Yearly Archives: 2013

Bill Moyers on Dollars versus Democracy, aka Supreme Court Case McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission

Yves here. With the deficit showdown consuming so much media attention, a lot of important stories are not getting the attention they warrant. One is a case before the Supreme Court, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, which many have called Citizens United 2.0. Bill Moyers and his guest, Yale Law School election and constitutional law professor Heather Gerken, discuss how this case has the potential to further erode campaign finance laws and increase the already considerable influence that monied interests have on politics.

Links 10/11/13

Talks Over Debt Showdown Finally Underway, but Acrimony, Republican Divisions Impede Dealmaking

This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 564 donors have already invested in our efforts to shed light on the dark and seamy corners of finance. Join us and participate via our Tip Jar or another credit card portal, WePay in the right column, or read about why we’re doing this fundraiser and other ways to donate, such as by check, as well as our current goal, on our kickoff post. And read about our current target here.

In the hostage negotiations otherwise known as the budget deal, the movement on Thursday, that of the Republicans meeting with Obama and offering the idea of a limited extension of the debt ceiling with some thin conditions attached, is indeed progress. But don’t confuse progress with much progress.

Whistleblower Suit Confirms that the New York Fed is in the Goldman Protection Racket

On Thursday, a former bank examiner at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Carmen Segarra, filed a suit (embedded at the end of this post) against the New York Fed and several of its employees alleging, among other things, improper termination. The complaint is a doozy and some of the additional details supplied by Segarra to ProPublica make an already ugly picture look even worse.

Dan Kervick: Yellen Needs to Tell Politicians to Stop Passing the Buck to the Fed

By Dan Kervick, who does research in decision theory and analytic metaphysics. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives

Evan Soltas is hoping that President Obama’s appointment of Janet Yellen signifies a new administration commitment to jobs and economic growth.

Unfortunately, Soltas seems to be one of those folks who is convinced that our failures over the past five years have much to do with a monetary policy that has been insufficiently “accommodative”. That’s just another version of the “if you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail” thinking. If you think the Fed has to fix the economy, sure, you’d think the Fed hasn’t done enough. But the Fed isn’t in a position to pull us out of this ditch, and Yellen should quit enabling the idea that it can.

Thanks! Met Our Third Target, On to the Fourth!

Thanks to your generous and speedy responses, we’ve met our first three targets: upgrading site support and hosting (which should help us come up with better solutions to our ongoing war with spambots; we think we may have solved the problem that had us completely missing from Google searches for over a month), nice ex-post facto honoraria to our loyal guest bloggers, and travel/conference expenses and coverage. And we are more than half way towards our goal of 1000 contributors for this fundraiser.

Links 10/10/13

Will China’s Gambit to Undermine the Trans-Pacific Partnership Succeed?

While eyes in the US have remained focused on the budget cliffhanger in Washington, in Bali, two sets of meetings were taking place. The first was the latest set of Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations. The US, led by John Kerry (Obama was supposed to make an appearance but the budget drama kept him away) met with representatives of the 12 nations it is pressing to agree to this deliberately mis-branded “trade deal”. The reason the label is misleading is that trade is already substantially liberalized; the real point of the TPP and its cousin, the pending EU-US trade agreement, is to weaken the power of nations to regulate, which will allow multinationals to lead a race to the bottom on product and environmental safety.

Calling on Yellen: Time for a Modest, Dull Fed

Most of the news accounts of Obama’s nomination of Janet Yellen as the next Federal Reserve Chairman focused either on what type of monetary stance she was likely to take or on biographical details.

But some writers have used the upcoming changing of the guard at the Fed to look at the bigger question of the Fed’s role, particularly now that it has continues to intervene in financial markets to an unprecedented degree, a full four years after the worst of the financial crisis had passed.

The Glamorous World of Big-Time Blogging

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

People often ask me, “Lambert, what is the glamorous world of blogging really like?” So, tonight I want to answer that question _{MR SUBLIMINAL The tip jar is to your right}. In detail.

Links 10/9/13

As Budget Stalemate Hostilities Escalate, Obama Starts to Brandish Default Threat

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The confrontation underway in Washington DC isn’t as deadly as the Cuban Missile crisis. But in many ways, a misstep could be would produce collateral damage is hard to estimate but would unquestionably be large. So given the stakes, it’s remarkable to see Obama prove his manhood by telling those Republicans he is not intimidated by the possibility of default.