Boston Bombing: Links and Commentary
The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images. — Guy DeBord
By Lambert Strether of Corrente
Read more...Yearly Archives: 2013
Robert Johnson on the Oligarchs: “They’re All Standing on the Deck of the Titanic Looking in Each Other’s Eyes”
Clip from Robert Johnson, former Senate Economist, Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, and a Senior Fellow and Director of the Global Finance Project at the Roosevelt Institute, and transcribed by The Transcriber, who added commentary. Originally published at Corrente.
Lambert here: Yes, the metaphor is a little different from Johnson’s But not all that different.
Read more...Links 4/20/13
The Elephants in the Room: Citizens United, Trade and Corporate Ownership of Our Natural Resources
Yves here. This is a short but useful reminder of how the failure to enforce anti-trust laws leads to oligopolies. MBAs are taught how to make markets inefficient to increase corporate profits, and one of the most lasting ways is to achieve a dominant position, ideally in a concentrated industry. “Roll ups” which is a consolidation play, is a favorite among private equity firms (but they often stumble in integrating the companies).
The author describes how dominant players preserve their profits through aggressive lobbying in the food space, and why that is particularly troubling.
Read more...“Manufacturing Consent” 25 Years Later
If you haven’t read “Manufacturing Consent” by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, you really should. That book plus Walter Lippmann’s “Public Opinion” and Alex Carey’s “Taking the Risk Out of Democracy” are three essential reads on propaganda in the US.
This Edward Herman interview on the Real News Network gives a sense of the book’s thesis and impact.
Read more...Boston Bombing Open Thread
I’m not sure what I can add to the extensive, and often confused, media coverage of the Boston bombing, the MIT police shooting and resulting manhunt, save to extend my condolences to the victims. As Marcy Wheeler pointed out, what differentiated these events from other outbreaks of violence was the intensity of the media coverage.
Read more...Links 4/19/13
Jeffrey Sachs Calls Out Wall Street Criminality and Pathological Greed
One of the things that Matt Stoller has stressed that the possibility of reform is remote until breaks within the elites take place.
Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia professor and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia, is a controversial figure for his neoliberal stance on macroeconomics and his role in promoting the use of “shock therapy” in emerging economies. But it is also important to recognize that criticism from a connected, respected insider has more significance than that of someone like Bill Black, who has made a career of taking on bank fraud but has never reached a top policy-making level.
This talk is blistering at several points.
Read more...More Foreclosure Review Fiasco: Paying Agent Rust Consulting Sends Letters to Different Addresses Than on Borrower Letters, Refuses to Make Corrections
Hedge fund manager and famed short seller David Einhorn is right: no matter how bad you think it is, it’s worse.
Read more...Yanis Varoufakis: Greek Banksters in Action – On the Latest Twist in the Story of Mafia-Style Terror Spreading Through the Greek Polity
Yves here. When high level bank and government dealings start resembling a John Grisham novel, it’s a sign that the rule of law is breaking down in a serious way. Given that the Troika’s plan for Greece is to break it on the rack, this sort of criminality isn’t a surprise. But the troubling bit is that if you reset this story in the US, I doubt anyone would find it implausible.
Read more...Soros is Dead! Whoops, Not, Reuters Pulled Trigger Early
George Soros, along with being the man who broke the pound in 1992, has the interesting privilege of being able to read his own obituary. This is something money can’t buy. Reuters launched the report of the hedge fund pioneer/philanthropist’s demise a tad prematurely.
Ed Harrison snagged the text:
Read more...Twisted Tale of Bad Math and Hubris: Global Austerity Based on a Spreadsheet Error
Somebody has some 'splaining to do!
Read more...Bipartisan Report: U.S. Practiced Widespread Torture, Torture Has “No Jusification” and Doesn’t Yield Significant Information, Nation’s Highest Officials Bear Responsibility
We Can’t Just Look Forward … We Have to Admit What Went Wrong
Read more...Links 4/18/13
Independent Foreclosure Review Fiasco: OCC and Fed Decided Not to Find Harm
The last few days have had more and more ugly revelations emerge about the botched OCC and Fed Independent Foreclosure Review settlement, with some particularly important ones coming out of the hearings in Robert Menendez’s Senate Banking subcommittee today.
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