10 public X-Rays
Curated analyses of consequential claims from economics, geopolitics, markets, technology, and power. Read the evidence landscape, then decide for yourself.
The case for the 2003 Iraq War
Not the active stockpiles or reconstituted nuclear programme presented at the UN. Iraq retained expertise and unresolved disarmament questions, but those were not the same as a current arsenal.
The 2018-2019 U.S.-China trade war
Mostly U.S. importers at the border, although the policy also reduced targeted imports and benefited some protected producers.
The post-World War I settlement
It helped create grievances and constraints that Hitler exploited, but later economic collapse, political choices, ideology, and deliberate aggression made the path to war contingent rather than inevitable.
The collapse of Lehman Brothers
Lehman's failure was a decisive trigger and amplifier, but mortgage losses, leverage, opaque exposures, and fragile short-term funding had already created a systemic crisis.
The 1973-1974 oil shock
It was a major shock that raised costs and weakened output, but inflation had begun earlier and persistence also reflected policy, expectations, productivity, food prices, and later energy shocks.
The Cuban Missile Crisis
No. Pressure mattered, but restraint, communication, a no-invasion assurance, and a private understanding over US missiles in Turkey were also material to the peaceful outcome.
The Great Depression
It damaged trade and deepened the downturn, but the Depression began before the tariff and became catastrophic through banking panics, monetary contraction, deflation, debt, and the gold standard.
The 2016 Brexit referendum
Not as an actual net weekly payment. The headline used a gross assessment before the rebate and ignored money returning to the UK, so the full amount was never freely available to redirect.
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
The 2 August attack occurred, but the reported 4 August attack did not. Treating both as confirmed created a much clearer case for urgent, broad escalation than the evidence supported.
The subprime mortgage crisis
Their defaults helped trigger losses, but securitisation, leverage, ratings, opaque exposures, runnable funding, and regulatory failures turned mortgage risk into a global systemic crisis.
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