Yearly Archives: 2011
Welcome to the Police State: NYC Cops Mace Peaceful Protestors Against Wall Street
I’m beginning to wonder whether the right to assemble is effectively dead in the US. No one who is a wage slave (which is the overwhelming majority of the population) can afford to have an arrest record, even a misdemeanor, in this age of short job tenures and rising use of background checks.
Read more...Marriner Eccles on the Need to Save the Rich from Themselves
Hoisted from comments, this from reader barrisj. When I went to read the London Banker post in question, I too was struck by the passage barrisj singled out:
Read more...Europe Readying Yet Another “This Really Will Do the Trick” Bailout Package
Well, we are clearly in crisis mode. We are back to weekends being a period when you need to watch the news in a serious way.
And in another bit of deja vu all over again, the powers that be in Europe are readying yet another bailout plan, this one supposedly big enough to do the trick once and for all.
Read more...Links 9/24/11
Obama’s Work for Almost Free, Maybe You Get Hired Program
I so often criticize the New York Times for doing stenography for officialdom that I feel compelled to point out a case of good reporting on an Obama initiative I’ve seen criticized in other venues and failed to shred on NC.
The Times piece focuses on a Georgia “tryout” program in which workers still on unemployment get to work for free for prospective employers for a maximum of 24 weeks. The employer is under no obligation to hire anyone. Needless to say, this program is more than a tad skewed in favor of companies. But it costs no money and creates the impression the government is Doing Something. So since no one in DC wants the government to spend more money, particularly on little people, this gimmick is perfect fit with the “let them eat cake” zeitgeist.
Key sections of the Times piece:
Read more...The False Dichotomy of Greed
By Sell on News, a macro equities analyst. Cross posted from MacroBusiness
The Euro crisis appears to be developing into something similar to the 1980s Latin American debt crisis when the idea that, to quote Walter Wriston, who ran First National City/ Citibank from the 1960s into the 1980s it was assumed that: “countries don’t go out of business.” The Latin American leadership demonstrated that they, in effect, could, by defaulting. As a number of bloggers at MacroBusiness have pointed out, government finances are not like household finances, although they are often seen that way. That much is well understood in the financial community, although perhaps not as well in the wider public.
Read more...How the Banks Take Down Politicians (Elizabeth Warren Edition)
Big banks are very powerful, and they destroy politicians they don’t like. Obviously, they don’t do it directly, but operate through front groups. Some of these organizations are known as “media outlets”, such as the New York Post, which outed one of Eric Schneiderman’s lawyers as a dominatrix to embarrass and intimidate his office.
Read more...Top Bankruptcy Lawyer Harvey Miller on the Possibility of a Countrywide BK
Bloomberg interviewed Harvey Miller, who is regularly described as the dean of the bankruptcy bar in the US. Miller handled the Lehman bankruptcy and is thus well positioned to opine on whether Bank of America might put Countrywide into bankruptcy.
Read more...Links 9/23/11
Matt Stoller: Did Geithner Really Undermine Obama on Nationalizing Citigroup?
By Matt Stoller, the former Senior Policy Advisor to Rep. Alan Grayson and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can reach him at stoller (at) gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @matthewstoller
The fight over the future, in the form of the fight over who writes the history of the Obama years, has begun in earnest.
Read more...Philip Pilkington: The History of Greed – An Interview with Jeff Madrick
Jeff Madrick is a journalist, economic policy consultant and analyst. He is also the editor of Challenge magazine, which seeks to give alternative views on economics issues, as well as a visiting professor of humanities at The Cooper Union, director of policy research at the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis, The New School, a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and the author of numerous books. His latest book, The Age of Greed, is available from Amazon.
Interview conducted by Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer based in Dublin, Ireland.
Philip Pilkington: Your book The Age of Greed is a detailed historical survey of some of the key figures that facilitated — broadly speaking — the transition away from the progressive, government-regulated economy of the post-war years and toward the finance-driven, deregulated economy in which we now live. In this interview I don’t want to focus on all the figures that crop up in the book as that is done so there in great detail. Instead I want to explore the broad sweep of this history focusing both on some of the more recognisable of these figures and on the actual cultural, political and economic shift that took place over this period.
Read more...Europe Must Choose
By Delusional Economics, who is unhappy with the current dumbed-down vested interest economic reporting the Australian public is force fed on a daily basis, and takes pleasure in re-reporting the news with “bad” parts removed, and a bit of contrarian balance thrown in. Cross posted from MacroBusiness
The big news from Europe last night was the “surprising” PMI numbers. But as usual the news also goes behind the headline.
Read more...Marshall Auerback: The ECB v. Germany
By Marshall Auerback, a portfolio strategist and hedge fund manager
I’ve been in Amsterdam and met some people very well connected with the ECB. The topic de jour is the apparent split between the Germans and the ECB, especially in light of the resignation of Jürgen Stark last week from the ECB executive board. This has been a move hailed as a German protest of the errant ways of the ECB, andStark is now touting his conservative ideas around Europe in a hope to undermine the central bank’s current interventions. That’s the public line.
But the people to whom I’ve spoken here contend that Stark’s resignation does reflect the reality that the Germans are losing out as far as the ECB goes. The profound objections to what the ECB is becoming on the part of Germany is also accompanied by a realisation that it is the only supranational game in town and has little choice but to take on this quasi-fiscal function that it is now undertaking.
Read more...How markets interpreted the Fed’s Operation Twist as a sign of double dip
Edward here again. I just posted this up on Credit Writedowns. I am not in the right frame of mind here to give this topic the well-developed attention it requires, but, with things unravelling in global stock markets, I feel that I have to take it on. By the way, feel free to ping me […]
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