“Your roof, your rules” –George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones
Lambert here: I’m writing this so Yves doesn’t have to. Because all we want Yves writing two or three McKinsey-quality posts each night, and not wasting her time on administrivia, right? Barry Ritholz at Big Picture has what Yves considers to be the gold standard for commenting policy. It reads in relevant part:
Read more...Georgetown law school professor and bankruptcy expert Adam Levitin in a must read article in Salon parses how municipal workers, who on paper should actually be well protected in the event of a municipal bankruptcy, are likely to be butchered.
Read more...Normally I’d relegate a good job of news spadework to the daily Links feature, but Bloomberg caught out Attorney General Eric Holder in such an egregious lie that this failed con job merits ample, widespread publicity and well-deserved derision.
Read more...By Raúl Ilargi Meijer, editor-in-chief of The Automatic Earth, Cross posted from Automatic Earth
It’s a state of mind, a way of thinking and a belief system bordering on outright religion all in one. If it would be recognized as a religion, it would be the world’s biggest. Its followers and proponents hold that growth is a necessary element of survival, that technology is capable of solving all problems (especially those caused by mankind), and that the earth, nature, the living environment, is there for mankind to be exploited at will to achieve that growth
Read more...How Congress made itself a big part of the “where are the jobs?” problem.
Read more...By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), says WikiPedia, would rank as the eighth largest economy in the world if it were a single entity. It includes ten countries: Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. This week, we’ll travel down the Mekong from Burma through Laos and Cambodia to Vietnam; next week, we’ll visit the remaining countries.
our humble blogger generally refrains from writing about stocks for a host of reasons. But several interesting news bits have prompted me to depart from my usual practice.
Read more...By rjs, a rural swamp denizen from Northeast Ohio, and a long-time commenter at Naked Capitalism. Originally published at MarketWatch 666.
Today we look at two major reports on active home mortgages; one, from the Mortgage Bankers Association, shows both mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures down in the 2nd quarter; the other, from LPS (Lender Processing Services) shows a sudden 18.3% spike in new mortgage delinquencies in June, the most newly delinquent homeowners in a month at least 2 years…We’ll unravel what both reports reveal…Then we look at the new trade report for June, which showed that our trade deficit was down over 22%, that exports hit an all time record, and that results might revise 2nd quarter growth to a respectable 2.5%… What is this, an Obama wet dream coming early, with export jobs for everyone? Hardly. We find big chunks of that June trade change can be accounted for by big jumps in jewelry, gem diamonds, monetary gold & refinery exports, and reductions in imports of much of the same…Something’s going on there, but it ain’t about jobs…
Read more...Yves here. The headline above, which is a carryover from OilPrice, is deliberately provocative. Of course US energy independence means something. After all, it’s one of the big rationales given for destroying America’s supply of potable water fracking. But the argument in this piece is geopolitical, that US energy independence is less important than typical, as in parochial, Americans believe.
From his latest presser, Obama’s partisan perspective on ObamaCare:
[OBAMA:] Now, I think the really interesting question is why it is that my friends in the other party have made the idea of preventing these people from getting health care their holy grail, their number-one priority.
However, from the public purpose perspective, the really interesting question is why our “friends” in both parties refuse to put truly universal coverage — for example, single payer Medicare for All — on the table at all. Remember, ObamaCare is, pathetically, projected to enroll only 7 million people in its first year, and when fully implemented will leave about as many uninsured as newly insured — 25 or 30 million, but with “these people,” who’s counting?
Read more...By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is “The Bubble and Beyond.” Originally published on michael-hudson.com.
Lambert here: This is Part C from Hudson’s ongoing Insider’s Economic Dictionary: It includes Capital, Chartalism, Chicago Boys, Class, Corruption, and Credit, and much else. It’s hard to believe that other letters will have such a rich set of entries, but we’ll have to see. Mix ’em, match ’em, share ’em with your friends!
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