NEW YORK — At the beginning of the 1980s capital was flooding into the American oil and gas industry. Apache Corporation, an erstwhile conglomerate spanning steel, dude-ranching and car sales, sought to tap into the flow in a novel way. It wrapped a bunch of private oil and gas assets into a new ownership structure that was akin to a partnership but was publicly listed. It was a useful idea-until steep declines in tax rates and energy prices put the Apache Petroleum Company to rest in 1987.

This time round the master limited partnership (MLP) structure which Apache pioneered is no longer just a footnote. In the 2000s such companies allowed the capital-intensive energy industry to attract vital funds even during a devastating financial crisis. Kinder Morgan, a complex entity built around interlocking MLPs, has an enterprise value (its market capitalisation plus its debt) of $109 billion. The collective market capitalisation of MLPs recently passed that of Exxon Mobil, the most highly valued energy company on the New York Stock Exchange.

The new popularity of the MLP is part of a larger shift in the way businesses structure themselves that is changing how American capitalism works. The essence is a move towards […]

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America is falling apart - and this nation’s super-rich are to blame.

There was once a time in America when the super-rich needed you, and me, and working-class Americans to be successful.

They needed us for their roads, for their businesses, for their communications, for their transportation, as their customers, and for their overall success.

The super-rich rode on the same trains as us, and flew in the same planes as us. They went to our hospitals and learned at our schools.

Their success directly depended on us, and on the well-being of the nation, and they knew it.

But times have changed, and the super-rich of the 21st century no longer think that you and I are needed for their continued success.

And in some ways, they have given up on America, period.

As Paul Buchheit brilliantly points out over at AlterNet, ‘As they accumulate more and more wealth, the very rich have less need for society. At the same time, they’ve convinced themselves that they made it on their own, and that contributing to societal needs is unfair to them. There is ample evidence that this small group of takers is giving up on the country that made it possible for them to build huge […]

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New research shows a steady increase in the extent to which Americans are geographically divided by income. The below charts are from a paper by Kendra Bischoff and Sean Reardon, professors at Cornell and Stanford respectively, on what they refer to as ‘residential segregation by income

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It’s been a hot week for global warming.

NASA released global temperature data showing that this September tied with 2005 for the warmest September on record. That’s doubly impressive since 2005 was warmed by an El Niño and accompanying warm Pacific ocean temperatures, whereas 2013 has had cooler Pacific temperatures all year.

Greenhouse gases keep warming the planet to unprecedented levels with unprecedented speed. That’s the conclusion of two new studies out this week.

The first, ‘Unprecedented recent summer warmth in Arctic Canada,

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Part one of this series, ‘The High Cost of Low Taxes,

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