Hello, and welcome to the end of the world as we know it, edition of Slate Money,

your guide to the business and finance news of what turns out to have been

a pretty packed week of business and finance news. I'm Felix Salmon of Axios and of South London,

which was the last holdout in the British election that actually voted Labour, virtually

everywhere else in the UK,

managed to vote Tory, it seemed, except for Scotland, which went in a landslide for the Scottish

nationalists. We're going to talk about that, of course. We are going to talk about the end of the

WTO, which is a story I covered in my newsletter this week, Xio's Edge, but which I feel

hasn't got enough attention because it's a pretty big deal. We're going to talk about other

trade related stuff. We're going to talk about Paul Volker, rest in peace. What else we're going to

talk about Emily? We're going to talk about when a suitcase company is more than a suitcase company.

Emily.

Emily Peck of Huffington Post is going to delve into the gender dynamics of away suitcases,

which apparently is a thing.

Who knew that a suitcase could have gender dynamics, but it does.

And Anna Chimansky of Breaking Views is here, and you are going to basically be the trade nerd.

I guess. I'm the one who's like, let's talk about all the boring things. All of that coming up on Slate

money. So everything's falling apart, Felix, huh? Everything is falling apart. I had this thing in my newsletter was like about the Treaty of Westphalia,

which I kind of like liked as a frame, which is basically 1648 when nation states really became a thing. And the thing about nation states was they were all sovereign nations and no one, and they answered to no one.

And they would make treaties with each other, but they wouldn't install some kind of judicial system that they could take each other to court, because that would violate their sovereignty.

And basically, ever since then, for the past 400, you know, 250 years, it was that way until something crazy

happened in 1995, which is that the general agreement on tariffs and trade gat transmogrified

...