Are we supposed to take this posturing seriously? The media is now peddling more and more banker-favoring narratives with a straight face. The Columbia Journalism Review described one last week, how a little Goldman Kabuki theater to appease the peasants was incorrectly depicted as a serious move: …the press way overplays what is essentially a […]
Read more...Easy money could have a high price Financial Times Disaster and Denial Paul Krugman Christmas Comes Early Macro Man Winston Churchill Liveblogs World War II: December 13, 1939 Brad DeLong Antidote du jour:
Read more...A provocative report by the New Economics Foundation has made an effort to put a price tag on the broader costs and benefits of various types of work. As quoted in the Financial Times (hat tip Swedish Lex), the leader of this effort put it: Pay levels often don’t reflect the true value that is […]
Read more...I’m curious to get reader views on this one, since even the normally jaundiced Reuters noted in its coverage that the 11th hour bailout was “the least expected of all options Dubai had on the table.” Abu Dhabi had made it sound as if it would help, but that it also was going to extract […]
Read more...Are Americans a Broken People? Why We’ve Stopped Fighting Back Against the Forces of Oppression Alternet (hat tip reader Uncle Billy) Interview with US Economic Recovery Advisory Board Chair Paul Volcker Der Spiegel. Notably better questions than in most US interviews. Goldman Trades Shouldn’t Get U.S. Aid, Volcker Says Bloomberg Unemployment Insurance in a War […]
Read more...Wow, so it wasn’t Turbo Timmy, the AIG rescue, the alphabet soup of Fed currency facilities or the currency swaps that saved the global banking system. The marginal suppliers of capital, according to the UN, were drug lords. That means that the UN is saying that the banks went into the money-laundering business on a […]
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Read more...Posting will be light today and tomorrow, I have a speech and an article I need to put to bed, plus holiday stuff…apologies! And I am SOOO annoyed about the reform bill headfake I don’t know where to begin. Poor Children Likelier to Get Antipsychotics New York Times. I think the odds are non-trivial that […]
Read more...I have just received confirmation from a very credible Congressional source that the bill to audit the Federal Reserve is included in the House financial reform legislation which passed today. My source says: The Fed audit provision which passed the Financial Services Committee a few weeks ago is part of the bill. This is a […]
Read more...By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns Matt Taibbi is one of the few commentators in the mainstream media who is not worried about ‘access’ and has, therefore, been free to write much more critically about the economic crisis and reform efforts on Wall Street. His first piece was a polemic against Goldman Sachs, which triggered […]
Read more...The Genesis 2.0 Project Vanity Fair (hat tip reader Crocodile Chuck). Science porn on the Large Hadron Collider. Fake ‘kid in a kit’ excuses workers for leaving early Springwise. So we have a newletter that extols a new business concept that helps workers deceive their employers. Anyone wonder why the US is going down the […]
Read more...We noted that all the talk of pitchforks and heads on pikes, the folks at Goldman have taken to arming themselves. But until recently, the talk was aggressive, but bodily harm was non-existent, save for an isolated (but very nasty) beating over phony mortgage mod advice. But that may be changing, per this update from […]
Read more...Why hasn’t a group of disgruntled Harvard alumni circulated a statement itemizing the damage that Larry Summers wrought as president of the University? Yeah, I know, it would be divisive, grown-ups are discouraged from raising uncomfortable questions, or worse, demanding accountability of leaders. But Summers did a great deal of damage to Harvard, and has […]
Read more...Dear readers, I posted this story about 18 hours ago, but my server went down briefly, and this offering was a casualty. The reason I included it was that, according to Google News, it had been picked up only by a few overseas news outlets, like the Turkish Press and the Straits Times, and here […]
Read more...By L. Randall Wray is a professor of economics and research director of the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability at the University of Missouri–Kansas City and writes for New Deal 2.0 Congress is nearing completion of its financial reform bill HR 4173 (Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009), which appears […]
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