide-eyed foreigners lustily eye Havana real estate, liberalized Cuban economic rules are “re-gentrifying the city along racial lines and class divisions, particularly because lighter-skinned Cubans are more likely to have relatives abroad with money to invest.” Viva capitalismo!

Do your charitable donations suck? Are you failing to save lives due to greed you don't even realize you have? Do poor people have the right to take all of our stuff? One of the world's most famous philosophers talked about these very topics with us.

Paul Tudor Jones—whose net worth is $4.6 billion—is one of the most famous hedge fund managers in American history. He is a heavy donor to Republicans. And he is warning of the possibility of class-based revolution in America. Also, he has some ideas.

America's health care system has many problems. One is the fact that it is incredibly difficult to know how much things cost. We asked for prices on health care. Now, we've assembled some for you.

McDonald's, the molded plastic king of America's molded plastic cuisine, has decided that money will no longer suffice to purchase its meager offerings; the company now demands that you degrade yourself in order to be fed.